Best Apex Legends Settings – All Settings Explained FPS Guide

Getting the max fps possible out of your rig is crucial no matter what game you are playing. By the end of this guide you will know the exact settings you can use to ensure you have best FPS and the best visibility.

A quick disclaimer in that these are just guidelines and what works for me might not work for you but at least you will gain an understanding of what the settings are for.  The settings are aimed towards being competitive settings so they will sacrifice some quality of life settings for FPS.

My best tip is to set each setting on as low as possible to start with.  Then play some games and get a feel for how your rig is handling the game. Then if your fps is holding steady around your refresh rate then you can start tweaking them higher.  

Related: How To Bunnyhop In Apex Legends

Before diving into the settings check out my YouTube video below that shows each setting on low and high side by side. This will help you see the settings that make little to no difference yet eat up your FPS.

After watching the video below you will know which of the settings you don’t care for and you can turn them down to maximise FPS.

Best Apex Legends Launch Options

There are a lot of launch options available to you which can be applied through the Origin launcher. To add launch options follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your library of games and right-click Apex Legends
2. Select game properties
3. Select the tab ‘Advanced Launch Options’

In here you can apply as many launch options as you like. Here is a list of known launch options some of which I haven’t tried yet myself. You must put a ‘-‘ before each setting.

• -refresh 144| This forces the refresh rate to whatever you set the value to. Set this to the refresh rate of your monitor.
• -preload | Preloads some game assets at the start of the game, this can increase performance but may also cause some stuttering on certain rigs. Try it out and you will notice if it does.
• -forcenovsync | Self-explanatory, forces vsync as disabled which you definitely want.
• -fullscreen | Forces the game into fullscreen.
  
• -threads 6| Apex Legends is already forced to use all threads available to it but you can specify your max here too to be sure. Replace 6 with how many threads you are rocking.
• -high | Sets the windows priority for Apex Legends to high. The same as if you were to do this through task manager.
  

Best Apex Legends Settings For FPS & Visibility

Let’s start by going through each setting and explaining what it’s for.  This will often help you decide whether you should care about it or not. The settings I recommend below are for providing you pure FPS and limiting the amount of quality of life settings you don’t need.

Display Mode & Aspect Ratio & Resolution – Your monitors native settings

This is up to you really but ideally you will want to be playing full screen and at your native resolution for your monitor.  If your getting subpar FPS you can descrease the resolution of the game to reduce the demand on your card. But this should only be in extreme circumstances.

Field of View – 90-100

This is often a preference setting but you should only be reducing this below 90 if you are struggling for FPS.  This is basically an ‘extra’ last step you can do to reduce your Field of View for a potential increase in FPS. Obviously, this will hinder your ability to see people, particularly around your ‘peripheral vision’.

If you have a powerful rig then feel free to put this to max if you want as your machine can likely handle it.

Vsync – Off

Vsync is awful and you probably already know that you should be turning it off.  It creates input lag which can affect your aim and overall is more of a hindrance than anything else.  I have written a complete article that discusses why you should stay clear of Vsync. Long story short is that it caps your FPS to match your refresh rate of your monitor.  

So if your monitor is 60hz then it will cap your FPS at 60.  This might sound good but it causes input lag and provides you with no headroom for maintaining your refresh rate of your monitor. So you are effectively missing out on performance of your card.  Turn it off!

Adaptive Resolution FPS Target – Off

What is adaptive resolution FPS target?  Sounds fancy but turn it off. It is used to change your rendering resolution to maintain a set framerate.  It can cause some artifacts and blurring which can affect your view.

Anti Aliasing – On (only if you can maintain your refresh rate)

Anti-aliasing is a tricky one since it can vary game to game.  It is a more of a preference thing but if you’re running a low-tier rig I would suggest turning it off as it can churn through FPS.  

If you can afford to turn it on then it can really smooth the game out and improve your visuals on people from further away.

As you can see in the image above with anti-aliasing turned on the jagged edges are gone and the game looks a lot crisper. Anti-aliasing is a huge resource hog though so if you don’t mind the jagged edges definitely consider turning it off.

Texture Streaming Budget – Really depends on your card

This one is self-explanatory and will probably be pre-set for you.  It sets the amount of memory allocated towards rendering the textures in the game.  You should set this depending on the memory of your card.

Try it on low if you are struggling to reach the refresh rate of your monitor.

If you are running a 1070 or later then I would suggest putting it up to very high or insane.

Ambient Occlusion Quality – Off

This is a realism setting used to define how much light should be shining on any part of an object based on the level of light and the environment around you.  So turn it off for free FPS unless you want the added realism.

