Overview
Tips for running Dark Souls Remastered on Laptops and Low-End Rigs.
Minimum Specs
Minimum Specs:
CPU: AMD FX-8150 / AMD Ryzen 3 1300X or Intel Core I5-2500K
RAM: 4 GB
GPU: Minimum 2GB VRAM (AMD Radeon HD7870, etc) or Nvidia GeForce GTX760
DirectX: Version 11
How this compares to Dark Souls PTD minimum specs:
– Twice the RAM needed
– Three times better CPU needed*
– Three times better GPU needed*
* Based on PassMark scores.
How can I find out if my computer meets the minimum requirements?
– CPU Benchmark: [link]
– GPU Benchmark: [link]
Are you playing on a laptop?
Be sure to set your battery power mode to “Best Performance”.
If you’re playing on a laptop, you might have dual graphics cards…
After installation, navigate to
C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonDARK SOULS REMASTERED
Right-click on DarkSoulsRemastered.exe, and select “Run with graphics processor”.
By default DSR uses Integrated Graphics, but you can change this by selecting “Change default graphics processor” and following steps through your GPU’s Control Panel.
You can ensure that it is working by opening DSR and then opening the Windows 10 Task Manager with CTRL-Shift-Esc (or Ctrl-Alt-Delete) and going to the Performance Tab.
You should see something like this:
Which brings us to…
High GPU Usage
Unlike the original Dark Souls, DSR heavily uses your computer’s GPU.
For many, this will be the bottleneck.
Here are your options:
- Update your GPU drivers.
- Disable any unnecessary 3D settings in your GPU’s Control Panel.
- Wait for GameReady drivers or performance patches.
- Upgrade your GPU.
Read on for managing in-game settings to boost fps.
Sub-60 FPS Causing Slowdowns
That’s right.
If your computer cannot run the game at 60 FPS, you will be playing in slow-motion.
There does not appear to be a 30 FPS setting.
Here’s what you can do:
Open Steam and go to Steam -> Settings -> In-Game -> In-Game FPS Counter
We are going to use this to try and target 60 FPS.
Open Dark Souls Remastered.
Check your current FPS and make note of the average.
Start -> Configure options or quit the game -> PC Settings.
If your FPS is well under 60 FPS, you’re going to want to lower the resolution.
Once you get above 50 FPS on average, you can fine-tune the other settings.
Personally, I would recommend keeping VSYNC on. Unless disabling it, and enabling it from your GPU’s Control Panel results in a performance boost.
As for the other settings, PCGamer did a nice write-up on the performance impact of each:
[link]
Originally posted by PCGamer:“Testing was done at 4k on an RX 560 4GB…
Anti-aliasing: Can be set to Off, FXAA, FXAA High, or Temporal AA. The latter is the best at removing jaggies but also introduces blurriness across the entire resulting image. The impact of FXAA/FXAA High is about 6-8 percent, while TAA can drop performance by 12 percent.
Motion Blur: Causes the image to blur with movement, and if you turn it off you can improve performance by about 14 percent. This is the largest impact on performance. I prefer this off regardless.
Depth of field: Blurs out distant objects, or at least that’s the idea. You can see in the screenshots that the effect is quite small, unlike in the original release. Causes about a 13 percent drop in performance, and can safely be left off.
Ambient occlusion: Improves the shadows where polygons intersect. As with the others, the effect is quite subtle, and unlike higher quality variants of AO (eg, HBAO+, VXAO, etc.) the performance impact is negligible (about 1-2 percent).”
Hope this helps.