"Battlefield 2042" is one of the few large-scale AAA shooting games released this holiday. It gave up the battle and focused only on multiplayer games, and it still has the huge and exaggerated battles that the Battlefield series is well-known for. In order to feel the heat of the battlefield as accurately as possible, we have compiled a list of the best Battlefield 2042 settings so that you can optimize the performance of your gaming PC.

Like previous games in the series, Battlefield 2042 is a game designed to emphasize the latest PC hardware. Our testing revealed how demanding the game is, although it seems to place more emphasis on old and low-end components. As long as you reach a certain threshold—especially the recent six-core CPU and one of the best graphics cards—you should be able to adjust to 4K with a few settings.

Unlike recent AAA shooters (such as Call of Duty: Pioneer), Battlefield 2042 has a slender list of 13 graphics options—if you ignore Nvidia Reflex, there are only 12. This means that each setting will have a greater impact on your performance, but the limited list does not have much room for optimization beyond the basics.

We isolated each setting of 4K to understand how they affect performance. Here are the best settings for Battlefield 2042: 

The two settings that have the greatest impact on performance are lighting quality and bush quality. We set both of these settings to "low". The lighting increased our average frame rate by 8%, and the bushes increased it by 3%. Although not a significant increase, the 11% between the two settings should not be underestimated.

Otherwise, we only see the marginal benefits of most graphical options. The only time we saw a significant increase in performance was when we turned off ambient light occlusion, although we compromised SSAO to maintain as much visual quality as possible. We don't see the difference between SSAO, HBAO and HBAO Full. In other words, HBAO is usually more demanding, so if you experience performance issues, we recommend that you stick to SSAO.

In addition to the normal setting list, you also need to adjust some other options. We have been shutting down Nvidia Reflex because it has dropped two frames from our benchmark average frame rate. This is within the margin of error, but we recommend that you turn off the setting unless you are particularly sensitive to delays.

Deep at the bottom of the settings list, you will find an option for high-fidelity objects. For some reason, it has nothing to do with other graphics options. This setting determines the distance of the game rendering details-character animation, effects, etc. We did not measure the difference when it is set to Ultra, but if you have a quad-core CPU, you may want to turn it down.

Finally, we have ray-traced ambient occlusion. This is the only form of ray tracing in "Battlefield 2042" and it is very demanding. It halved our average frame rate and reduced the RTX 3070 from a 4K playable 63 frames per second (fps) to only 31 fps. This is an option that looks great, but you need to combine the settings with Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS).

"Battlefield 2042" is a very demanding game, which is not surprising. Over the years, the "Battlefield" series has consolidated itself as the backbone of PC graphics capabilities, and this release is no exception. According to our tests, the minimum specifications do not meet the requirements. Unless you are willing to make some serious visual compromises, you need a powerful gear to run Battlefield 2042. 

Between the minimum system requirements and the recommended system requirements, you need a six-core or eight-core AMD CPU, or a quad-core Intel CPU. The more cores you can get, the better. Battlefield 2042 has a set of simulations, including wind and destruction physics. If you have more cores, your processor can split the workload.

For graphics, there is a huge gap between the minimum requirements and the recommended requirements. According to our tests, the recommended specifications can reach 60 fps at 1440p high to ultra settings. On the other hand, the minimum specifications may only apply to 1080p at low settings. The RX 580 is more powerful than the developer recommended, and cannot crack 60 fps when the slider is adjusted to 1080p.

100GB of storage space is required, but our installation only takes up 47GB. The developer may recommend more for future updates. At startup, you don't need to worry about freeing up 100GB of hard drive space, although you may need to do so in the future.

We tested Battlefield 2042 with three graphics cards for the three most common resolutions: RTX 3070 for 4K, RTX 2060 Super for 1440p, and RX 580 for 1080p. We ran all tests on a bench equipped with Ryzen 9 5950X and 32GB RAM to focus on GPU performance.

In addition to RX 580, we can use graphics cards up to 60 fps at their respective resolutions. As we will discuss in depth in the next section, "Battlefield 2042" includes a dynamic resolution option that can push cards such as RX 580 at 1080p to above 60 fps.

