If you’ve just started your run as an Apex predator or if you’re coming back to the game for its latest season, this guide will help with everything that you need for setting your game up. Often overlooked by casual players, a game’s graphic settings are incredibly vital, especially in the case of competitive shooters. Similarly, tweaking Apex Legends’ graphic settings is essential to achieving the perfect balance between visual clarity and high performance.
The very best and most optimized graphic settings for Apex Legends tend to give players reliable clarity and visibility during fights. And while they sacrifice some aesthetic qualities of the game, they ultimately lead to better FPS and clearer surroundings. All of this adds up to a more advantageous gameplay experience for predators wanting to be the champions of their arenas. And that, without a doubt, is a great way to look at things.
Apex Legends System Requirements
Take a look at the game’s minimum and recommended system requirements before you head down to the actual settings. Make sure your equipment meets the proper standards before you start playing or the changes and improvements to your settings won’t make a difference.
Minimum Requirements
- OS: 64-Bit Windows 7
- CPU: Intel Core i3-6300 or AMD FX-4350 (or Equivalent)
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 or Radeon HD7700 (or Equivalent)
- RAM: 6 GB
- Hard Drive: 30 GB
Recommended Requirements
- OS: 64-Bit Windows 7
- CPU: Intel i5 3570K (or Equivalent)
- CPU: Intel i5 3570K (or Equivalent)
- RAM: 8 GB
- Hard Drive: 30 GB
Best Apex Legends Graphics Settings
In our guide, we will go through a variety of settings that you can tweak to get that optimal sweet spot of performance. Note that not all our recommendations will work for everyone, and that our guide focuses more on the general idea for optimization based on professional players and our own experience playing Apex Legends.
Best Apex Legends Launch Commands
Before you even get into the game itself and mess around with the settings, various launch commands can be of great use. These options help gamers start their game with some settings already specified and can be done from both the Steam Client and the Origin Launcher. Follow these steps to add launch commands:
- Navigate to your game library and right-click on Apex Legends
- Select the properties (or game properties for Origin)
- Under the General tab (Advanced Launch Options for Origin) you will find the command line where you can input commands for the game
You can add as many commands as you prefer here, depending on your needs. Just be sure to add a ‘-’ before the command for it to take effect. The following is a list of some popular commands that you may want to add, at your preference.
- -preload | Loads some of the game’s resources before it starts, which increases performance but is also noted to cause minor stuttering in some low-end rigs. Add this to your preference.
- -forcenovsync | Forcefully disables Vsync every time the game is launched.
- -refresh 144 | This command force sets the refresh rate to the value you input and is recommended to be set to the rate of your monitor.
- -fullscreen | Pretty simple, forces the game to launch in Full Screen so that the system renders the game and nothing else that introduces any sort of lag.
- -high | This particular command sets the priority for the Apex Legends application to ‘high’, without having to navigate through the Task Manager to do it manually.
Best Apex Legends Display Settings
Now let’s get into some of the best Apex Legends graphic settings, starting with initial changes such as Aspect Ratio, Resolution, and Field of View.
Display mode: Needless to say, this should always be Full Screen. And with the ‘-fullscreen’ launch command, the game will always launch with Full Screen enabled.
Aspect Ratio: In general, one should always stick to their monitor’s native aspect ratio. However, pros and streamers often play on stretched options, citing that enemies are easier to hit on them. Stick to native unless you specifically play on a different ratio.
Resolution: Again, stick to your native resolution unless the higher resolution provides less FPS than expected. This is usually a last-ditch effort to correct FPS drops but if your rig is up to the mark, the native resolution should work just fine. Lower resolutions such as 900p or 720p ease the burden on your GPU but offer a less smooth visual experience.
Brightness: Adjust this setting to your liking, keeping in mind that higher brightness causes more strain on the eyes and isn’t necessarily better for gameplay.
Field of View (FOV): Keep this between 95 – 105, unless you prefer it another way personally. A higher FOV means more peripheral awareness and if your rig is powerful enough to support it, crank it to the max.
FOV Ability Scaling: Keep this disabled if you don’t want your abilities to interfere with your FOV or change it anyway during combat.
Sprint View Shake: Set this to Minimal since enabling it affects performance and adds another unneeded motion source that disrupts gameplay.
Best Apex Legends Graphic Settings
Moving on to the more advanced settings that have a greater impact on the performance of the game and the overall graphic experience.
