Apex Legends is a competitive battle-royale game where maximizing game performance and image quality is essential for winning games. The best video settings for Apex Legends can help improve FPS while still maintaining graphical quality. This guide will outline how to adjust video settings, the best graphics settings for Apex Legends, and the resolutions used by Apex Legends pros.
Quick take
To achieve the best video settings for Apex Legends and improve FPS, set most graphic settings to low/disabled for the best performance. Disable FOV Ability Scaling and set your Texture Streaming Budget below your GPU’s VRAM. Removing the FPS cap, updating GPU drivers, and disabling background apps can also increase the performance of Apex Legends on PC.
Table of Contents
Best video settings for Apex Legends
We’ve selected several settings to improve performance and FPS without completely sacrificing visuals.
- Display Mode: Fullscreen
- Brightness: 50%
- Field Of View(FOV): 110
- FOV Ability Scaling: Disabled
- Sprint View Shake: Minimal
Pro tip
Our Apex Legends graphics settings were picked based off the performance of a mid-range PC. Increase these video settings if you play on a high-end PC, and decrease them accordingly if you play Apex Legends with a budget PC that struggles to maintain 60 FPS.
Fullscreen is the standard Display Mode that should be used in most games to maximize performance. Checking to ensure the game is on Fullscreen Display Mode can quickly troubleshoot performance issues.
The Brightness setting you pick is a personal preference, and the ideal setting may depend on your monitor’s color settings. The default Apex Legends Brightness setting of 50% should work for most players.
The Field Of View (FOV) you choose is one of the most critical Video settings in Apex Legends. FOV can affect your computer’s performance and the consistency of your aim. See our best FOV for Apex Legends guide for a comprehensive breakdown of FOV in Apex Legends.
FOV Ability Scaling changes the field of view when activating particular abilities like Bloodhound’s Beast of the Hunt. We recommend disabling this setting, which will increase your FPS and can even improve aim and tracking when certain abilities are active.
Sprint View Shake should always be set to Minimal to help reduce visual noise on-screen. The Sprint View Shake setting is meant to increase immersion in Apex Legends, but competitive gamers will always want to minimize visual noise as much as possible.
- V-Sync: Disabled
- Nvidia Reflex: Enabled
- Adaptive Resolution FPS Target: 0
- Adaptive Supersampling: Disabled
V-Sync should always be disabled to maximize FPS in Apex Legends. V-Sync can help solve screen tearing issues, but it’s not usually worth the negative impact on performance.
Nvidia Reflex is an Nvidia graphic card setting that helps reduce system latency and improve response times. Apex Players with Nvidia graphics cards can choose between Disabled, Enabled, and Enabled + Boost. Enabled is the best setting for most players; however, Enabled + Boost can help with PCs experiencing CPU bottlenecking.
The Adaptive Resolution FPS Target setting can only be used with TSAA Anti-Aliasing, and it adjusts Apex Legends’ resolution to meet the desired framerate target. It’s best to avoid Adaptive Resolution FPS Target altogether because dips in framerate are usually preferred over drops in resolution.
Adaptive Supersampling can dynamically raise Apex Legend’s resolution if the game outperforms the target framerate. While this setting can increase graphical quality, the negative implications for performance outweigh the benefits.
- Anti-Aliasing: None
- Texture Streaming Budget: Set to just below GPU VRAM
- Texture Filtering: Bilinear
- Ambient Occlusion Quality: Disabled
Anti-Aliasing can improve the visual quality of Apex Legends by smoothing jagged edges. Disabling Anti-Aliasing is the best option for performance; increase the Anti-Aliasing setting to TSAA for enhanced visuals.
The Texture Streaming Budget setting loads textures onto VRAM, and it’s one of the best Apex Legends graphics settings to improve performance or graphical quality.
A Texture Streaming Budget of None will significantly boost FPS, but most players should use a Texture Streaming Budget just below their GPU’s specs. For example, if you’re using a GPU with 3GB of VRAM, set your Texture Streaming Budget to Low (2GB VRAM). Using a Texture Streaming Budget below your GPU’s VRAM specs will help textures load more smoothly and reduce latency to your system.
Texture Filtering improves the sharpness and visibility of certain textures (mostly environment) in Apex Legends. Bilinear is the lowest Texture Filtering setting that will yield the most performance in-game.
Ambient Occlusion Quality causes textures to stand out from the background, making objects look more 3D in-game. Disabling Ambient Occlusion Quality can significantly boost FPS, and you may not even notice the difference in-game.
- Sun Shadow Coverage: Low
- Sun Shadow Detail: Low
- Spot Shadow Detail: Disabled
- Volumetric Lighting: Disabled
- Dynamic Spot Shadows: Enabled
We recommend turning the Sun and Spot Shadow settings to Low/Disabled to maintain fast frame rates. If you’re on a higher-end PC or the competitive edge of increased FPS isn’t a priority, increasing the shadow settings can significantly enhance how Apex Legends looks and won’t completely tank your performance.
