Finding the best settings for Gray Zone Warfare has proven to be quite tricky for many users, as early access performance has been far from ideal. These days, that’s almost come to be expected, especially for a game still actively in-development and running on the demanding Unreal Engine 5. Regardless, we’ve done our best to find the best graphics settings for a wide range of players, even if you don’t happen to have the best CPU or best GPU for Gray Zone Warfare.
We’ve been busy testing the game in order to find the most optimal list of settings and it already looks like options such as DLSS or FSR upscaling are doing some heavy lifting. If you want to boost your FPS, these are important, so hopefully you have access to them.
Early access performance issues
Gray Zone Warfare became available in early access on April 30th, 2024. As such, it is relatively early in development and performance issues such as stuttering have been evident. Even the developers note that it could remain in early access for “several years”, with performance improvements constantly being looked at.
How we picked the best settings for Gray Zone Warfare
With lots of discussion going around regarding the performance of Gray Zone Warfare, we took plenty of different users’ experiences into account to find the best settings for you. The developers themselves put out a post on Steam explaining ‘how to enhance your GZW experience’, addressing the issue of framerate stutter as well as some generic advice.
On top of that, we’ve also been tinkering with the game ourselves to figure out what’s best. Not everyone has the same hardware, and performance will differ depending on your machine, so below we’ll cover the best settings for low-end to high-end systems. It feels like some settings make a big difference and are almost essential so far in early access, regardless of hardware. The game has proven to be tough to run, and to give you something to compare to, here’s what we used in our testing rig:
Our testing rig
- CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X
- GPU: Radeon RX 7900 XT
- RAM: 32GB DDR4 @ 3,200MHz
- Storage: Samsung 980 NVMe SSD
- PSU: Corsair RM850x
- Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix X470
Best graphics settings for high FPS
When it comes to running Gray Zone Warfare as smooth as possible on your gaming PC, we’d recommend opting for many of these low-end graphics settings. In this range, we’re generally looking at users on a 1080p or 1440p monitor, as 4K will cause a drastic increase in GPU utilization and generally lower performance. However, we’re using an ultrawide screen for testing and sticking to our native resolution. If you’re struggling to achieve a stable framerate in GZW, then many of these settings will help you improve FPS.
We fully recommend that you make the most of upscaling technology – whichever method is applicable to your specific graphics card. Since we’re using an AMD GPU for testing, we’re sticking with FSR.
| Window mode | Fullscreen |
| Display resolution | 1920 x 1080 / 2560 x 1440 |
| Vertical FOV | 60 |
| VSync | On |
| Frame rate limit | 144 FPS (or your monitor’s refresh rate) |
| Frame rate limit (background) | 30 FPS |
| Quality preset | Custom |
| 3D resolution | 67 |
| Global illumination | Low |
| Shadow quality | Low |
| Texture resolution | Low |
| Effects quality | Low |
| Reflections quality | Low |
| Foliage quality | Low |
| Post-processing | Low |
| Sharpening | 10 |
| Anti-aliasing/upscaling method | FSR (AMD) / DLSS (Nvidia) / XeSS (Intel) |
| Anti-aliasing quality | Off |
| Nvidia DLSS Frame Generation | On |
| Nvidia DLSS Super Resolution | Performance |
| Nvidia DLSS Sharpness | 0 |
| Nvidia Reflex Low Latency | On + Boost |
| FidelityFX Frame Generation | On |
| FidelityFX Super Resolution | Performance |
| XeSS Super Sampling | Performance |
Best balanced graphics settings
To get a good balance of strong performance and stunning visuals, then you can afford to crank up a few of the settings. We still recommend the use of upscaling here, as you can boost your framerates quite considerably without losing too much visual fidelity. Feel free to tinker with additional settings to your own liking to find the right balance for you.
