Ghost of Tsushima PC optimized settings – best graphics and performance options

Here's how to above 100fps in Ghost of Tsushima's PC port

Sucker Punch Productions/PlayStation

Ghost of Tsushima is the latest PC port of a former PlayStation exclusive, and it's a good one. While the original game ran fine on a PS4, the experience of playing it was transformative once its potential was unlocked on PS5. Nixxes Software has delivered what is the definitive version of the game with the latest PC release, unlocking both higher frame rates and visual settings to run beyond the PS5 counterpart.

As hinted by Ghost of Tsushima's minimum requirements, you don't need much to run the game well. The game was originally developed for the PS4, and is very scalable on higher-end PC GPUs. To that end, we tested the game on our high-end rigs to check out how its performance can be improved.

For our testing, we used a PC with the following specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• GPU: Nvidia Geforce RTX 4080
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz
• Storage: WD SN850 M.2 SSD

We targeted to render at least 60fps or above at 4K output resolution with the Nvidia RTX 4080. Of course, dropping the resolution to 1440p or even 1080p will help a lot, but it's not a good indication of how hard the game hits the GPU. We also noticed that at lower resolutions like 1080p, the game is CPU bound so you won't get any meaningful return in frame rates if you have an older CPU.

Ghost of Tsushima PC optimized settings

Optimized settings for Ghost of Tsushima on PC. / Sony Interactive Entertainment/GLHF

Thankfully, Ghost of Tsushima is a very well-optimized game to the point that tinkering with settings is almost unnecessary. Our RTX 4080 could reach 4K 60fps at the highest settings without issues, with only minor frame drops during intense battle scenes. The game also supports dynamic resolution, which can be paired with any anti-aliasing solution and works well.

For the best image quality, we recommend using Nvidia's DLAA for anti-aliasing and AMD's FSR 3 for frame generation. Currently, the Nvidia DLSS 3 frame generation shows issues with UI elements, so it's better to stick with AMD's implementation. Plus, the latter is available on more GPUs which can give your older gaming PC/laptop a much-needed boost. Nixxes Software has also released a new patch v1053.0.0522.1042 that fixes some of the issues with frame generation.

As for other settings, we recommend turning down the shadows and level of detail settings, as those ones have the most significant impact on performance. With that said, here are the optimized settings for Ghost of Tsushima on PC:

• Texture quality: Very high
• Texture filtering: 16x
• Shadow quality: High
• Level of detail: High
• Terrain detail: High
• Volumetric fog: High
• Depth of field: Off/High (subjective)
• Screen space reflections: Very high
• Screen space shadows: Very high
• Ambient occlusion: XeGTAO
• Bloom: On/Off (subjective)
• Vignette: On/Off (subjective)
• Water caustics: On

Ghost of Tsushima PC performance benchmarks

Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut / Sony Interactive Entertainment

Check out these benchmarks of Ghost of Tsushima PC’s port the RTX 4080:

Resolution Setting (Very High Preset)	Average Frame rate (RTX 4080
4K - DLAA	60
4K - DLAA, DLSS Frame Generation	92
4K - DLSS Balanced, DLSS Frame Generation	135
1440p - DLAA	94
1440p - DLAA, FSR 3 Frame Generation	160
1440p - DLAA, DLSS 3 Frame Generation	155
1440p - DLSS Quality, DLSS 3 Frame Generation	180
1080p - DLAA	100
1080p - DLAA, DLSS 3 Frame Generation	187

With these settings, you can roam around Tsushima and Iki Island without any issues. This one is truly one of PlayStation's best yet. It also helps to be a great game at its core, as noted in our GoT PC port review. It's a great time to be a PC gamer, as the curse of bad ports seems to be behind us. Boundary-pushing games like Hellblade 2 have received good PC ports, and one can only hope PlayStation's next port will be just as good, if not better.

Ghost of Tsushima is available on PC, PS4 and PS5.