Vsync: Always keep this disabled, resulting in less input lag and uncapped frame rate
NVidia Reflex: Enable this, along with Boost, if you’re running Nvidia graphic cards. This is a relatively newer setting for the game, and for gamers running older GPUs, it can drastically cut latency and offer better performance.
Adaptive Resolution FPS Target: Keep this turned off at ‘0’ for a more consistent graphic experience since enabling it leads to lagging cuts in quality.
Adaptive Supersampling: Kept disabled by default, behaving similarly to the previous setting.
Anti-aliasing: Set this to None, and will greatly improve performance and sharpen the visuals of objects and edges in the game.
Texture Streaming Budget: Adjust this particular setting accordingly, since it revolves around the amount of VRAM your system has. Most often, this setting will be preset for you automatically as the game scans your hardware for the best approach to texture streaming.
Texture Filtering: Despite your preference and system hardware, we recommend keeping this at Bilinear or Anisotropic 2x since higher options weigh down on the GPU greatly
Ambient Occlusion Quality: Turn this off, and you will thank yourself. It has a large impact on game performance and keeping it off will help you achieve smoother gameplay.
Sun Shadow Coverage & Detail: Shadows in general cause too much of a drain on your graphics and it is always better to keep their settings at the lowest option available. Set both of these to low.
Spot Shadow Detail: While shadows would seemingly help identify enemies, in this case, they don’t do as much so keeping this setting disabled would be the best option.
Volumetric Lighting: Turn this off, as realistic lighting effects are the last thing you need to be tacked onto your system’s ability to render the game.
Dynamic Spot Shadows: Again, anything to do with shadows should either be disabled or kept at the lowest. Keep this setting disabled and lift any unnecessary burden on your GPU.
Model Detail: Most players would suggest keeping this at low, like all other visual settings for the best performance. However, if your rig can handle it then set this to medium for a more refined look, while at the same time keeping your gameplay smooth and fluid.
Effects Detail: Set this to low since all this does is spruce up explosions and other unwanted visual effects.
Impact Marks: You don’t need to know where your bullets have landed, as long as they’re on the enemy. Keep this on low for better performance.
Ragdolls: Set this to disabled. Apart from making your death seem more realistic in terms of body movement, there’s no actual need for something that can cause FPS drops when a lot of bodies hit the ground simultaneously.
How To Fix Low FPS in Apex Legends
If you have a PC with adequate or better hardware and still experience occasional FPS drops, the problem may not be the game’s graphic settings. Even with good hardware, issues like these often stem from the CPU or GPU. And unless you’re an expert with computer tools and equipment, there’s not much you can physically do about your hardware yourself.
Luckily, there are still a few options you can explore to ensure all your equipment is optimized and running perfectly. These do not involve replacing or fixing hardware and are more focused on the driver and software side of things to ensure the gaming application runs smoothly. Hopefully one of these fixes will help you out in restoring a healthy number of FPS for your game.
- Optimize your graphics card settings – Whether you have an AMD card or an Nvidia one, both manufacturers allow changes from their respective control panels. You can browse online for written or visual guides for these settings if you’re unsure about what specific settings do. Optimizing these settings and prioritizing power over quality will help you improve your performance and in turn, raise the FPS of your game.
- Updating your graphics card – Often, new patches and updates for the games introduce new content and visual improvements. And some of those changes often interact with your GPU in different ways. If you think your FPS counter is declining after an update, try updating your graphics card driver and restarting your game. The process is fairly easy and mostly automated, allowing you to easily update the drivers and get back into the arena in no time.
- Removing FPS cap – For players who have a PC capable of pushing past Apex’s native frame cap of 144 and wish to go beyond it, this is the perfect solution. As mentioned previously, various launch commands can help with gaming issues. One such command is “+fps_max unlimited”, which removes the game’s FPS limit, allowing for a free flow of frame rates up to what the hardware can provide.
Conclusion
Remember to adjust any settings you think work better for you than the one we mentioned, and always prioritize a high frame rate over anything else. The best way to improve is to focus on the clarity of your vision and the performance of your game, and you’ll slowly see yourself heading towards that coveted champion title in no time.
And there you have it, all you need to know about the best Apex Legends graphic settings. Hopefully, this guide was helpful to you in determining what settings to focus on and tweak to get a smoother gaming experience.
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