The quick version: use DLSS, FSR or XeSS on Quality, turn High-Quality Hair off, leave ray tracing off, set Environment Detail to Medium, and drop Lighting, Effects and Materials to High. Everything else can mostly stay on Ultra. In launch testing, a tuned setup like this ran about 39% faster than the Ultra preset at 1440p (74 to 103 FPS average) and looked almost the same in motion.

Below is the full settings table, presets for every kind of PC, and why frame generation can make your FPS counter look great while parrying feels worse.

First, a reality check

Phantom Blade Zero is heavy on PC. Even the official recommended spec (RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT) only targets 1440p at 60 FPS with upscaling switched on. Native resolution at Ultra isn’t what the developers built those numbers around, so don’t feel bad about using DLSS or FSR. You’re meant to.

Also, Ultra and Very High look almost identical in this game, but Ultra costs real frames. A preset is a starting point, not the answer.

Why your average FPS can lie in this game

This is a parry-heavy action game. What matters is how steady your frames are when a boss starts a five-hit combo, not the big number in the corner.

Sportskeeda’s testing on an RTX 5070 Ti (1440p, Ultra, DLSS Quality, ray tracing on) shows the problem clearly:

Setup	Average FPS	1% low FPS
No frame generation	83	61
2x frame generation	134	44
6x frame generation	316	42

Frame gen almost quadrupled the average, but the 1% lows (the dips you feel during fights) went down, from 61 to the low 40s. The counter says 316. Your hands feel the 42.

So the order is: get a steady real frame rate first, then add frame gen on top only if you want a smoother picture on a high refresh monitor.

Before you change any settings

1. Update your GPU driver. NVIDIA put out a Game Ready driver for the launch. AMD and Intel users should grab their latest drivers too.

2. Let the shaders compile. The first launch builds shaders. Let it finish, and don’t judge performance in the first few minutes while your CPU is still busy.

3. Install it on an SSD. An SSD is required. The game takes 145 GB, and you need a lot more free space while it installs and patches.

4. Turn on XMP or EXPO if you never have. Running RAM at its rated speed is free performance. Here’s how to enable XMP or EXPO in your BIOS.

5. Plugged in, if you’re on a laptop. Many gaming laptops cut GPU power on battery. Our gaming laptop low FPS fixescover power plans and the MUX switch.

Best Phantom Blade Zero graphics settings (full table)

This is the balanced setup for a mid to high-end PC. Lower-end and high-end changes come after.

Setting	Our pick	Why
Super Resolution	DLSS / FSR / XeSS: Quality	Native costs a lot. Quality looks close to native.
Super Resolution Output Scale	100%	Going lower makes the image soft fast. Change other settings first.
Frame Generation	Off (see below)	Only turn on if your real FPS is already steady.
Ray Tracing Quality	Off	The biggest single cost in the menu.
High-Quality Hair	Off	About 19% FPS for nicer hair strands.
Environment Detail Quality	Medium	Big saving, and the world still looks full.
Lighting Quality	High	Very High and Ultra cost more for small gains. Don’t go below Medium, though: foliage lighting starts to flicker.
Effects Quality	High	Keeps particles and fog looking right.
Material Quality	High	Hard to spot the difference from Ultra in a fight.
View Distance	High	Distant scenery holds up fine.
Shadow Quality	Very High	The step to Ultra is the expensive part.
Reflection Quality	Ultra	Cheap. Dropping it saves little and looks worse.
Ambient Occlusion Quality	Ultra	Cheap. Keeps scenes grounded.
Character Texture Quality	Ultra	Cheap, and you stare at Soul all game.
Character Model Quality	Ultra	Cheap.
Environment Model Quality	Ultra	Cheap.
Environment Texture Quality	Ultra (8 GB+ VRAM, no RT) / High	The one to drop if you run low on VRAM.
Anti-Aliasing Quality	Medium (only matters with TSR)	Upscalers handle this themselves.
Motion Blur Intensity	Off or Low	Clearer combat. A must if you use frame gen.
Depth of Field	Your call	Small cost either way.
Post-Processing Quality	Your call	Small cost either way.

The surprising part: five settings (reflections, ambient occlusion, character textures, character models, environment models) can stay on Ultra because lowering them barely helps. Most players drop these first, and it’s the wrong call.

Presets for your PC

Low-end and minimum spec (GTX 1660, RX 5500 XT, RTX 3050)

• Play at 1080p with upscaling on Quality. Try Balanced if you still fall short.
• Ray tracing and path tracing off. High-Quality Hair off.
• Environment Detail Low or Medium, Reflections High.
• On a 6 GB card, drop Environment Textures to High or Medium.
• Keep frame gen off.
• Cap the game at a steady 60 (or 30 on the weakest cards) instead of letting FPS bounce around. A steady cap feels better than an unsteady high number.

Don’t set everything to Low. It makes the game look muddy in places where you save almost no FPS.

Mid-range (RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 4060 / 4060 Ti, RX 6700 XT)

• Use the full table above at 1080p or 1440p.
• On 8 GB cards: ray tracing off, and Environment Textures on High if you notice stutter when entering new areas.
• On Radeon, use FSR Quality. If it looks unstable on foliage, try XeSS or TSR.

High-end (RTX 4070 Ti / 5070 Ti and up, RX 7900 XT/XTX)

• Start with the table above at 1440p or 4K, DLSS or FSR on Quality.
• Turn ray tracing on, then test in an actual fight, not in a quiet field.
• If you’ve still got headroom, switch High-Quality Hair back on last. It’s the worst value setting in the menu.
• On Radeon cards, think twice about ray tracing. ComputerBase measured an RX 7800 XT losing about 30% of its performance with RT on, while an RTX 5070 lost only around 3%.

