Tweak God of War Settings For Amazing Performance And Brilliant Visuals

There are some surprises here, not least of which is the tiniest impact Model Quality and Texture Quality have on the frame rate. When testing at 4K, there’s a mere 2fps difference between the Ultra texture setting and the Minimum offering. Given that the more elevated quality textures can look awesome than their low-res counterparts, the fact it has such a little impact on game performance means you want to leave this as elevated as possible.

If you’re looking for a fast and easy fix to your frame rate, then the presets, as ever, deliver a crude but essential answer. These configure the seven graphics quality settings to make for a smoother experience at the cost of an overall tradeoff in the visuals. It’s a pretty good-looking game across the board though, so don’t be put off dropping down from High to Original for example so as to enjoy a smoother experience.

One thing of note is that the four presets do require different amounts of graphics card VRAM. At 4K, for example, you’re looking at just over 4GB for the lowest settings up to 7GB for the Ultra settings. And you really don’t want to go over your graphics card’s memory budget for this, as that can mean hobbling your graphics card’s performance due to not having enough.

One thing that is a little odd with this port of God of War is that you can’t switch to a preset and then modify it yourself, so as to hit the perfect balance between speed and quality. No, instead you need to configure it from scratch using the ‘Custom’ preset. This isn’t exactly hard, as there are only seven settings, and some of those do very little, but it’s unusual not to be able to use a preset as a starting point.

Reflections are a bit odd too, as reflective surfaces are used sparingly, particularly at the start of the game. It’s also the only setting that has an Ultra+ option. If your performance is taking a hit in highly reflective areas later on, then lowering this down a notch or two is a smart move.

God of War has enjoyed a wonderful port to the PC. The fact that the PS4’s graphical settings have been labeled ‘Original’ means that you know you’re enjoying a better visual experience just by selecting ‘High’ or ‘Ultra’—something I suggest every PC gamer does. You can finally turn off the vomit-inducing motion blur, as well as kill the ‘film grain’ while you’re at it.

While there aren’t too many settings to play around with, the core engine has come across well, and that means smooth framerates are within the understanding of anyone that has a relatively new machine.

As ever, if you’re struggling with low framerates, then dropping the resolution is a good idea. God of War only allows you to run in a window if you’re not running at the Windows default resolution—you can’t set it to 1080p fullscreen on a 1440p display in-game, although you set Windows to that resolution and then launch it. This is one more reason why DLSS or FSR is worth playing around with here—they just make it so much easier and look more pleasing for it.