Nioh 3 continues the series’ tradition, offering signature combat and immersing players in an open-world adventure spanning various eras of Japan. Although the game’s world is more expansive than ever, many players are experiencing performance issues on their PCs. Frame rate drops, stuttering, and input lag can quickly ruin a well-honed combat rhythm, especially during intense encounters. To fix this, we present a quick guide with the most optimized graphics settings for Nioh 3 that will improve performance on your computer.
The best settings to optimize Nioh 3 performance on PC
Nioh 3 offers a number of graphics settings that can be adjusted to adjust image quality and achieve desired performance. Some settings have a greater impact on system load than others, so we’ll focus on balancing graphics and performance for an optimal gaming experience.
Below is a complete breakdown of the best graphics settings for Nioh 3 on PC.
Display settings
- Display Mode : Borderless . The game does not support exclusive fullscreen mode, but borderless mode works flawlessly and does not cause performance issues.
- Vertical Sync (VSync) : Off. Enabling this adds input lag, which is critical for fast-paced combat.
- Resolution : The native resolution of your monitor . For monitors with a 16:9 aspect ratio, the native resolution is available. For 16:10, you’ll need to select the closest available resolution. The game also supports ultrawide resolutions.
- Frame rate limit : Maximum .
- Graphic preset : Custom . We will adjust the parameters manually.
- Dynamic FPS Adjustment : On. Recommended for smoother gameplay, despite possible minor slowdowns.
Advanced resolution settings
- Upscaling method : DLSS / FSR 3.1 . Owners of Nvidia RTX graphics cards can choose DLSS, while FSR 3.1 is recommended for everyone else for a significant performance boost.
- Sharpness : At the player’s discretion .
- Rendering Resolution : 50% . This matches the “Performance” mode for DLSS and FSR, providing a good balance between image quality and FPS.
- Dynamic Resolution : Off. This legacy feature is not needed when using DLSS/FSR.
- Frame Generation : DLSS FG / FSR 3 FG . Available for Nvidia RTX 40 series and higher graphics cards (DLSS FG) or all graphics cards via FSR 3. May increase input lag for some players.
- DLSS Multi-Frame Generation : GPU dependent . RTX 40 series graphics cards support 2x generation, while higher modes are available for RTX 50 series cards.
Advanced visual settings
- Shadow Quality : Standard . Affects FPS, especially in open areas.
- Ray-traced shading (Ambient Occlusion) : High . Provides good soft shadows in the corners of objects without a significant performance hit.
- Model Quality : Standard . Controls the detail of character models.
- Model texture quality : Dependent on VRAM .
- 6GB VRAM : Low.
- 8GB VRAM : Standard.
- 12+ GB VRAM : High/Ultra.
- Wind Sway Quality : Standard . Has virtually no impact on performance.
- Anisotropic filtering : 16x . Maintains texture clarity without a significant resource drain.
- Effects : Standard . Controls the quality of particles and visual effects.
- Motion Quality : High . Ensures smooth character and NPC animation.
- Screen-Space Reflections (SSR) : Standard . Higher settings enable software ray tracing, which significantly reduces FPS.
- Background Mesh Quality : High . Recommended to avoid texture pop-ins in the distance.
- Terrain Quality and Grass Density : Standard . Controls the detail of the terrain and vegetation.
- Volumetric Cloud Quality : High . Improves the appearance of smoke and fog with minimal impact on FPS.
- FPS (cutscenes) : 60 (fixed) . Cutscenes at 60 FPS look almost as good as at 120.
- Cutscene quality : Standard .
- Global Illumination : Standard . The most demanding setting in the game. Reducing it to standard provides a significant performance boost, compensating for the slight loss in visual quality.
So, here are the best settings for Nioh 3 , which will help players optimize performance and achieve high FPS on PC. These settings were tested on a system with an Intel i9-14900HX processor, Nvidia RTX 4080 graphics card, and 32 GB of RAM. The average FPS was around 90-120 FPS, with the minimum values (1% low) hovering around 65-70 FPS .
The proprietary engine used in Nioh 3 brought with it similar bugs and glitches that plagued previous installments in the series . However, these performance issues are expected to be addressed in future patches.
