BEST God Of War PC Settings [Optimization Guide]

Since 2018, PlayStation players have been enjoying this masterpiece, and it’s about time PC players got their hands on it as well. I’ve been playing God Of War non-stop for hours, and my mind wouldn’t let me get up and write this guide. But I can’t keep my readers at Exputer waiting on our Best God of War PC settings guide. So here I am, making sure you also have the best experience with God of War as I’ve had with the best visuals and performance. 

Best God of War PC Settings

Summary Of Best GOW In-Game Settings

God of War PC has a decent amount of graphics settings that let you fine-tune your experience. Finding the right sweet spot between visual clarity and smooth FPS can be tricky, but I did the work, so you won’t have to. 

Here are the God of War settings in-game to use and enhance your experience. 

Video Device: Discrete GPU 

The Video Device setting lets you select the proper GPU to run the game. Set this to your dedicated GPU, i.e., Nvidia or AMD. 

Monitor: Primary Display 

Choose the main display to run the game on in the Monitor setting. In case you have a multi-monitor setup, select your primary monitor here. In case you have a single monitor, it will default to 1. 

Display Mode: Borderless

Sadly God of War doesn’t have a fullscreen display mode when writing this guide. Until a fullscreen option is available to select in display mode, use borderless for the time being. 

Aspect Ratio: Auto

Here you can set your desired aspect ratio according to your monitor, i.e., 16:9, 16:10, 4:3, etc. Instead of selecting a particular ratio, simply selecting auto will set the best aspect ratio according to your display. 

VSync: Off

Set VSync off to avoid capping your frames to your monitor’s refresh rate. In case you experience a lot of screen tearing, you can’t turn it back on. 

FPS Limit: Off

Don’t limit your FPS to any particular value. Unless you want to save some GPU power for other programs like OBS, let the game run free at max FPS.

Motion Blur: Off

It highly depends on your taste, but I prefer that vomit-inducing motion blur off. It’s a bad implementation and has bothered the PS4 players for ages. We finally got the option to turn it off on PC, and we shall, at least I will.

Film Grain: Off

I still don’t know why developers add Film Grain settings to their games. Why would you let unwanted static taint those beautiful visuals? Don’t turn it on at any cost. 

Screen Calibration: 30

You can adjust the best brightness according to your display in Screen Calibration. Fine-tune the brightness according to the two images provided for the best results. I found 30 to be the best setting for my laptop’s display, but your experience will vary. 

Advanced Setting: Turn on Nvidia Reflex

Advanced settings only contain Nvidia Reflex and related settings. You only need to turn Nvidia Reflex to “On + Boost.” It will help you nail those counters with the shield in gameplay perfectly. 

DLSS: Performance

You can instantly boost performance simply by turning on DLSS into performance or quality mode. However, DLSS in God of War PC is a bit weird since it somehow also makes the texture a bit too sharp for my liking. It’s nothing major, but I’ve noticed it during my playthrough. 

FidelityFX Super Resolution: Performance

God of War PC was my first game with AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution or FSR. It’s a great tech that (unlike DLSS) is available on all GPUs. So, whether you’re team green or team red, you’ll get to experience the fantastic tech behind AI supersampling and juicy FPS gains. 

Render Scale: 100%

Crank the Render Scale bar to the max to enjoy God Of War PC on maximum resolution. 

Now that wraps up our display settings. Let’s get into the main graphics settings and optimize them for the best performance without compromising image quality.

Preset: Custom

There are multiple presets you can choose to experience different levels of graphical quality. But since we’re going to optimize each setting, set it to custom. 

Texture Quality: High

Texture Quality is one of the most critical settings in God Of War PC. You can easily use Ultra if you have a rig with decent specs. But I recommend selecting the high option instead since you get a decent uplift in performance with any major hit on quality. 

Model Quality: High

Mode Quality is another essential graphics option in God of War and a fairly demanding one. Switching from high to ultra can give you almost 10% FPS gain. The graphics difference is also really minor and hard to notice.

Anisotropic Filter: High

Anisotropic Filtering further sharpens and cleans out the textures. However, I didn’t find any visual difference between high and medium. So setting the Anisotropic Filter to medium is the best option if you want to favor performance. 

Shadows: Original

Shadows is a taxing graphics setting in God of War PC. So, you can turn shadows to original to avoid losing FPS and details on shadows. Using anything above this will give smoother shadows, but your FPS will take a massive hit depending on your system.

Reflections: Original

Reflections are an integral part of God of War PC, especially indoors, where reflective surfaces are abundant. Turning Reflections to the original didn’t affect their quality much but increased the performance significantly. 

Atmospherics: Original

Atmospherics is what makes the world of God of War immersive. Everything from fog to diffused lighting effects adds to the immersion, and disabling them negatively affects the experience. So, turning Atmospherics to the original will provide you with the best reflections at a reasonable cost. 

Ambient Occlusion: Original

Ambient Occlusion also creates an amazing atmosphere in the game, especially around light sources. Switch it to Original to keep that visual effect without compromising FPS too much. 

Nvidia Control Panel Settings

Nvidia Settings Overview For GOW

There you go, your Nvidia Control Panel settings are good to go to take on Kratos and Atreus’ journey. All these settings were set, keeping both performance and visuals in mind. So rest assured, you won’t be losing that beautiful image quality from these settings.

AMD Radeon Settings

AMD Settings Summary For GOW

So, that wraps up our best AMD Radeon Settings for God of War PC. Applying these optimized settings is sure to give you upwards of a 15-20% boost in performance while not degrading visuals. If you’re still looking for ways to increase your performance even further, keep reading, folks. 

Windows Optimization Tips

This is the final section, we’re going to fine-tune every critical aspect of Windows to give you the best experience possible in God of War PC. 

Let’s start optimizing Windows 10/11 with the following tweaks without wasting any time. 

• Update Windows to the Latest Build: New Windows Updates pack a slew of features and fixes that optimize the performance of your games. To have the best experience with God of War, I recommend updating your Windows to the latest build.
• Run God of War as Administrator: This ensures that no other program or policy interferes with your game’s performance or its files. God of War will run with the highest privileges providing you a distraction-free gaming experience in most cases. 
• Enable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling: It’s a great feature that helps improve gaming and heavy workload performance through GPU. It works when the CPU offloads some graphics-intensive data onto the GPU to render games without being under load. You can enable this setting in Settings > System > Display > Graphics > Change Default Graphics Settings.
• Enable Ultimate Power Plan in Windows: Ultimate Power Plan unleashes your CPU’s full power and CPU without restricting its clock speeds to favor power saving. You can unhide this in the Windows power plan by entering this command in Windows Powershell: powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02 -d5df -448d -aa00 -03f14749eb61.
• Disable Unwanted Background Applications: God of War PC may be an optimized game, but it still requires a substantial amount of resources to run smoothly. Now, that won’t be possible as other processes in your system are hogging your CPU or RAM. Make sure to terminate any unwanted programs running in the background through Task Manager.

Finishing Up God of War Settings Guide

Testing God Of War was an utter delight. It’s not because I’m a fan of the series, it’s due to witnessing a well-optimized port for a PC after a long time. While cranking on the settings to Ultra with 1600p resolution, I was getting a steady 60-65 FPS in areas crowded with enemies. 

After applying the optimized settings mentioned above and using the power of DLSS, my FPS instantly shot up to 70-80 while also breaking 90’s threshold in some lighter-on-GPU areas. 

The game’s performance may even get better as developers release updates to the game. But as of right now, God of War on PC is a great, bug-free experience. With that, I hope you were able to improve your game’s performance with my suggested settings as well.

Update v1.0.12 Patch Notes

God of War PC Patch:

• This patch added support for AMD FSR 2.0 which further boosts the performance of the game across all GPUs.