Official PC Performance Tuning Guide

With Deus Ex: Mankind Divided our goal has been to provide you with a very scalable experience with a major gap between minimum requirements, recommended requirements, and optional features that you can turn on if you have really powerful hardware.

Tuning it best for your hardware can involve tuning a lot of settings though, and we would like to help you ensure the best performance on your system.

First of all, please keep in mind our targets with minimum and recommended specs. At minimum spec, which is a HD 7870 2GB or GTX 660 2GB, paired with an Core i3-2100, we aim to give you an average of 30 fps, at 1280*720 resolution, but this is at the low quality preset. At recommended spec, which is a RX 480 4GB or GTX 970 4GB, paired with an i7-3770K, our target is to offer you 60fps average at 1080p, but at the High quality preset.

We also offer a Very High and Ultra preset aimed at users well above recommended spec or those who wish to trade framerate for image quality. When above recommended spec, even if you cannot use the Very High preset entirely, please experiment with individual settings at a higher quality, and see what settings work best for you!

Display

The first Options screen to check should always be the Display options.

Resolution: Higher resolutions can cost a lot of GPU power, and performance will often scale proportionally to the resolution. Especially close to minimum spec it may be worth it to run at a lower resolution while maintaining a higher graphics quality level.

Another option available in the Display menu is the MSAA setting. We offer three very high-end AA modes, MSAA 2x, MSAA 4x and MSAA 8x. Note that using these can have a very severe performance impact, so only use these when you have plenty of hardware power available relative to the resolution you are running at (for example with SLI). Note that we also offer the affordable AA method TAA which is located in the Graphics options.

Both of the options in the display menu only impact the GPU performance, not the CPU performance. If you are CPU bottlenecked reducing any of the settings here will not help you.

Graphics

The graphics menu has the largest number of options, and the performance of each individual one is limited, but all turned up together can severely impact frame rate when the hardware is not up to the task.

Preset

There are simply suggestions for different quality levels, feel free to use them, but for the best experience tuned to your personal preference, please tune the other options below and have this be Custom.

Texture Quality

This alters the resolution of textures used in the game. This primarily impacts GPU memory pressure. If this is set too high the game may start stuttering and slowing down. It does not impact performance on the GPU or the CPU much otherwise. We recommend it at High for 4GB cards. You have to restart the game to apply changes to Texture Quality.

Texture Filtering

This is an all-time PC gaming classic. Turn it up for sharper textures at an angle. We feel that the moderate amount of 4x gives very good results. Altering only impacts GPU performance.

Shadow Quality

This setting impacts the resolution of shadows rendered throughout the game. At high settings shadows become crisp and lose pixelated artifacts. At lower settings they are chunkier. Altering only impacts GPU performance. Very high can be relatively expensive for the GPU.

Contact Hardening Shadows

Turning this on creates more realistic shadows as they move away from their source. This only impacts GPU performance.

Temporal Anti-Aliasing

Toggling this on will reduce aliasing to create a smoother image. This only impacts GPU performance.

Motion Blur

Fast camera and object motion will appear smoother. This only impacts GPU performance.

Depth of Field

Depth of Field can blur areas on screen that are out of focus, typically when far away. This only impacts GPU performance.

Bloom

When turned on bright spots on the screen will bleed out, adding to the illusion of bright light. This only impacts GPU performance.

Volumetric Lighting

Turning this on adds volumetric lighting to some fog and smoke effects. This only impacts GPU performance.

Setting it to Ultra increases detail but has a significant impact on GPU performance!

Subsurface Scattering

Improves lighting effects on the skin of characters in the game. This only impacts GPU performance.

Cloth Physics

Disabling this reduces the quality of cloth simulation. This only impacts CPU performance.

Ambient Occlusion

This toggles on and between different ambient occlusion algorithms. This only impacts GPU performance.

Tessellation

Turning this option on smooths selected meshes throughout the game by tessellating them. This option impacts GPU performance, and to a lesser extent CPU performance.

Parallax Occlusion Mapping

Adds additional depth and detail to select surfaces, such as brick walls and cobblestone streets. This only impacts GPU performance.

Screenspace Reflections

When this option is turned on dynamic reflections are calculated based on other items visible on the screen. Turning it up to Ultra gives you more detail in the reflections. This only impacts GPU performance.

Sharpen & Chromatic Aberration

Camera effects that can be toggled on or off. This has a minimal impact on GPU performance.

Level of Detail

This influences the detail level of rendered meshes, and the distance at which they disappear entirely. Lower settings can significantly help CPU performance due to it having to process fewer objects. GPU performance is also impacted.

Source: Nixxes Software