Best performance and graphics settings for Overwatch

Overwatch is one of Blizzard Entertainment’s most played creations. Unfortunately, many of our readers suffer from lagging when playing Overwatch, while others wanted to play Overwatch on their low-end systems.

For these reasons, we have made a special guide for optimizing graphics settings in Overwatch to increase your FPS and improve your gameplay.

You can only edit the in-game settings of overwatch as far as I know. So without further ado here are the max performance settings for Overwatch

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Overwatch 2 In-game settings for best performance

Start Overwatch, then select Options in the menu. Open the Video Settings tab. We will go through the settings and optimize each one:

best fps

Display Mode: Fullscreen.

Full Screen is the best choice for performance and gameplay. You can spot enemies better and give you loads of gameplay advantage.

Resolution: Use Your Max Resolution.

Using your max monitor resolution is recommended for better gameplay experience. You will be able to spot enemies better and get a competitive advantage.

You can reduce the resolution only as a last resort. It affects the quality quite a bit especially if you have a large monitor.

Field of View: 103.

This is a personal preference, but all the pro players prefer to maximize the FOV so that they can spot players better.

A wider field of view (FOV) increases your vision so that you can spot players easily. Lower values will increase performance.

Aspect Ratio: Use Your Default

It depends on your display, whether it is a regular monitor or a widescreen monitor. Nowadays the majority of the monitors have a 16:9 aspect ratio by default. Ultrawide monitors have a 21:9 ratio.

VSync: Off.

It can cause drastic FPS drops if your FPS drops below monitor refresh rate. Best to just turn this off.

Triple Buffering: Off.

Triple Buffering adds latency and can cause some lag, disable it to get the max performance when playing Overwatch.

Reduce Buffering: On.

We contacted the customer support team at Blizzard. They explained this setting to our team:

“This setting Reduces Buffering and is aimed at reducing input lag while playing overwatch 2.”

I recommend using this option as it gives you a gameplay advantage. Make sure you reach at least 60 FPS to take advantage of this setting.

Limit FPS: Off or The Same As Your Monitor Refresh Rate.

This is the fps cap. I recommend setting it at the same value as your monitor refresh rate (60, 120, 144Hz), especially for laptops.

For systems, you can turn if off provided you have a good cooling for your PC.

Advanced Video Settings

max performance settings in overwatch

Graphic Quality: Low.

If you want to maximize the FPS gains, select the Low graphics preset. Then, click on the Advanced tab as shown here and edit each setting.

TEXTURE QUALITY:  Low or Medium

Medium is the most recommended graphics setting since you can have a better gameplay experience and spot enemies better. Only set it to Low if you cannot even reach 60 FPS in-game.

TEXTURE FILTERING QUALITY: Low 1x

The lowest setting is best for Overwatch. This option adds extra filtering to the texture which can cause a Huge FPS hit. Always keep it at low.

LOCAL FOG DETAIL: Low

Keeping fog will only end up hampering your Vision?

DYNAMIC REFLECTIONS: Off

Turning it off will boost performance and FPS.

SHADOW DETAIL: Low

You don’t want this to be set as off, you need to be able to see the shadows of your enemies (in corners, and on buildings, etc).

MODEL DETAIL: Low Or Medium

Medium is the best graphics setting for spotting enemies and getting FPS. The perfect balance.

You can set it to low if your game is lagging.

EFFECTS DETAIL: LOW.

You do not want the extra effects. Effects are already visible in the low settings.

LIGHTING QUALITY: LOW.

The lighting effects can be rather distracting. Best to just turn this off and enjoy the added performance and FPS boost.

ANTIALIAS QUALITY: LOW – FXAA.

This is the lowest you can set it to. Honestly? Disabling this is better but such an option isn’t available in Overwatch. Unfortunately.

REFRACTION QUALITY: LOW.

Lower is better. You will have fewer distractions and onscreen effects in-game. Keeping it as low as possible is best for max performance in Overwatch

SCREENSHOT QUALITY:  1X RESOLUTION.

This setting changes the quality of in-game screenshots. Though, it does not impact FPS, so you can set it however you like.

LOCAL REFLECTIONS: OFF.

This graphics setting must be turned off as it provides no real value in terms of gameplay advantage. Plus, you will get better FPS if you have it disabled.

AMBIENT OCCLUSION: OFF.

This setting adds more depth to light and shadows in Overwatch. And, it affects FPS so by turning it off you will increase your FPS in overwatch by quite a bit.

Render Scale: Default

Do not change this graphics setting. The default setting is the most optimal one and can give you a great gameplay experience. Anything below 90% makes the texture blurry and you will not have fun playing Overwatch on it.

  • That’s all. Click Apply to save the changes.

Congratulations! You have successfully optimized Overwatch graphics and performance settings to get you the best FPS.

If you do find more settings and ways to boost FPS in Overwatch do let me know. I would be happy to add them to the list. And, you can also try to optimize windows 10 to get better FPS in Overwatch.

Thank you for reading. Hope you liked it. Share it with fellow Overwatch players.

See you in-game!

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