Sun Shadow Coverage – Low

Set this to low as it just adds visual noise.  Too many shadows can make it significantly more difficult to see players.  Especially in the dark cliff areas.

The visual difference isn’t even that big of a deal. If you look at the images above there really isn’t much difference except for the depth of the shadows.

Having it set to disabled makes the backgrounds and shadowed areas brighter making it easier to see players.

Sun Shadow Detail – Low

The same goes for sun shadow detail, this should be set to low. Very little difference between the settings as shown by the images above. Having the shadow detail on high brings more depth and coverage of the shadows.

The same applies here in that by putting this on low, you make the game slightly brighter in shadowed areas again making it easier to spot players.

Spot Shadow Detail – Disabled

Disable this for the same reasons above.

Volumetric Lighting – Disabled

Volumetric lighting adds additional 3d render effects to lighting to add to realism and immersion.  It is a nice quality of life feature but turn it off to save FPS.

It adds a lot of sunlight to the game and this can make it much more difficult to see in front of you if you are running towards the sun. Disabling this removes the ‘bloom’ affect making your overall vision much clearer.

Dynamic Spot Shadows – Disabled

By having this disabled it can save you on average between 3-7fps.  This controls whether the light in the environment can move. It also controls how bright and realistic the lighting is in the game. This has a big impact on the sun.

If you look at the images above this is clear to see with the sun beaming through the top left of the picture when dynamic spot shadows are enabled.

Model Detail – Low

Always set model detail to low because it affects the amount of surface area that is rendered for models such as grass and rocks.

It is hard to see above but if you look at the rocks in the background you can see that in the low version there are fewer rocks and part of the rocks are missing compared to high.

Turn this to low to ensure you are saving on the rendering surface area of rocks and grass which will increase invisibility and fps.

Effects Detail – Low

As you can see form the images above this one is more clear cut. The particles are much more obvious when set to high. Plus you can see the spray effect that happens when effects are set to high.

Apex Legends has a lot of visual effects during fights so for the amount of carnage in this game turn it down low.  You don’t need all those bullets in HD.

If you want a more immersive experience then, by all means, keep those effects up high. Just remember you will be greatly sacrificing potential FPS.

Impact Marks – Disabled

This can be helpful as it can suggest where you may be being shot from if you can find the bullet marks.  However its extra effects your rig has to deal with and can affect your CPU, particularly if you have a lower gen CPU.

Setting this on low or disabled seems to completely remove the effect altogether.

Ragdolls – Low

Turn this to low as it doesn’t really add much to the game so by having it higher you are just wasting away FPS. This uses more of your CPU than your GPU.

Streamer Apex Legends Settings

Here is a quick overview of some of the top streamers and what their Apex legends settings are. I will try to update this as much as possible. If you find something that is out of date post it in the comments section below, thanks.

Shroud Apex Legends Graphics Settings

Shroud Apex Legends Keybindings

Mouse Settings

Keybinds

Dr Disrespect Apex Legends Graphics Settings

Dr Disrespect Apex Legends Keybinds

Mouse Settings

Keybinds

Ninja Apex Legends Graphics Settings

Ninja Apex Legends Keybinds

Mouse Settings

Keybinds

Summit1g Apex Legends Graphics Settings

Summit1g Apex Legends Keybinds

Mouse Settings

Keybinds

General Windows Tweaks

Power Settings

Windows has different performance modes which can affect how your machine performs.  To ensure you are on the best one follow these steps:

1. Click start and search for ‘power plan’. It looks like a battery icon.
2. You should be presented with a list of power plans available.
3. Click the hide additional plans drop down to ensure you can see them all.
4. Select the ‘High Performance’ power plan.

Clean Up Windows Files

I recommend you clean up some of your Windows files such as temp files as these folders can end up holding a huge amount of unnecessary data.  This is often where old data is left lying around from applications or games that you may no longer even have on your system or use.  To check whether you have anything worth deleting you can navigate to:

C:\Users\”YourUser”\AppData\Local\Temp

Do not manually delete these files as this can cause problems.  Check out CCleaner which is an awesome free application that can do this safely and it can also scan for any registry issues and more.  I have used it for years and perform wipes of temp data every month using it. 

This step won’t directly affect your FPS unless you have limited disc space but it is always a good idea to manage your temporary windows files.  Some people don’t know such a thing exists and it can be taking up huge amounts of space on your machine.  You can get CCleaner here.

Conclusion

Hopefully you have found this quick overview helpful and you now have a better understanding for what settings you can ignore. Let me know in the comments if you have any further tweaks that could be added above.