Metro Exodus is out now and if you are playing the game on PC then you will notice that there are plenty of options that you can play around with. These settings can have an impact on performance and visuals and here we are going to look into what different settings do and how they impact performance and visuals when you are playing Metro Exodus on PC.
Metro Exodus PC Requirements
Before we look into the Metro Exodus PC settings we should talk about the hardware that you need in order to run the game. Check out the recommended and minimum requirements of the game before you start optimizing the game accordingly.
Metro Exodus PC Minimum System Requirements
- OS: Windows 7/8/10
- CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 or equivalent
- RAM: 8 GB
- GPU: Nvidia GTX 670 / Nvidia GTX 1050 / AMD Radeon HD 7870
- Free Disk Space: 59 GB
- Dedicated Video RAM: 2048 MB
Metro Exodus PC Recommended System Requirements
- OS: Windows 10
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4770k or equivalent
- RAM: 8 GB
- GPU: GeForce GTX 1070 / GeForce RTX 2060 / AMD RX VEGA 56
- Free Disk Space: 59 GB
- Dedicated Video RAM: 8192 MB
Metro Exodus is a fairly demanding game as was the case with previous Metro titles. So it is not surprising to see that you will need a relatively decent CPU and graphics card in order to run the game at decent settings at 60 FPS. You will need even better hardware if you are interested in playing the game at higher resolutions.
For these tests, we used an Intel 8700K paired with an Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card and 16 GB of RAM.
Metro Exodus Graphics Settings
Now that we have seen the hardware requirements of the game, we can look at the settings that can improve performance. Note that some of these settings will have a drastic impact on the visuals so we will mention that where needed.
DLSS
Deep Learning Super Sampling is supported by the new Nvidia RTX graphics cards that come with Tensor cores. These are the RTX 2060 and higher models. What you need to know if that DLSS can increase performance when playing Metro Exodus on PC but you will notice that the image quality is reduced.
If you are using the RTX 2060 and need to hit 60 FPS then you can look into turning DLSS off especially if you are using ray tracing but if you need better visuals then you might want to lower other settings rather than turning this feature on. DLSS can increase performance by 16% depending on resolution.
HairWorks
HairWorks is an Nivida exclusive feature that makes hair look better by using tessellation. Turning this setting off can increase performance by 3%.
Ray Tracing
Ray Tracing is a very taxing setting. If you have an RTX 2060 then you might want to turn this off. Ray Tracing can impact performance by up to 35%.
Quality
Quality also has a major impact on performance. Moving from Extreme to high gives us a performance increase of 26% but this will reduce the image quality drastically.
Motion Blur
Motion Blur seems to be an odd one here. We did not experience any kind of drop in performance while using this setting and did not gain anything by turning it down.
Shading Rate
Shading rate is also an odd one here. It is set to 1 by default but lowering it can give you a small boost in performance.
Tesselation
Reducing this setting can give you a small boost in performance. We noticed a boost of 2%.
Texture Filtering
This setting also has a small effect on performance. Turning this setting down gave us a 3% boost in performance.
Metro Exodus PC Benchmarks With RTX 2060
The RTX 2060 is a new entry-level graphics card that comes with ray tracing support and DLSS technology. You can check out how well the graphics card manages to run Metro Exodus on PC at different settings at 1080p and 1440p below:
Metro Exodus Recommended Settings
The settings will depend on the kind of hardware that you are using but we are going to go with RTX, in this case, keeping in mind that that vast majority of people will not be using Nvidia RTX graphics cards.
For Entry-level PCs
We can recommend the following settings for entry-level PCs:
- Low Quality
- Texture Filtering: AF 4x
- Motion Blur: Low
- Tessellation: Off
- Advanced PhysX: Off
- HairWorks: Off
- Ray Tracing: Off
- DLSS: Off
- Shading Rate: 50%
For Mid-range PCs
We can recommend the following settings for mid-range PCs:
- Medium Quality
- Texture Filtering: AF 4x
- Motion Blur: Low
- Tessellation: Full
- Advanced PhysX: On
- HairWorks: Off
- Ray Tracing: Off
- DLSS: Off
- Shading Rate: 100%
For High-end PCs
We can recommend the following settings for High-end PCs:
- High Quality
- Texture Filtering: AF 16x
- Motion Blur: Low
- Tessellation: Full
- Advanced PhysX: On
- HairWorks: On
- Ray Tracing: Off
- DLSS: Off
- Shading Rate: 100%
Enthusiast Level PC
We can recommend the following settings for enthusiast grade PCs:
- Ultra Quality
- Texture Filtering: AF 16x
- Motion Blur: Normal
- Tessellation: Full
- Advanced PhysX: On
- HairWorks: On
- Ray Tracing: Off
- DLSS: Off
- Shading Rate: 100%
If you are interested in playing the game then you can check out our other guides as well which are as follows:
- Metro Exodus Winter Collectible Locations Guide – Diaries, Post Cards
- Metro Exodus Moscow Collectible Locations Guide – Diaries, Post Cards
Let us know what you think about Metro Exodus PC optimization and what your experience has been like so far.
previous commenter is correct… it makes a drastic difference in performance.
So much bull in this article
“Shading rate is also an odd one here. It is set to 1 by default but lowering it can give you a small boost in performance.”
Small boost? That’s literally the resolution scaling just worded differently. Putting it to 50% makes the game render at 50% the resolution you set which drastically gives you a huge boost.
Just told you my findings. You could experience things differently. Not to mention we get the game before you do so there are multiple factors that can alter our results. I would not take it so seriously if I was you.