As for display resolution, we’d recommend sticking with your native resolution. We’ve been playing on a 1440p ultrawide (3440 x 1440) monitor, so expect a little worse performance at 4K or if you’re using an larger ultrawide monitor with 32:9 aspect ratio. On the flipside, you’ll get better performance using a standard 16:9 1080p or 1440p display.
| Window mode | Fullscreen |
| Display resolution | 2560 x 1440 / 3440 x 1440 |
| Vertical FOV | 75 |
| VSync | Off |
| Frame rate limit | 240 FPS |
| Frame rate limit (background) | 30 FPS |
| Quality preset | Custom |
| 3D resolution | N/A |
| Global illumination | Medium |
| Shadow quality | High |
| Texture resolution | High |
| Effects quality | Medium |
| Reflections quality | Medium |
| Foliage quality | Medium |
| Post-processing | Low |
| Sharpening | 0 |
| Anti-aliasing/upscaling method | FSR (AMD) / DLSS (Nvidia) / XeSS (Intel) |
| Anti-aliasing quality | Off |
| Nvidia DLSS Frame Generation | On |
| Nvidia DLSS Super Resolution | Balanced |
| Nvidia DLSS Sharpness | 0 |
| Nvidia Reflex Low Latency | On + Boost |
| FidelityFX Frame Generation | On |
| FidelityFX Super Resolution | Balanced |
| XeSS Super Sampling | Balanced |
Can I play at max settings in Gray Zone Warfare?
If you really want to max out GZW without compromises, then you can try it out. However, if you want to do this, you’ll likely need some of the best gaming hardware available, such as the Ryzen 9 7800X3D and RTX 4090. With hardware like this, you’ll be able to use Epic settings at a high resolution, with this benchmark video showcasing around 60FPS at 4K while using DLAA at 60 vertical FOV.
Depending on what kind of framerate you want to achieve and what resolution you’re playing at, there’s lots of tinker around with to allow you play with acceptable FPS (whatever that is for you), if you don’t mind changing a few settings. If you can already achieve a stable framerate, then we definitely recommend using frame generation to boost this further. Additionally we fully recommend using the Quality setting on your upscaler of choice for performance gains without loss in visual fidelity.
For comparison, our testing rig was able to achieve around 100 FPS at native resolution (3440 x 1440) while using high settings and FSR in quality mode. So, you can definitely enjoy smooth gameplay at higher settings with the right hardware.
How to optimize Gray Zone Warfare for your system & boost FPS
As we’ve discussed, performance feels a little lackluster in GZW at the moment. We’re sure that the developers will be putting in plenty of time to make optimizations as time goes on, as it looks like early access could last some time. There is a good level of customization in Gray Zone Warfare to help your system to perform at its best in game, but there is of course only so much you can do, especially if you have an older rig.
- If possible, make sure you enable your GPU’s upscaling solution. That’s DLSS for Nvidia, FSR for AMD, and XeSS for Intel graphics cards. Additionally, make use of frame generation on RTX 40 series, RX 6000 series, and RX 7000 series GPUs to boost your framerate.
- Update your graphics drivers to the latest version. If you haven’t done so already, updating your GPU drivers is an essential part of unlocking the best performance, especially in a new game where driver optimizations are fresh. To help you out, we have guides to help you update Nvidia drivers or update AMD graphics drivers.
- Consider enabling V-Sync if your frame rate is inconsistent and causing screen tear and stuttering. An even better solution though would be using AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync if your monitor supports either one.
Final word
Looking at the system requirements of Gray Zone Warfare does suggest that you’ll need a fairly beefy PC to run it, with an RTX 3070 Ti or RX 6800 recommended alongside a relatively recent i7 or Ryzen 5 CPU and plenty of RAM. On top of that though, the usual early access issues have kicked in.
Furthermore, some users are reporting poor performance even with the best CPU and best GPU combo available, but there are some things you can do to remedy this. The use of upscaling and frame generation technology is a big one to make GZW more playable, though this leaves many people on older hardware out of luck.