Path tracing showcase (RTX 5070 Ti at 1440p, RTX 5080/5090 at 4K)

Path tracing replaces the normal lighting with full path-traced lighting. It looks great in temples, around water and in any scene lit indirectly. The RTX 5070 Ti handled it well at 1440p with DLSS Quality: 82 FPS average, 65 FPS 1% lows, without frame gen. Ray Reconstruction switches on automatically with path tracing.

At 4K it’s a different story. An RTX 5090 managed only 25 to 27 FPS at native 4K with path tracing, and around 54 to 60 FPS with DLSS Quality. The official spec lists an RTX 5080 for 4K 60 FPS path tracing, and that assumes upscaling and frame gen.

DLSS vs FSR vs XeSS: which one to use

The game supports all of them, plus Unreal’s own TSR.

Your GPU	Use	Start with
NVIDIA RTX	DLSS	Quality
AMD Radeon	FSR	Quality
Intel Arc	XeSS	Quality
Older or anything glitchy	TSR	Quality

On RTX cards, DLSS is the clear pick. It holds up best with the foliage, particles and fast sword trails that fill the screen in fights.

DLAA vs DLSS Quality: DLAA (native resolution with NVIDIA’s anti-aliasing) looks a bit sharper but costs a lot. One test on an RTX 5080 at 1440p went from 56.6 FPS on DLAA to 76.1 FPS on DLSS Quality. Sportskeeda also found DLAA felt less smooth during fights. Use Quality unless you have frames to spare.

Performance mode makes sense at 4K. At 1080p it looks too soft.

Should you turn on frame generation?

Only if your real frame rate is already 60 or higher and steady. Then frame gen is a nice way to fill a 144Hz or 240Hz screen.

If you’re at 30 to 40 FPS, frame gen won’t save you. The picture looks smoother, but input still responds at the low base rate, and as the table above shows, the dips get worse. In a game where you’re timing parries, that’s a bad trade.

What’s supported:

• NVIDIA: DLSS Frame Generation. RTX 50 cards also get Multi Frame Generation, up to 6x.
• AMD: FSR Frame Generation.
• Intel: XeSS Frame Generation.

If you use it, turn motion blur off. It makes frame gen artifacts more noticeable. And make sure your monitor’s VRR is set up properly. Our V-Sync vs G-Sync vs FreeSync guide explains which one to turn on.

VRAM: the 8 GB problem

Ray tracing adds roughly 1.5 GB of VRAM use, and path tracing close to 3 GB. That’s why 10 to 12 GB cards handle RT much more comfortably.

On an 8 GB card:

• 1440p without RT: Ultra environment textures are usually fine.
• With RT on, or if you get stutter when new areas load: drop Environment Texture Quality to High first. Leave the rest alone.

Stutter and frame drop fixes

1. Wait for shaders to finish on first launch, and again after big patches or driver updates.

2. Turn ray tracing off before anything else. Don’t drop textures, shadows and models to Low while the most expensive setting is still on.

3. Cap your FPS a little under your average with the in-game limiter or your GPU software. A steady 60 or 90 feels much better than 70 to 110 swinging around. Our NVIDIA Control Panel and AMD Adrenalin guides show where the limiter is.

4. Freezes in fights with DLSS Frame Generation on? Players have reported the game switching frame gen off and on during combat, causing short freezes. The simplest fix is to leave frame gen off until it’s patched.

5. Don’t use frame gen to hide stutter. It adds frames on top. It doesn’t fix the frames underneath.

6. Check Windows itself. Game Mode, HAGS and Memory Integrity can all affect performance. See our Windows 11 gaming settings guide.

The game also uses Denuvo copy protection. Some players blame it for extra CPU load, but there’s no clear test showing how much it affects performance here, so don’t expect a quick fix from that side.

Phantom Blade Zero PC system requirements

	Minimum	Recommended
Target	1080p / 30 FPS with upscaling	1440p / 60 FPS with upscaling
CPU	Intel Core i7-8700K / Ryzen 5 3600	Intel Core i5-10600K / Ryzen 5 5600X
GPU	GTX 1660 6 GB / RX 5500 XT 8 GB	RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB / RX 6700 XT 12 GB
RAM	16 GB	16 GB
Storage	145 GB, SSD required	145 GB, SSD required
OS	Windows 10/11 64-bit	Windows 10/11 64-bit

For 4K at 60 FPS with path tracing, S-GAME lists an RTX 5080.

FAQs

What are the best settings for Phantom Blade Zero on PC?

Upscaling on Quality, High-Quality Hair off, ray tracing off, Environment Detail on Medium, and Lighting, Effects, Materials and View Distance on High. Keep Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, character settings and Environment Models on Ultra.

Which setting gives the biggest FPS boost?

Ray tracing and path tracing, then High-Quality Hair, which costs about 19% on its own.

Should I use DLSS or FSR in Phantom Blade Zero?

DLSS on NVIDIA RTX cards, FSR on AMD, XeSS on Intel Arc. Start on Quality.

Is frame generation good in Phantom Blade Zero?

Only when your base frame rate is already 60+ and steady. In testing, it raised average FPS a lot but made the dips during combat worse.

Can a GTX 1660 run Phantom Blade Zero?

Yes, it’s the minimum GPU. Expect 1080p at around 30 FPS with upscaling on and most settings low to medium.

How much storage does Phantom Blade Zero need?

145 GB on an SSD, plus extra free space during install and updates.

Running an NVIDIA card? Do a 5-minute pass through our best NVIDIA Control Panel settings before you jump in.