If you’re a big Overwatch fan, or simply looking to get the best performance out of your system in this famous title, we might just have the guide for you! Here we’ll be showing you how to maximise the frame rate you can achieve in Overwatch, by strategically configuring the in-game settings to max out the frame rate.
Factors that Affect In Game FPS
There are myriad of different factors that can affect in game frame rate in Overwatch 2, and across the board in other titles, too. The most common factor is the power of your hardware – particularly the graphics card and processor. We’ll be detailing below how you can get the most out of the parts you have, but the impact these components have is worth touching upon. More powerful graphics cards can complete more graphics computations in a given time period, and the addition of more memory also helps to store more data for better game visuals.
Another factor that has an effect on performance is the visual settings and resolution you’ve opted to use. The higher the resolution you choose to game at, the more pixels your GPU needs to render. The same goes for those cranking the visual fidelity up to ‘Ultra’. Pushing the visual quality up only makes each frame that bit more intensive to render, something which inevitably reduce the number of frames able to rendered in a given second.
Best Overwatch 2.0 Settings to Enable/Disable
As with all titles, there are select settings which you should pay more attention to than others. Enabling and disabling a few key settings can really help to level up frame rate, and provide that bit more performance for those looking to achieve a more competitive Overwatch 2 experience.
Render Scale
Render Scale is a percentage setting, ranging from 100% downwards. 100% will render the game at the native display resolution you set at the top of the settings menu. For example, if you set the game resolution to 1440p, and set the scale at 100%, you would see a native, 2560 x 1440 image.
Set this to 90% and it will render at 1296p, and so on. The lower this setting, the less pixels the game needs to render, and the lower the performance overhead becomes. That’s not to say dropping this to 50% or 60% is a good idea, as the image quality can deteriorate with this setting quite quickly. It cna be useful for those with high resolution monitors, or less powerful systems.
Ambient Occlusion
Ambient occlusion is a rendering process that shades images based on their exposure in a scene. This can be a crucial setting for helping aid the visual fidelity in a game, but at higher settings can be a more demand on
Our Recommendation: Tune this setting down to ‘Medium’.
Dynamic Reflections
A little bit like Nvidia’s Ray Tracing technology, which itself is famed for bringing a high performance overhead with it, Dynamic Reflections helps to increase the accuracy and detail of reflections. This setting can be pretty demanding and as such is one we’d typically disable.
Our Recommendation: Disable this setting.
Anti-Alias Quality
Anti aliasing helps to smooth out lines, curves and vertices. It removes the ‘stepping’ effect that can often be visible and helps to smooth out rendered objects. Though it can produce solid visual results, it is also a power intensive setting to enable, and with modern high-resolutions, less useful than it has been. This is one of our first settings to tune down in most games if more FPS is the target.
Our Recommendation: Tune this setting down to ‘Low’ or Medium’.
Overwatch 2.0 Hardware Requirements
When weighing up which settings are best to enable or disable, it’s important to see how your system stacks up against both the recommended and minimum specs, set out by the game developer. This helps to give you an indication of just how aggressive you should be with your setting optimisations. Those meeting the basic minimum or recommended specs will need to tune down more settings than those exceeding both requirements more substantially.
Minimum Specs | Recommended Specs | |
---|---|---|
CPU | Intel Core i3 AMD Phenom X3 8650 | Intel Core i7 AMD Ryzen 5 |
GPU | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 600 Series AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 / 1650 AMD R9 380 / RX 6400 |
Memory (RAM) | 6GB | 8GB |
Disk Space | 50GB | 50GB |
Operating System | Windows 10 (64-bit) | Windows 10 (64-bit) (Windows 11 will also work fine) |
Best Settings for Overwatch 2.0 at 1080p
Name | Setting |
---|---|
Resolution | 1080p |
Display Mode | Fullscreen |
Render Scale | Custom |
In Game Resolution | 100% |
Max. Frame Rate | 600 |
V-Sync | Disabled |
NVIDIA Reflex | Enabled + Boost |
Graphics Quality | Custom |
High Quality Upsampling | Default (or AMD FSR 1.0 with AMD GPU) |
Image Sharpening | User Preference |
Texture Quality | High |
Texture Filtering Quality | High – 4X |
Local Fog Detail | Low |
Dynamic Reflections | Off |
Shadow Detail | Off |
Model Detail | High |
Effects Detail | Low |
Lighting Quality | Low |
Anti Alias Quality | High – SMAA Medium |
Refraction Quality | Low |
Screenshot Quality | 1x Resolution |
Ambient Occlusion | Off |
Local Reflections | Off |
Damage FX | Default |
Best Settings for Overwatch 2.0 at 1440p
Name | Setting |
---|---|
Resolution | 1440p |
Display Mode | Fullscreen |
Render Scale | Custom |
In Game Resolution | 100% |
Max. Frame Rate | 600 |
V-Sync | Disabled |
NVIDIA Reflex | Enabled + Boost |
Graphics Quality | Custom |
High Quality Upsampling | Default (or AMD FSR 1.0 with AMD GPU) |
Image Sharpening | User Preference |
Texture Quality | High |
Texture Filtering Quality | High – 8X |
Local Fog Detail | Low |
Dynamic Reflections | Off |
Shadow Detail | Medium |
Model Detail | High |
Effects Detail | Medium |
Lighting Quality | Medium |
Anti Alias Quality | High – SMAA Medium |
Refraction Quality | Low |
Screenshot Quality | 1x Resolution |
Ambient Occlusion | Off |
Local Reflections | Off |
Damage FX | Default |
Best Settings for Overwatch 2.0 at 4K
Name | Setting |
---|---|
Resolution | 4K |
Display Mode | Fullscreen |
Render Scale | Custom |
In Game Resolution | 100% |
Max. Frame Rate | 600 |
V-Sync | Disabled |
NVIDIA Reflex | Enabled + Boost |
Graphics Quality | Custom |
High Quality Upsampling | Default (or AMD FSR 1.0 with AMD GPU) |
Image Sharpening | User Preference |
Texture Quality | High |
Texture Filtering Quality | High – 8X |
Local Fog Detail | High |
Dynamic Reflections | Medium |
Shadow Detail | Medium |
Model Detail | High |
Effects Detail | Medium |
Lighting Quality | High |
Anti Alias Quality | High – SMAA Medium |
Refraction Quality | High |
Screenshot Quality | 1x Resolution |
Ambient Occlusion | Medium |
Local Reflections | Off |
Damage FX | Default |
Our Recommended GPU Picks for Overwatch 2.0
Best 1080p GPU – AMD Radeon RX 6650XT
The AMD Radeon RX 6650XT is a fantastic all-rounder for gaming at 1080p in an array of the most popular titles. Overwatch 2 is no exception to this rule, with the 6650XT delivering top-tier frame rates for competitive gaming.
Buy the AMD Radeon RX 6650XT on:
Best 1440p GPU – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060Ti
NVIDIA’s RTX 3060Ti remains one of our top ever picks for 1440p gaming. With slightly less powerful than the RTX 3070, a card that is frankly overkill for 1440p gaming, at a price point more aligned to the RTX 3060, you can’t go wrong with this mid-range titan!
Buy the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060Ti on:
Best 4K GPU – AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
AMD’s latest and great Radeon RX 7000 series has received deserved praise since its launch in late 2022. With lots of power, for a lower price than NVIDIA’s competing RTX 4000 series you can’t go too far wrong!
Buy the AMD Radeon RX 7900 on: