ARC Raiders v1.26.0 (Riven Tides) Best Settings 2026

ARC Raiders v1.26.0 (Riven Tides) shipped with new volumetric effects, reworked lighting in contested zones, and heavier CPU threading — all of which tanked frame rates for players who carried forward their pre-patch settings. The update also exposed GPU-bound scenarios that didn't exist before, particularly on mid-range cards running 1440p Ultra.

The fix isn't a blanket "turn everything to Low." Certain settings in Riven Tides scale disproportionately — volumetric clouds and reflections are the heaviest hitters — while others (texture quality, view distance) have minimal FPS impact. This guide walks through the per-setting breakdown, DLSS/FSR configuration for each GPU tier, and the CPU tweaks that matter now that the patch threads more workload across cores. You can generate a free hardware-specific playbook for your exact GPU at the end, but here's the baseline every ARC Raiders player should start with.

Critical Settings to Change First

Three settings account for 60–70% of the FPS delta between Ultra and competitive-viable visuals in v1.26.0. Start here before touching anything else.

Volumetric Clouds Quality

The Riven Tides weather system renders real-time volumetric clouds that occlude lighting in outdoor zones. Ultra samples at full resolution; High uses half-res with temporal upscaling; Medium drops to quarter-res. The visual difference between High and Ultra is negligible (slightly sharper cloud edges at extreme distances), but the performance cost is massive. Dropping from Ultra to High typically frees 12–18 FPS on RTX 4070-class cards at 1440p. Medium saves another 6–8 FPS but introduces noticeable posterization when clouds move across the sun. Stick with High unless you're chasing every frame on older hardware.

Reflection Quality

Riven Tides added screen-space reflections to wet surfaces and puddles across the map. Ultra traces reflections at native resolution with full-detail geometry; High uses half-res tracing; Medium relies on pre-baked cubemaps for most surfaces. The jump from Ultra to High nets 10–15 FPS with minimal visual loss — you'll only notice softer reflection edges on close-up metal panels. Medium is a sharp visual downgrade (static reflections that don't update with player movement) but saves another 8–10 FPS. Use High for balanced quality; drop to Medium only if you're GPU-bound below 90 FPS.

Shadow Quality

Shadow quality in ARC Raiders controls both cascade resolution and sample count for soft shadows. Ultra renders 4K cascades with 16-sample soft edges; High uses 2K cascades and 8 samples; Medium drops to 1K with hard-edge shadows. The FPS gain from Ultra to High is 8–12 FPS, with the only visual cost being slightly blockier shadows at long distances (which you won't notice in fast combat). Medium is playable but introduces obvious shadow aliasing on character models. High is the sweet spot for everyone except competitive players chasing 240+ FPS.

GPU-Tier Configs: DLSS, FSR, and XeSS

Riven Tides added DLSS 4 multi-frame generation for RTX 50-series cards, FSR 4 for Radeon RX 9000, and updated XeSS 2 support for Arc B-series. The upscaling tier you choose matters more than most in-game settings, because the frame-gen modes can double your render rate — but only if you're already rendering above 60 base FPS.

NVIDIA RTX 50-Series (DLSS 4)

Enable DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation (the "Performance + Frame Gen 2" preset in-game). At 1440p, this renders internally at ~960p and generates two interpolated frames per real frame, effectively tripling your output from the base render rate. An RTX 5080 measured by Sportskeeda hit 100 FPS avg at 4K Ultra with DLSS 4 enabled — without upscaling, the same config drops to low-60s. The tradeoff is minor ghosting on fast-moving ARC units and ~40ms of added latency (mitigated by Reflex). Use Quality mode instead of Performance if you're already above 120 FPS base and want cleaner image stability.

NVIDIA RTX 40-Series (DLSS 3)

DLSS 3 in ARC Raiders uses single-frame generation (one interpolated frame per real frame). An RTX 4070 Ti measured by Steam Community at 1440p Ultra pulled 170 FPS avg with DLSS 3 Balanced + Frame Gen — that's roughly 85 FPS base doubled. The catch: you MUST be rendering above 60 base FPS for frame-gen to feel smooth, or you'll get visible stuttering. If you're below that threshold, disable Frame Gen and use DLSS Quality upscaling only. Turn on NVIDIA Reflex (Low Latency mode) to offset the added input lag from frame generation.

AMD Radeon RX 9000 (FSR 4)

FSR 4 is AMD's first ML-based upscaler and includes frame generation. Set FSR 4 to Quality mode for 1440p (internal ~1130p render) or Balanced for 4K. Frame generation works identically to DLSS 3 — one interpolated frame per real frame — but requires a 90+ FPS base to avoid micro-stutter. The RX 9070 XT at 1440p High with FSR 4 Quality + Frame Gen typically lands in the 140–160 FPS range in outdoor zones, versus 70–80 native. Like DLSS, FSR frame-gen adds latency; enable Anti-Lag 2 in AMD Adrenalin to compensate.

Older GPUs (FSR 3.1 Fallback)

RTX 3000-series, RX 7000-series, and older cards use FSR 3.1 (vendor-agnostic, no ML). An RTX 3080 measured by XDA Developers at 1440p Ultra pulled 62 FPS avg native; enabling FSR 3.1 Quality + Frame Gen pushed it to ~105 FPS. FSR 3.1 frame-gen is more artifact-prone than DLSS/FSR 4 — expect ghosting on scope overlays and UI elements — but it's your only path to 100+ FPS on legacy hardware. Avoid the Performance preset (too blurry); Quality is the minimum acceptable tier.

Secondary Settings Breakdown

After locking in the critical three (Volumetric Clouds, Reflections, Shadows) and your upscaling tier, these settings offer smaller but still meaningful FPS gains with minimal visual cost.

