Best settings for XDefiant on PC & how to optimize graphics for high FPS

With the release of Ubisoft’s free to play arena shooter now here, we take a look at the best settings for XDefiant to figure out how to maximize your FPS, or find the right balance of graphics settings for your system. As a more competitive title, the system requirements aren’t too difficult to reach, especially if you’re going to be playing at 1080p. Even still, optimizing your settings is key to gaining a competitive advantage and, importantly, enjoying a smooth framerate.

In this guide, we’re going to go through the best settings to cater for a range of different users, so even budget builders should be able to find the right config for them. We’ve done some testing of the game in our very own testing lab to figure out what’s best, opting for a relatively modest build.

How we picked the best settings for XDefiant

Finding the best settings for the job means diving into the game ourselves and taking a look at the performance. Tinkering with settings helps us understand which have the biggest impact on framerate, as well as finding the right balance of visual fidelity. Ubisoft list recommended specs up to 4K in this official post, so we already know the kind of hardware required. Don’t worry if you don’t have the best GPU for XDefiant or best CPU for XDefiant though, as the game is pretty forgiving for those of you on older hardware.

As we mentioned before, XDefiant aims to be a competitive shooter, a genre which hopes to welcome as many players as possible. It’s a heavily contested market, and one where players will want to maximize their framerate as much as possible. Below we’ve detailed the specs of the gaming PC we used to test the game, helpful if you wish to compare with our hardware or even have something similar in your setup.

Best graphics settings for high FPS

Like many people that play FPS games, you may be looking to get the highest FPS possible. We aren’t going to compromise on resolution, instead sticking to native, but what should you change? We’d recommend using either a 1080p or 1440p monitor if you’re looking for a high level of performance, as 4K will be much more taxing on your system. Based on our testing, we could easily achieve a high framerate in XDefiant with these kinds of settings.

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Best settings for high-end gaming PCs

Now for those of you on a high-end gaming PC, you can feel free to run the game at much better settings. You may be tempted to max out all settings possible, and feel free to do so if you prefer the best visual quality, especially if you still get high FPS. You don’t really need a guide to do that, so let’s consider some other details. Remember, XDefiant isn’t the hardest game to run out there, so this could apply to you.

We wanted to showcase a good mix of stunning visuals and performance. Of course this depends on your specific hardware, so be sure to play around the settings yourself if needed. Surprisingly, our framerate didn’t suffer too much when cranking up the settings, though switching to a 4K resolution will be a big performance hit.

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How to optimize XDefiant for your system & boost FPS

The best way of optimizing the game is by reading through our suggested settings above. We expect that most people will be playing on either 1080p or 1440p monitor, so be sure to understand what kind of performance your hardware can achieve relative to your resolution.

Outside of the game itself, there are a few things you can do to make sure you run XDefiant to the best of your gaming PC’s ability. We imagine that some of your will want to get the highest framerate possible in a competitive game like this, so some of these tweaks are useful if you want every frame you can get.

• Update your graphics drivers to the latest version. This is important in the case of any game, especially around the time of launch. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel should be providing a new driver version to better support XDefiant – this is the case for most new game releases. See our guides on how to update Nvidia drivers, update AMD drivers, or check out the Intel Arc website, depending on which manufacturer is relevant to you.
• If you are experiencing low FPS or stuttering, be sure to close any other resource-hogging applications which are adding stress to your system. This can also be the case for streaming, especially if you don’t have suitable hardware to stream and play the game at the same time.
• Enabling V-Sync in game may allow you to hold steady FPS, the same as your monitor’s refresh rate, which will help prevent screen tear or stuttering. On the flipside though, we’d instead recommend using either AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync if you have access to either of these technologies on your display, as V-Sync is known to cause more input lag.

Final word

You’ll be glad to hear that XDefiant runs well on a good range of hardware. And since it’s free to play, there’s plenty of reason to give the game a try yourself to see how well it runs on your rig. Hopefully our guide has given you everything you need to know when it comes to making graphics settings tweaks and achieving a comfortable amount of FPS.

XDefiant is Ubisoft’s latest first person shooter, exclusive to their Ubisoft Connect platform. It launched on May 21, 2024 and looks to be a worthy contender to the likes of Call of Duty – well worth a try if this genre is for you. On another note, if you have to deal with XDefiant crashing on PC, we can help with that too.