Best Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 settings for max fps

What are the best Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 settings for PC? Getting great performance out of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 on PC isn’t too challenging, thanks to the game’s relatively low-end basic hardware requirements. However, to get the most out of the incredible medieval vistas that can be achieved in this game, you’ll want to run at high resolution and detail settings, which can be quite demanding.

The Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 system requirements start off at a low level, meaning most gamers should be able to achieve 30fps performance with low detail settings at 1080p. You also don’t need much over a 60fps frame rate to get a satisfyingly smooth experience. As such, even if you want to run Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 at its recommended settings, you won’t need the very best graphics card to get a smooth 60fps experience at 1440p. However, this game is demanding when it comes to RAM, so even though you don’t need the best gaming RAM, a 32GB kit is a recommended upgrade if you want to run this game well.

Here are the best Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 video settings for PC:

Best Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 settings for PC

Graphics settings

• Window mode: Fullscreen
• Overall image quality: Custom
• Show FPS: Off
• VSync: On
• Frame rate limit: Your screen refresh rate
• Gamma correction: Adjust to your liking or leave at default
• Horizontal FOV: 95°
• Resolution scaling – technology: DLSS or FSR
• Resolution scaling – mode: Native AA for 1080p, Quality for 1440p, Balanced for 4K
• Sharpness: Adjust to your liking or leave at default
• Camera effects – motion blur: Object
• Camera effects – near DOF: On

Advanced graphics settings

• Antialiasing: Off
• Object quality: Medium
• Particles: Medium
• Lighting: Medium
• Global illumination: Medium
• Postprocess quality: Medium
• Shader quality: Medium
• Shadow: Medium
• Textures: Medium
• Volumetric effects detail: Medium
• Vegetation detail: Medium
• Character detail: Medium

Although Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has a first-person perspective, its relatively slow pace means that, unlike a lot of first-person shooters, a high frame rate isn’t a high priority. That said, we still recommend aiming for settings that get you a smooth average of over 60fps and a minimum 1% low of over 40fps. The latter is the average of the lowest 1% of frame times, which is a more representative figure of the typical drops in frame rate you might get in some areas of the game. That’s as opposed to the outright minimum frame rate, which can be thrown off by a single random interruption on our test PC.

On our test system, at 1080p using the above settings with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, the game averaged 73.9fps with a 1% low of 60.3fps. This resulted in a reasonably smooth-feeling experience that held up to some of the more intense combat-focused moments, while the graphics quality didn’t drop all that much.

In fact, right across the board, from Low detail settings, all the way up through Medium, High, Ultra, and even Experimental graphics settings, the game doesn’t look dramatically different.

At Medium, you get noticeably better shadows than on Low, while Ultra introduces more undulating, realistic-looking surfaces, such as on muddy tracks and stone walls, as shown in the below images (which you can right-click or hold down your finger on to view at full size). From left to right in both images, the quality settings are Low, Medium, High, Ultra, and Experimental.

The step up in shadow quality is high enough and the performance drop is low enough that medium details should be fine for most users. However, if you do drop to low settings, on our test system we jumped to an 87.6fps average with a 70.1fps 1% low, at 1080p.

At high detail settings, our system dropped to 67.8fps average but here’s where the higher memory requirement recommended by the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 system requirements kicks in, as our 1% low frame rate dropped to just 39.7fps, with the game noticeably feeling more choppy. The system requirements recommend 24GB of RAM for 60fps+ performance at 1080p, and although our 16GB test system’s RAM allocation wasn’t maxed out, the game seemed to be struggling for memory bandwidth.

This struggle continued when moving up to Ultra settings, where although the average was a decent 56.6fps, the 1% low was just 27fps. Oddly, though, opting for the seemingly even higher Experimental settings resulted in a boost to frame rate, with the game hitting a 57.7fps average and 43fps 1% low.

Crucially, whatever other settings you choose, if you’re playing at 1080p, you absolutely must turn on DLSS or FSR and set it to Native AA, instead of using the other antialiasing settings (SMAA 1x, SMAA 1TX, SMAA 2TX). The game’s other antialiasing options all look fairly awful, with the whole image looking blurry and losing detail. FSR actually looks better than DLSS when it comes to dealing with aliasing – such as the jagged, flickering edges of the fence in our test images – but DLSS retains slightly more detail.

As for how resolution affects performance, stepping up to 2,560 x 1,440 (1440p) at medium settings resulted in our average frame rate dropping to 73.7fps while our 1% low hit 60.9fps. Opting to run at 4K, meanwhile, didn’t have such a big performance impact as you might expect.

Our average was 58.8fps while the 1% low was 50.2fps, which is still a decently playable frame rate. In the image below, you can see the difference made by increasing the resolution, where the image goes from 1080p (left) to 1440p (center) to 4K (right).

At 1440p you can also get away with engaging DLSS at Quality mode, rather than just Native AA, while still getting sharper image quality than 1080p with DLSS Native AA. This netted us a 73.6fps average with a 1% low of 44.6fps. Meanwhile, at 4K with Balanced DLSS, we achieved a 72.5fps average frame rate although the 1% low dropped to 29fps.

How we tested Kingdom Come Deliverance 2

At , we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 includes the following components; Intel Core i7 11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 16GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM, MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 and 4K using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 need an SSD?

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 does require an SSD, and you can really feel this fact when playing the game. We measured it taking over 90 seconds to load a save game on the Kuttenberg map. As such, upgrading to one of the best gaming SSD options will really help keep game and map loading times in check.

Any such upgrade is worthwhile anyway, as it will make Windows boot quicker, and make your system more responsive too. If your motherboard has a PCIe 4.0 M.2 port, we recommend picking up a Samsung 990 Pro at its current price. The same goes for a memory upgrade to a fast 32GB kit.

How to monitor performance in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, we have an easy method that works whether you’re using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

To find out everything else you need to know about this stunning medieval romp of a game, check out our Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 guide, which covers the release date, trailers, gameplay, and more.