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Obsidian’s new RPG, Avowed, is finally here and it’s made with the Unreal Engine 5, which very well means it’s a bit of a demanding beast. At the same time, the game also comes with some of the latest graphical bells and whistles such as Global Illumination and Ray Tracing. Some of you might already know the drill as far as those settings are concerned, but it turns out Avowed can be more merciful on older hardware compared to more recent AAA games.
So after spending a totally normal two hours in the character creator, I fiddled around with the graphics settings in-game for another couple of hours, and here’s what I came up with as a good balance between smooth FPS and visuals.
Best Settings for Avowed (Hardware Dependent)
For reference, my rig was rocking an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and an Intel Core i5-12400 with 16 GB of RAM. Truth be told, my system is starting to become dated, but no doubt still a typical mid-range performer with performance close to the RTX 4060/4060 Ti/2080 or RX 6700 XT setups.
Sure enough, if you have better hardware than that, feel free to crank everything all the way to Epic even with resolutions higher than 1080p. This was what worked for my setup, however, with a stable 60-70 FPS (drops to 50+ in cities and towns).
Basic Display
| Resolution | Native (mine was 1440p or 2560×1440) |
| Window Mode | Windowed Fullscreen |
| Frame Limit | 120 FPS (don’t go lower than 60) |
| Field of View | 95 (100 is also good; 90 can feel tight, so don’t go too high as FOV can heavily affect framerate) |
| VSync | Off (depends on whether you have a FreeSync or Gsync monitor) |
| Ray Tracing | On (weaker hardware than RTX 3060 Ti should disable this) |
| Upscaling | NVIDIA DLSS 3 (FSR if you have AMD, but DLSS is better, of course) |
| DLSS Super Resolution Quality | Quality (Native for 1080p, Quality for 1440p, and Balanced for 4K). See notes below. |
Sadly, running Avowed with Ray Tracing and maximizing visuals without upscaling is not going to be a pleasant experience on mid-range gaming hardware unless you’re fine with 30-40 FPS. Those stuck on 1080p displays thus will have a bad time since enabling DLSS (Quality or lower) will result in blurry imagery.
For 1080p users, you might have to disable Ray Tracing or some of the more granular settings below.
Is Ray Tracing Worth It?
If you’re going to choose between a consistent 60+FPS or Ray Tracing, then pick the former. Ray Tracing is mostly just noticeable in indoor areas with many shadows and windows, but outdoors, you’d be hard-pressed to find the difference.
Ray Tracing does improve reflections quite noticeably, but again, the performance hit is not worth it. So if you’re looking to maintain 60+ FPS or even playing on native resolution with no DLSS, feel free to disable Ray Tracing since you won’t be missing much.
Advanced Display (Epic is the Highest Setting)
Advanced Graphics Settings for Avowed go from Low, Medium, High, and Epic. This is where you can achieve most FPS gains provided you’ve already sacrificed Ray Tracing, FOV, and resolution from the Basic Settings.
The goal here is to make the game as pretty as it can be while still maintaining 50+ FPS (60+ FPS, ideally). So knowing which settings impact FPS the most will help you make concessions better.
Again, for reference, these were tested with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and an Intel Core i5-12400 with 16 GB of RAM. I was able to maintain 60-70+ FPS at all times with acceptable dips to 50+ FPS in towns and cities. Ray Tracing and DLSS (Quality) were enabled.
| Graphics Quality | Custom |
| View Distance | Epic (set to High or lower for less stuttering) |
| Shadow Quality | High (Medium for weaker hardware) |
| Texture Quality | Epic (lower it if you experience stuttering) |
| Shading Quality | Epic (doesn’t affect FPS too much) |
| Effects Quality | Epic (lower to High or Medium it if FPS during combat dips to 40) |
| Foliage Quality | Epic (doesn’t affect FPS too much) |
| Post Processing Quality | Epic (doesn’t affect FPS too much) |
| Reflection Quality | High (or Medium; Low turns reflections off) |
| Global Illumination Quality (Most Demanding) | High (Epic can shave off nearly 20 FPS in some areas). See notes below. |
Hence, the usual culprits for tanking your FPS are these settings from most demanding to least demanding:
- Global Illumination – The FPS difference between Low to High is practically negligible so I recommend setting this one to just High. Meanwhile, the visual difference between High and Epic is also somewhat noticeable due to the light bouncing but the FPS cost is too much. Low to Medium also has the highest visual difference, so avoid Low.
- Reflection – Again, setting Reflections to Epic yields the highest performance hit, and it’s probably not worth it since who looks at the water reflections during gameplay? Low practically turns off reflections, while Medium and High have nearly the same performance impact. The visual difference between High and Epic is negligible. Go for High.
- Shadow – Tied with Reflection for performance impact. Medium to High shows negligible performance difference. High to Epic shows negligible visual difference but a significant performance hit. Avoid Low as it’s too blocky.
So for mid-range 2024-2025 hardware, you can expect a combination of High-Epic even with Ray Tracing on, as long as you use DLSS in Avowed and follow our settings recommendation.
