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Apex Legendsis a battle royale, where you play either alongside friends or alone to run around and shoot down all opposition until your team is the last one standing. Apex itself is not only expansive, but adds unique gunplay and movement to the genre.
This battle royale also has a lot of moving parts, and requires a good reaction time and a decent computer. Making sure Apex Legends runs its best could be the difference between a loss and a win, so here is how to change settings in Apex and on your computer to improve that experience.
Improving Apex Legends performance on consoles is limited to eitherupgrading your console to the newest versionoradding an external solid state drive (SSD)to load games faster. This article is specific to the PC version of Apex Legends.
Apex Legends' Minimum System Requirements
Before even trying to mess around with either computer or game settings, make sure tocheck the minimum system requirements for Apex Legends.EA have an official page showing these system requirements, as does the store page for Apex Legends on Steam, but here is a quick rundown of the specs you would need.
The specifications do change based on one key thing:the version of DirectX that works with your computer. To find out which one you have or can install, you can usethe DirectX Diagnostic Tool, which should be installed on your computer alongside the correct version of DirectX when you perform Windows Updates.
Windows 10 (64-bit)
CPU
Intel Core i3-6300 3.8GHz, or an AMD FX-4350 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Processor
6 GB (gigabytes)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 640, or an AMD Radeon HD 7730
NVIDIA GTX 950, or an AMD Radeon HD 7790
1 GB (gigabyte)
2 GB (gigabytes)
75 GB of available space
If you cannot match the minimum requirements, the performance of the game will be poor, if it works at all.
Improve Performance In Apex Legends' Settings
The quickest way to boost performance in Apex Legends isthrough the in-game settings. Adjusting specific video settings in the game to lower options, or turning others off or on, can be the boost in FPS a player needs.
To access the settings, click the gear icon at the bottom right of the main menu, then click the settings tab.
Go tothe Video section of settings, as all other sections have almost no effect on game performance. The first thing shown will be the display settings, which have a surprising effect on performance based on your setup.
For a single monitor setup, playing in Fullscreen modewill assist in performance. Fora multiple monitor setup, Windowed or Borderless Windowedare the better options.
Other display settings to focus on are the aspect ratio and resolution, which you should set to match what your respective monitor’s default settings are. Apex Legends will automatically detect what the default resolution for the monitor is when launched for the first time, but if for some reason it doesn’t,you can find out by going to your computer’s display settings.
It will showthe recommended display resolution, which is what you should use for your Fullscreen option in Apex Legends. If you havea multiple monitor setupand use Windowed or Borderless Windowed,anything smaller or matching the recommended display resolutionfor your respective monitor will work best.
After the display section of the video settings are the advanced settings, where you can change a lot of options for appearance or performance. There is an extensive list of options, so here is a list of what the recommended settings are for performance.
On (if possible)
Off (can adjust to game appearance)
Ragdolls
Low
Not all of these settings on their own affect game performance equally. The most effective settings you may change includeModel Detail, Effects Detail, and Volumetric Lighting.
If you change those and still need to improve, settings likeV-Sync and Texture Filteringare the next two options to focus on. Both of these increase performance if lowered, but removing V-Sync can lead to some screen tearing while increasing performance.
Improve Apex Legends Performance Outside The Game
Improving game performance is not always something that can be done in a game. You can have all the settings above selected correctly, and still need to boost the way the game runs. The main goal should be to avoid running multiple programs at once that could slow down computer performance, sotry not to run anything in the background while playing Apex Legends.
Another key thing to focus on isyour graphics card. Anold graphics card can be the reason why many games don’t run wellon a computer, but make sure to keepyour graphics card drivers updatedno matter the age.
Last but not least, lots of computers have options tochange their power output to focus on performance, usually in the graphics card settings. No matter which brand of graphics card you have,find your graphics card’s programand use it to change those settings.
Apex Legends even has an option in its settings for NVidia graphics to get even better performance, as the second option in the table above. However, changing the settings of whichever brand of graphics card you have can change a lot.