The Volumetric Lighting setting causes a lens-flare effect in-game, hurting your overall visibility. We definitely recommend disabling Volumetric Lighting to gain a competitive edge.
Dynamic Spot Shadows are seen on your character while at the main menus, and this setting won’t affect your performance in-game. We recommend Enabling this setting for a noticeable boost to visuals.
- Model Detail: Low
- Effects Detail: Low
- Impact Marks: Disabled
- Ragdolls: Disabled
- Color Blind Mode: Disabled
The Model Detail settings you choose will determine the quality of objects in Apex Legends. For competitive games like Apex Legends, it’s best to set Model Detail to Low for increased FPS. Be aware that the Texture Streaming Budget you set (covered above) will also affect the quality of objects in Apex Legends.
The Effects Detail setting determines the quality of effects, like gunfire or explosions. Keep Effects Detail Low; the High setting will significantly decrease performance without much of an increase in visuals.
Impact Marks are left in-game when bullets hit walls or other surfaces, and leaving Impact Marks on does harm FPS. You can enable Impact Marks to test or practice weapon recoil patterns but disable them again when you’re done practicing.
Apex Legends features Ragdoll physics for dead bodies, where character models can react and move after death using a physics engine. Since this increases the load on your PC, disable Ragdolls for a performance boost.
Color Blind settings are a personal preference, and enabling them has no impact on Apex Legend’s performance. Try going into the Firing Range and messing with some of the different Color Blind Modes to see if any improve how your game looks.
Best Apex Legends resolution
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Resolution: 1920×1080
Most Apex Legends players prefer to render the game in their monitor’s native resolution, whether 1920×1080, 2560×1440, or something else. Rendering the game in a monitor’s native resolution will provide the best graphics for Apex Legends, but it’s not always the best for performance.
Many Apex Legends players, even those with 2560×1440 monitors, prefer a 1920×1080 resolution to maximize their FPS in-game. Furthermore, some players choose to downscale their resolution below 1920×1080 if they are on a PC that has difficulty maintaining FPS at 1920×1080.
If your PC can stay close to its monitor’s FPS limit while using the native resolution, then it’s best to stick with that resolution. Only downscale from a native resolution if your PC can’t perform near your monitor’s FPS limit. Going from 2650×1440 to 1920×1080 or 1920×1080 to 1760×990 can significantly boost FPS and game performance.
See our Apex Legend stretched resolution guide for a comprehensive overview of how to achieve stretched resolution in Apex Legends and learn about its effects on performance.
How to change Apex Legends video settings
Follow these steps to change Apex Legends video settings.
- Load into Apex Legends and head to the main menu. Click the settings icon in the bottom right corner.
- Navigate to the Video settings tab at the top of the screen to adjust all video settings. Color Blind settings can be found under the Gameplay tab.
- Once satisfied with your choices, click Apply in the bottom right corner of the settings menu to save your new preferences.
The Firing Range is the best place to test and tweak settings in Apex Legends. The Firing Range gives players a full selection of weapons and targets to practice or perfect new settings before jumping into a real game.
What resolution do Apex Legends pros use?
Let’s analyze Apex Legends pro settings for players tracked on Setup.gg to learn more about the resolutions the best players are using.
- Out of the Apex Legends players we track, 69% of players use a 1920×1080 (16:9) resolution, 15.5% play with a 2560×1440 (16:9) resolution, and the other 15.5% play with a 1680×1050 (16:10) stretched resolution.
- All Apex Legends pros we track play with Full Screen Display Mode. Make sure you enable Full Screen for maximum FPS.
Other ways to get more performance in Apex Legends
Remove the in-game FPS cap
Apex Legends does not allow players to set their FPS limit in-game, and the default FPS limit is 144. Here’s how to remove the FPS cap for Apex Legends:
- Go to your Apex Legends game launcher, right-click on Apex Legends, and select Properties. Enter this text in the Launch Options area: +fps_max unlimited.
- Save your new launch options. Apex Legends’ frame rate will now only be limited by the performance of your PC!
Update graphic card drivers
Updating graphic card drivers for the best possible optimization in games like Apex Legends is always recommended.
The latest driver update can often improve FPS and reduce crashes for big titles like Apex Legends. You can also turn on auto-update to never miss a driver update in the future.
Disable apps from running in the background
Apex Legends requires a lot of processing power, so it’s essential the game is receiving your computer’s full attention and that no other programs are running in the background.
For Windows 10 & 11 users, head to Settings on your PC and navigate to Apps. Click on Installed Apps to see a complete list of the applications installed on your PC.
For each app you want to disable from running in the background, click on the app and head to Advanced Options. From here, you can change the Background Apps Permissions to ‘Never’ so that the app doesn’t run in the background while playing Apex Legends.