• **Ambient Occlusion (AO):** HBAO+ (Ultra) versus SSAO (High) costs 5–7 FPS for slightly deeper shadow contact in crevices. Drop to SSAO unless you're already above 144 FPS — the difference is invisible in motion.
• **Anti-Aliasing:** TAA High is the baseline (required for DLSS/FSR to work). TAA Ultra adds extra temporal samples that smooth sub-pixel shimmer on distant fences but costs 3–5 FPS. Stick with High.
• **Texture Quality:** Ultra versus High has zero FPS impact if you have enough VRAM (12GB+). Only drop to Medium if you're hitting VRAM limits (texture pop-in, stuttering) on 8GB cards.
• **View Distance:** Ultra renders ARC units and environmental detail out to 500m; High cuts to 350m. The FPS gain is 2–4 FPS, but you lose tactical visibility of distant enemy spawns. Only drop this if you're purely PvE farming and don't need long sightlines.
• **Post-Processing (Motion Blur, Chromatic Aberration, Film Grain):** All disabled. Motion blur in ARC Raiders is aggressive and hides enemy movement; chromatic aberration adds fake lens distortion that obscures edges; film grain is pure visual noise. Disabling all three costs zero FPS but dramatically improves visual clarity.

CPU Optimization for Riven Tides

Patch v1.26.0 reworked ARC Raiders' job system to spread physics, AI pathing, and audio across more cores. This improved frame pacing on 8+ core CPUs but also exposed bottlenecks on older 4-core and 6-core chips that were fine pre-patch. If you're seeing stuttering or low GPU usage (below 90%) despite reasonable settings, the CPU is likely the limiting factor.

Per-Core Usage Check (Not Aggregate %)

Open Task Manager, go to Performance → CPU, right-click the graph, and select "Change graph to Logical processors." ARC Raiders heavily loads 2–4 cores (typically Core 0, 1, and whichever cores handle the render thread and physics). If any single core is pinned near 100% while others sit below 50%, you're CPU-bound — the aggregate CPU usage % will mislead you (it might show only 30–40% on a 12-core chip while still bottlenecking). The fix is either upgrading the CPU or lowering settings that add CPU work: View Distance, Physics Quality, and NPC Count (in the Gameplay tab, controls ambient ARC spawn density).

Process Affinity and Priority

If you're on a 6-core or 8-core CPU, disable Hyper-Threading / SMT in BIOS for ARC Raiders. The game's job system doesn't scale well past physical cores, and HT/SMT introduces thread-swapping latency that causes micro-stutter. Alternatively, in Task Manager, set ARCRaiders.exe to High priority (not Realtime — that can starve system processes). Close background apps (Discord hardware acceleration, RGB software, browser tabs) that fight for CPU time. Every 5% you free from other processes translates to 3–5 FPS in CPU-bound scenarios.

Benchmarked GPU Performance

Real-world testing shows wide variance depending on upscaling config. These are native (no DLSS/FSR) figures unless noted, measured by independent reviewers on v1.26.0.

• **RTX 5080** (measured by Sportskeeda): 100 FPS avg at 4K Ultra native, 87 FPS at 1080p Ultra. The 4K number is higher because DLSS 4 auto-enables at that resolution in their test — without it, expect low-60s.
• **RTX 4090** (measured by Steam Community): 130 FPS avg at 1440p Ultra native. Still the king for no-compromise max settings.
• **RTX 4070 Ti** (measured by Steam Community): 170 FPS avg at 1440p Ultra with DLSS 3 + Frame Gen. Native (DLSS off) drops to ~85 FPS.
• **RTX 4070 Ti SUPER** (measured by XDA Developers): 105 FPS avg at 1440p Ultra, 90 FPS at 1440p High. A solid 1440p card if you enable DLSS Quality.
• **RTX 3080** (measured by XDA Developers): 62 FPS avg at 1440p Ultra. Needs FSR 3.1 frame-gen to push past 100 FPS.
• **GTX 1660 Ti** (measured by XDA Developers): 62 FPS avg at 1080p Low. This is the floor for playable ARC Raiders in 2026 — older cards struggle even at minimum settings.

If your GPU isn't listed, run a free playbook — it extrapolates from the nearest-performing card and adjusts for your VRAM and resolution target.

Config File Tweaks (Advanced)

ARC Raiders stores user settings in `%LocalAppData%\ARCRaiders\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\GameUserSettings.ini`. Two hidden cvars can squeeze out extra frames if you're willing to sacrifice minor visual fidelity.

1. Navigate to the folder above and open `GameUserSettings.ini` in Notepad.
2. Add the line `sg.FoliageQuality=0` under `[ScalabilityGroups]` — this disables grass and small plants beyond 50m, gaining 5–8 FPS in dense forest zones.
3. Add `r.Streaming.PoolSize=4096` under `[SystemSettings]` if you have 16GB+ system RAM. This pre-loads more texture data into RAM, reducing mid-match stutter when new areas stream in.
4. Save the file and set it to Read-Only (right-click → Properties → check Read-Only) so the game doesn't overwrite your changes.

Riven Tides raised the performance floor — what ran fine at Ultra pre-patch now stutters without upscaling or the three critical setting changes. The good news: the game scales well once you know which knobs to turn. DLSS 4 and FSR 4 are legitimate performance multipliers if you have the hardware, and even older GPUs can hit 100+ FPS with FSR 3.1 frame-gen and the High preset. If you want settings that adapt to your exact CPU + GPU instead of generic advice, generate a free playbook — it takes 30 seconds and accounts for your resolution target and refresh rate.

Frequently asked questions