Quick answer: For the best WARDOGS PC settings, turn VSync off, turn NVIDIA Reflex on, and use your card’s upscaler (DLSS, FSR or XeSS) on Quality. Then switch off Global Illumination, Picture-in-Picture Scope, Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Lens Flare and Bloom, and drop Reflections, Effects and Particle Spawn Rate to Low or Potato. Keep textures on High if you have the VRAM and View Distance on High so you can still spot players at range. Leave Frame Generation off for competitive play.
WARDOGS, BULKHEAD and Team17’s 100-player, three-team warfare FPS, has been in Steam Early Access since September 10. It runs on Unreal Engine 5 with BULKHEAD’s own “War Dynamics Framework” on top, and big Control Zone fights full of vehicles, smoke and collapsing buildings can push any PC hard. The good news is that the graphics menu gives you a lot of control, and it even shows how much each option loads your GPU, CPU and VRAM. Here is what to change, what to leave alone, and three starting presets.
One note before you start: these recommendations are built from what each setting does, BULKHEAD’s own patch notes and the published settings breakdowns listed at the bottom of this page. They are not our own frame rate benchmarks, and every PC is different, so treat them as a starting point and test in a busy match rather than the empty firing range.
WARDOGS PC system requirements
BULKHEAD’s Steam page lists these official specs, including the frame rate each tier targets.
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 (64-bit) | Windows 11 (64-bit) |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-8600 or AMD Ryzen 5 3500 | Intel Core i7-12700K or AMD Ryzen 7 5700X |
| RAM | 16 GB | 16 GB |
| GPU | NVIDIA GTX 1660 or AMD RX 590 | NVIDIA RTX 3070 or AMD RX 6700 XT |
| Storage | 50 GB | 50 GB |
| Official target | 1080p Low at 60 FPS (upscaled) | 1440p Medium at 70+ FPS (native), or 4K Medium at 60+ FPS (upscaled) |
WARDOGS also uses Elytra kernel-level anti-cheat, needs a broadband connection, and is Windows only. Steam lists no macOS or Linux version.
Best WARDOGS settings: three presets
Use the column that matches what you want. Competitive is for the highest frame rate and clearest view of enemies. Balanced suits most players on recommended-spec PCs. High-end is for strong PCs that already hold a stable frame rate and want the game to look its best.
| Setting | Competitive (max FPS) | Balanced | High-end |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display Mode | Fullscreen | Windowed Fullscreen | Windowed Fullscreen |
| VSync | Off | Off | Off (use G-Sync or FreeSync) |
| Frame Rate Limit | Off | A few FPS under your refresh rate | A few FPS under your refresh rate |
| NVIDIA Reflex | On | On | On |
| Upscaling | DLSS, FSR or XeSS Quality | Quality (Balanced at 4K) | DLAA or native if you hold your target |
| Frame Generation | Off | Off | Optional, only on a solid base frame rate |
| Field of View | 95 to 110 | 95 to 110 | 95 to 110 |
| Picture-in-Picture Scope | Off | Off | On if you have headroom |
| Mesh Detail | Medium | Medium | High |
| View Distance | High (Medium if you must) | High | High |
| Shading | Low | Low | High |
| Global Illumination | Off | Off | On |
| Shadows | Low | Medium | High |
| Reflections | Potato | Low | High |
| Effects | Potato or Low | Low | High |
| Particle Spawn Rate | Potato or Low | Low | High |
| Post-Processing | Low | Low | Medium |
| Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Lens Flare, Bloom | Off | Off | Motion Blur off, the rest to taste |
| Textures (World, Character, Effects) | High if VRAM allows | High | High |
| Texture Streaming | Low or Medium under 8 GB VRAM | Medium (higher on 8 GB+) | High |
| Texture Filtering | Medium | Medium | High |
Some changes only fully apply after a restart, so relaunch the game before you judge a big change.
Which settings cost the most FPS?
Before you drag everything to Potato, check the impact meter next to each option in the video menu. It shows how much that setting loads your GPU, CPU and VRAM, which is the fastest way to see where your frames are going. In the published breakdowns we checked, these are the settings that come up again and again as the heaviest:
- Global Illumination: one of the first things to switch off. It costs a lot in busy scenes and you will barely notice it mid-fight.