Starting from RTX 3070, 4K Ultra is no problem, but our optimized settings still increased our average frame rate by 27%. AMD RX 6700 XT can also reach 60 fps in our recommended list, although cards like RX 6600 XT will struggle to maintain a 4K playable frame rate. Anything higher, such as RTX 3080, should not have any problems.

The RTX 2060 Super performs better at 1440p, and at our recommended settings, it is even close to 60 fps at 4K. AMD RX 5700 XT should be able to provide similar performance, but may encounter difficulties in 4K. Although we recommend 1440p for RTX 2060 Super, it can run some settings adjustments and turn on DLSS under 4K.

Finally, the RX 580 could not reach 60 fps at 1080p, but our optimized settings pushed it to a level well above that mark. The graphics bandwidth provided by "Battlefield 2042" is not as good as Forza Horizon 5, but the settings still leave a lot of room for optimization. The RX 580 is a proof. Through some adjustments, it has been increased from 21 fps, which cannot be played under 4K, to 31 fps.

On our test bench, a lot of our performance comes from the back of Ryzen 9 5950X, especially at 1080p. As mentioned earlier, the more cores you can access, the better. Core speed is not important, although it certainly helps. If you are running at a resolution of 1440p or higher, the CPU is less useful.

"Battlefield 2042" includes a set of Nvidia technologies: DLSS, ray tracing and Reflex. As mentioned earlier, turning on ray tracing will reduce your frame rate by half, and Reflex has no frame rate advantage. DLSS is another matter. As in all supported games, DLSS helps to improve the performance of Battlefield 2042, but at the cost of amazing image quality.

Unlike Call of Duty Pioneers, where the visual quality hardly changes when DLSS is turned on, Battlefield 2042 is struggling. The most aggressive Ultra Performance mode is very eye-catching, even if it provides a greatly increased frame rate.

Our results reflect the results we found in the Back 4 Blood performance guide. In the Ultra Performance mode of 4K Ultra, DLSS increased the average frame rate of RTX 2060 Super by 71%, and the average frame rate of RTX 3070 by 49%.

DLSS still works well, but we recommend keeping it in quality or balanced performance mode. "Battlefield 2042" also includes automatic settings for DLSS, which will adjust the resolution to meet the target frame rate. We would have liked to see AMD’s FidelityFX super resolution option, but with Nvidia graphics cards and Nvidia Image Scaling, you can get the same effect.

The dynamic resolution option built into the game works, but it is aggressive. With the Ultra setting targeting 4K at 60 fps, the game can even push the underpowered RTX 2060 Super to the target frame rate. However, the visual cost is too high. The dynamic resolution options seem to be unlimited, so it will shrink the game as much as necessary to meet the target frame rate.

In the end, you just run the game at a lower resolution. We recommend using dynamic resolution mode with high refresh rate monitors and graphics options just below the refresh rate. When the dynamic resolution is at its best, it can save you from certain frame rate drops rather than improving your performance.

During our testing, we encountered several issues with Battlefield 2042. Suddenly, our frame rate will drop to single digits, and we will not be able to open DLSS. It turns out that this is a problem of turning off DirectX 12. Throughout the test, the game will inexplicably turn off DirectX 12, but you can manually turn it back on.

If you have ever edited the settings file on your PC, you will know what to do. Open the file explorer and follow the document> Battlefield 2042> Settings. Find the PROFSAVE_profile file and right-click on it. Select Open with> Notepad. 

You can manually change each setting here. For DirectX 12, find GstRender.Dx12Enabled and change the value from 0 to 1. You can also do this using other graphics options, which we must do during testing. Once, dynamic resolution was turned on in the settings, but it didn't work. This prevents us from using DLSS because you can only enable one upgrade mode. We disabled the dynamic resolution in this file by setting GstRender.DRSEnabled to 0, and everything returned to normal.

You can also improve performance by adjusting some settings in the file. You may notice that Battlefield 2042 has no shaded graphics options in the game, but the settings are available in this file. By setting GstRender.ShadowQuality to 0, you can greatly increase the frame rate (albeit at the expense of image quality).

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