Best Graphical And Audio Settings Guide For WARDOGS

WARDOGS has just entered Early Access, and since it is an Unreal Engine 5 game, some players may be skeptical about the game's performance. In this guide we will go over what every graphical and audio option does in WARDOGS!

Before diving into the Video Settings in WARDOGS, we need to go over some key things, this game runs on Unreal Engine 5.7.4, which can put a lot of people off. However, in my testing, the game did not stutter, and ran really well, utilizing less than 9GB of VRAM on a 1440p display, DLSS Quality, with Overkill Settings.

Since this game is not a competitive game, it will not have a "best visibility settings" section, instead we will focus on the Optimized Settings - the most fps for the least noticable visual downgrade.

Before diving into the Video Settings in WARDOGS, we need to go over some key things, this game runs on Unreal Engine 5.7.4, which can put a lot of people off. However, in my testing, the game has no stutters and runs really well, considering its engine.Since this game is not a competitive game, it will not have a "best visibility settings" section.

Before we start with the optimized settings, we need to go over the Anti Aliasing options, since they can boost your performance by quite a lot of frames.

• FXAA - an antialiasing setting that makes the jagged lines a little smoother. Has no performance cost.
  
• TAA - a temporally based antialiasing that utilizes data from previous frames, making the image in motion have a "ghosting" effect. Looks good when stationary, falls apart when either the camera, or the character are moving. Has no performance cost.
  
• DLSS - most advanced upscaler to date, utilizes temporal data from previous frames, renders game at a lower resolution to reconstruct image that in some instances is higher quality than native resolution. You need an Nvidia Graphics Card to use it. You can upgrade the in-game DLSS version to the new DLSS 4.5 Model in your Nvidia APP. Since it renders the game at a lower resolution it actually improves your performance.
  
• FSR - AMD's version of DLSS, works on every graphics card, however, it looks worse than DLSS. If you have an AMD Radeon 7000 series, or Radeon 9000 series, you can upgrade the in-game FSR version to the new 4.1 version in the AMD Adrenalin Software. Since it renders the game at a lower resolution it actually improves your performance.
  
• XESS - Intel's Version of DLSS. Works on any graphics card. Looks the best on Intel GPUs, due to how they are built. Since it renders the game at a lower resolution it actually improves your performance.

• 3D Spatial Audio - Game emulates how sounds would behave in real life, and applies various effect, such as reverb or echo to make the sound more immersive.
  If you want to use this feature, and in my opinion turning it on is a no brainer, you should disable any spatial audio settings in Windows. Using two at the same time will result in an unpleasant experience, since the game's audio will be processed by two separate spatial audio engines interfering with each other.

TIP: if you have problems with sound - game launching with no sound at all, make sure to turn your Windows Audio Sample Rate to maximum value of 192000Hz. Anything above that will

These are the Optimized Settings for WARDOGS.

• Display Mode - Windowed Fullscreen
• Resolution - Your Native Resolution
• Brightness - 100%
• Sharpness - 1.00
• Frame Limit - OFF (Limiting your FPS disables DLSS Frame Generation, so you need to use Nvidia APP to limit your FPS if you want to play with DLSS FG enabled)
• VSYNC - Disabled (Enabling VSYNC disables DLSS Frame Generation, so you need to use Nvidia APP to turn the VSYNC on if you want to play with DLSS FG enabled)
• Nvidia Reflex - Enabled
• Main Menu FPS Limit - OFF
• Anti-Aliasing Method - GPU Vendor dependent:
  -DLSS For Nvidia RTX GPUs,
  -FSR for AMD GPUs, Nvidia GTX GPUs, and Integrated GPUs
  -XESS for Intel GPUs
• Upscaling Quality:
  -1080p - Quality
  -1440p - Quality
  -2160p - Performance
• DLSS Frame Generation - ON (It only introduces a couple of Miliseconds of input delay, but the precieved smoothness is worth it)
• Mesh Detail - High
• View Distance - High
• Shading - High
• Global Illumination - ON
• Shadows - Medium
• Reflections - High
• Effects - High
• Particle Spawn Rate - High
• Post-Processsing - Medium
• Motion Blur - Disabled
• Depth Of Field - Disabled
• Lens Flare - Disabled
• Bloom - Disabled
• Textures:
  World - High, if you have 8GB of VRAM go to Medium
  Character - High
  Effects - High
  Texture Streaming - High
  Texture Filtering - High
  

If you want to run the game at Overkill Settings on a 1440p display, using an RTX 4070 or a similiar GPU, the game will run at about 90FPS with DLSS set to Quality, and 150FPS after turning the DLSS Frame Generation on.