- Picture-in-Picture Scope: renders a second view through your optic, so it hits hardest exactly when you aim through a magnified scope. Turn it off.
- Reflections, Effects and Particle Spawn Rate: explosions, smoke and destruction pile up in a 100-player fight. Lowering these keeps the worst moments smoother without hiding enemies.
- Shadows: drop to Medium or Low if you still need frames. Since the Season 1 changelog, a high automatic benchmark score clamps Shadows to Low instead of switching them off completely.
The settings worth protecting are textures (they mostly depend on VRAM, not raw GPU speed) and View Distance. WARDOGS fights often start at long range, so cutting View Distance too far can make distant players harder to track.
DLSS, FSR, XeSS and Frame Generation
WARDOGS supports NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR and Intel XeSS upscaling, plus DLSS Frame Generation and NVIDIA Reflex. Use the upscaler that matches your card: DLSS on RTX cards, FSR on AMD and older GTX cards, and XeSS on Intel Arc.
- 1080p: native or DLAA usually looks best. Upscaling from such a low internal resolution gets soft.
- 1440p: Quality mode is the sweet spot.
- 4K: Balanced still looks clean.
Avoid Performance and Ultra Performance unless you have no other option. The lower internal resolution makes distant enemies blurrier, which hurts more in WARDOGS than in a close-quarters shooter. If the image looks soft after upscaling, raise the Sharpness slider a little rather than a lot, since too much adds shimmer on foliage.
Frame Generation makes motion look smoother, but it adds input latency, so leave it off for competitive play. If you want to try it, get a stable base frame rate first and then compare. BULKHEAD’s Season 1 changelog made DLSS Frame Generation switchable without a restart and fixed two crash paths in the frame generation pipeline.
Known performance issues and fixes
- Intel Arc B580 stutter: Intel says frame drops every few seconds in WARDOGS came from the game requesting GPU crash debug data. Its fix is driver 32.0.101.8993 or newer. As a workaround, Intel also says adding
-nogpucrashdebuggingto the Steam launch options resolved it. - WD-L020 crash on Windows 11: BULKHEAD fixed this in Update 0.1.2 on September 30. It linked the crash to Windows update KB5124010.
- Hitching when you spawn: the Season 1 changelog reduced shadow cache refreshes to cut hitching when you take control of your character.
- Stutter after the Season 2 update: BULKHEAD’s Season 2 notes only promise general “performance and stability improvements”. In a Steam forum thread, some players say turning off the new Nanite Material Visibility Culling video setting helped, while others say it made little difference. Other players report fixing it with a clean reinstall (including the WARDOGS config folder in AppData), fresh GPU drivers, or by removing the October 13 Windows update KB5127648. These are player reports, not official fixes, so try one change at a time.
- Big fights tank your frame rate: 100 players, vehicles and destruction load the CPU as well as the GPU. If lowering resolution or upscaling does little, you are likely CPU limited, and graphics settings will not fix it on their own.
Your settings live in GameUserSettings.ini in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Wardogs\Saved\Config\WindowsClient. Back it up before you experiment so you can go back.
Game Beacon’s take
The best tip in WARDOGS is not one setting. It is the impact meter in the menu. Start with the Balanced column, switch off Global Illumination and Picture-in-Picture Scope, and only then start trading away visuals, keeping textures and View Distance high for as long as you can. BULKHEAD skipped this week’s devlog while it works on Season 3, so expect menus and performance to keep shifting during Early Access. If you are just catching up, our WARDOGS Season 2 rundown covers the latest weapons, vehicles and rain. We will update this guide when Season 3 changes the settings.
Sources
- WARDOGS on Steam (system requirements)
- BULKHEAD: Pre-Load Live and Season 1 Changelog
- BULKHEAD: Update 0.1.2
- BULKHEAD: Season 02 Patch Notes
- Intel: Arc B580 frame drops and stuttering in WARDOGS
- GAMES.GG: WARDOGS best PC settings
- Gamers Together: WARDOGS settings
- Beak Mode: WARDOGS DLSS, FSR, XeSS and frame generation
- Steam Community: post-patch stutter thread
