Studio Wildcard’s Ark: Survival Ascended got off to a rocky start with the state of its early access release, but the game has continued raking in more and more players. At the time of publishing this, ASA had achieved a 24-hour peak player count of about 98K players, and that’s not something you get to see every day with survival games. And with so many new and curious players joining in on the fun, it was only evident that many would want to know the best settings for getting high fps and low input lag in the game.
Studio Wildcard isn’t particularly known for optimizing its games. Ark: Survival Evolved was a big resource hog on most builds, and the same is true for its remake, Ark: Survival Ascended. Don’t worry, though. If you follow the steps mentioned in this guide, you will be able to achieve a much better in-game FPS.
Ark Survival Ascended (ASA) Best Settings for High FPS & Low Input Lag
We have shared methods that include tweaking the game’s settings menu, as well as Windows Settings for better optimization. That said, let’s get right into it.
Launch Options (Steam)
First, head over to Steam and do some tweaking there. You will need to click on Library and from there, find Ark Survival Ascended. Now, right-click on the game and switch to the General section. Take a look at the right side and scroll down until you find Launch Options. There, in the empty space below, copy-paste or type in the following: “-USEALLAVAILABLECORES“.
In-game Tweaking
Once you have added the launch option command, it is time to launch the game and access the command console. When you are in the game, open the console command by pressing the tilde (~) key. Now, enter the following commands:
- r.VolumetricCloud 0
- r.VolumetricFog 0
- r.Water.SingleLayer.Reflection 0
- r.Lumen.Reflections.Allow 0
- r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.Allow 0
- r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable 0
- r.DistanceFieldShadowing 1
- r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades 1
- r.MaterialQualityLevel 1
- r.MipMapLODBias 15
This concludes the console command part. After this, it’s time to open the in-game settings menu. Head over to the Settings tab, switch to General, and then Video. There, you can modify the options as suggested below:
- Resolution – [Lower resolution will translate to better fps.]
- Windowed Mode – Fullscreen
- Graphics Presets – [Build dependent]
- Resolution Scale – [100 only if using Nvidia GPU. Otherwise, 80 or lower is suggested.]
- Advanced Graphics – Medium
- Anti-Aliasing – Low
- View Distance – Low
- Textures – [If above 6GB VRAM, choose High or Epic. If lower, choose Medium or Low.]
- Post Processing – Medium
- General Shadows – High
- Global Illumination Quality – Off
- Effects Quality – Medium
- Foliage Quality – Medium
- Max Frame Rate – 60
- Motion Blur – Off
- Light Bloom – On
- Light Shafts – On
- Low-Light Enhancement – Off
- Enable Foliage & Fluid Interaction – Off
- Foliage Interaction Distance Multiplier – 0.01
- Foliage Interaction Distance Limit – 0.5
- Foliage Interaction Quantity Limit – 0.5
- Enable Footstep Particles – Off
- Enable Footstep Decals – Off
- Disable HLOD – Off
- GUI 3D Widget Quality – 0.6
Now, click on the Save button below and switch to the RTX tab. If you happen to have an NVIDIA GPU, turn on NVIDIA DLSS and set Super Resolution to Quality or Performance. Also, turn on Nvidia Reflex Low Latency. Next, head to the Camera tab and there you can lower the Camera FOV option. The lower the FOV, the less CPU ASA will use. You can also disable/turn off the Camera View Bob option. Now, save your settings, quit the game, and then reload.
Additionally, you can also turn on Frame Generation under the RTX settings. At the time, Frame Generation is only available for 40-series NVIDIA GPUs, so if you have that GPU, turn on Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling first and then Frame Generation. If this is your first time doing that, then:
- Type in Graphics settings in the search bar and open it.
- At the top, you will see the Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling option. Toggle it on and then launch the game to enable Frame Generation.
Windows settings
Aside from all that, we also suggest you do some tweaking with your Windows settings. First, open Settings and click on Gaming. You will now see three options: Xbox Game Bar, Captures, and Game Mode. Select the third option and enable Game Mode. As for the other two settings, disable all the features.
Next, type in Graphics in the search bar and open it. Look for Ark: Survival Ascended in the list below. If it isn’t there, click on Browse and add the game. Following that, click on ASA and select Options. Now, from the options presented, select High Performance and click on Save.
Well, that’s all you need to get high fps and experience low input lag in Ark Survival Ascended. And now, if you happen to be encountering some server issues in the game, check out this guide. Lastly, don’t forget to follow DigiStatement for more such guides. Also read: Ark Survival Ascended (ASA): How to Enable/Disable Friendly Fire
