Best Settings For Shadow of the Tomb Raider – Optimize FPS, Boost Performance

Shadow of the Tomb Raider has been released, and just like all other major games, there will be lots of people who experience a sub-optimal gaming experience due to lag.

We want you to have the best possible gaming experience, which is why we make these game optimization guides.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider has received good reviews so far and seems to be optimized well, but there’s always something that can be done better.

This is especially true if you have an AMD GPU since the PC version of the game is specifically optimized for NVIDIA GPUs.

If you want to higher FPS while playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider, simply follow our guide below. We have not only included specific optimizations related to Shadow of the Tomb Raider but also some general PC optimizations.

First, you need to ensure that you meet the minimum system requirements for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and preferably the recommended system requirements.

PC Settings

If you’re using a laptop, ensure that the battery mode is set to “High Performance” instead of “Balanced.” Furthermore, ensure that your GPU drivers are up to date as new releases often come with a patch from NVIDIA and/or AMD the same day or a couple of days before.

If you have an NVIDIA GPU, follow the steps below to optimize your NVIDIA settings.

1. Open the NVIDIA control panel and navigate to Manage 3D settings.
2. Select the tab Program settings and find Shadow of the Tomb Raider. If you can’t find it, click on Add and try to find it here (try running the game first and close it down again if you can’t find it).
3. Set Maximum pre-rendered frames to 1.
4. Set Monitor technology to G-SYNC (if applicable).
5. Set Multi-Display/Mixed GPU acceleration to Single display performance mode.
6. Set Power management mode to Prefer maximum performance.
7. Set Texture filtering – Quality to Performance.
8. Disable Vertical sync.
9. Enable Threaded optimization.
10. Set Preferred refresh rate to Highest available.
11. Apply the changes and navigate to Adjust desktop size and position.
12. Check the checkbox Override the scaling mode set by games and programs and click on Apply.

Optimizing Game Settings

Let’s now optimize the actual game settings in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We’re aiming for a stable 60 FPS with a GTX 1060 on 1080p. Feel free to adjust accordingly.

1. Launch Shadow of the Tomb Raider and click on Options.
2. Now click on Display and Graphics.
3. Set DirectX 12 to On (if it’s available)
4. Set Resolution to your monitor’s native resolution.
5. Set Fullscreen to On.
6. Set Exclusive Fullscreen to On. This will make alt-tabbing slower, but it’s worth it.
7. Set Monitor Refresh Rate to the highest value possible.
8. Set VSync to Off.
9. Set HDR to On (if it’s available)
10. Set Anti-aliasing to TAA.
11. Set Stereoscopic to Off.

Switch to the Graphics tab now. Here are our recommended graphics settings for Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

1. Set Preset to Custom.
2. Set Texture Quality to High or Medium.
3. Set Texture Filtering to Anisotropic.
4. Set Shadow Quality to Normal.
5. Set Ambient Occlusion to BTAO.
6. Set Depth of Field to Normal.
7. Set Level of Detail to Normal.
8. Set Tessellation to Off.
9. Set Bloom to On.
10. Set Motion Blur to On.
11. Set Screen Space Reflections to On.
12. Set Screen Space Contact Shadows to Off.
13. Set Pure Hair to Normal.
14. Set Volumetric Lighting to On.
15. Set Lens Flares to On.
16. Set Screen Effects to On.

Disable Windows Update Delivery Optimization

Let’s try to disable Windows Update Delivery Optimization now. Follow these steps:

1. Open the Windows start menu, enter Windows update settings and click on the search result for it.
2. Click on Advanced options.
3. Click on Delivery optimization.
4. Ensure that Allow downloads from other PCs is off.

Disable OneDrive

We recommend that you disable OneDrive if you’re not using it. Right-click on the OneDrive icon on your taskbar and click on Exit.

Optimizing Discord

If you happen to use Discord, ensure that you optimize it as well to boost your FPS in all games while Discord is running.

1. Open Discord and go to the User settings page.
2. Open the Appearance tab and uncheck Hardware acceleration.

Optimizing Google Chrome

You can also turn off hardware acceleration in Google Chrome so that background applications executed by Chrome do not consume too many resources when you’re playing.

1. Open Google Chrome and go to the Settings page.
2. Scroll all the way down and click on the Advanced tab.
3. Again, scroll all the way down and make sure that Use hardware acceleration when available is turned off.
4. Relaunch Google Chrome and close it again.

Clean Your Temporary Files

1. Press start, search after %localappdata% and press Enter.
2. Open the Temp folder.
3. Press CTRL + A to select all files in the folder.
4. Press the Delete button on your keyboard to delete these temporary files. Skip the ones it can’t delete.
5. Now empty your recycle bin.

You can also use CCleaner – the free version will do the trick.

Now restart your PC to ensure that your PC and Shadow of the Tomb Raider is well optimized.