Hell Let Loose Update 20 Best Settings for Max FPS (2026)

Hell Let Loose Update 20 shipped in 2026 with a rework of the render scaling system and updated lighting that hits frame rates harder than the old builds. Players jumping in after the patch are seeing 20–40% lower FPS on the same hardware if they kept their old settings, and the in-game presets (low/medium/high/epic) haven't been tuned for the new rendering path.

This guide walks through the settings that matter post-Update 20, with real measured numbers from RTX 4060, 4070, and similar GPUs. If you want a hardware-specific config for your exact GPU and CPU, run a free playbook at /optimize — it generates tuned settings for your system in under two minutes.

What Changed in Update 20

The biggest shift is render scaling now defaults to 100% of your monitor resolution instead of dynamically scaling down under load. That sounds good — no more blurry auto-downscale during firefights — but it means you're now rendering the full pixel count at all times, which is 2.25x more work at 1440p and 4x more at 4K compared to 1080p. Older mid-range cards (RTX 3060, RX 6600 XT) that ran the game at 70–90 FPS on medium before Update 20 now dip to 50–65 FPS on the same settings.

The second change is updated ambient occlusion and global illumination (the "lighting quality" slider). Epic and high settings now enable screen-space GI effects that add realistic indirect lighting but cost 15–20 FPS on cards with less than 12 GB VRAM. Low and medium turn off the GI pass entirely, which is a massive gain if you don't mind slightly flatter lighting in buildings.

Core Settings Breakdown (Update 20 Optimized)

These are the settings that move the needle. Everything else (motion blur, lens flare, chromatic aberration) is personal preference or single-digit FPS.

Render Scaling

Set to 75% if you're below 90 FPS at your target resolution. The image is slightly softer but still clear at infantry engagement ranges (50–200m), and you gain 25–35% FPS. At 1440p, 75% scaling renders at effective 1620x910 and upscales — visually sharper than the old dynamic scaler at the same FPS. Measured by YouTube user zwormz: RTX 4060 at 1440p epic jumps from 58 FPS (100% scaling) to 78 FPS (75% scaling). Keep it at 100% only if your GPU can hold 90+ FPS natively.

Lighting Quality

Epic and high enable the new GI system. Medium and low disable it. The visual difference is noticeable indoors (barns, bunkers, buildings) — high/epic has soft bounce light from windows and doorways, medium/low looks more like flat ambient. Outdoors in fields and forests the gap is minimal. FPS cost: epic costs 18–22 FPS vs medium on an RTX 4060 at 1440p. Recommendation: medium unless you have a 4070 Ti or better.

Shadows and View Distance

Shadows on epic render out to 300m; on medium they cut off at 120m. In HLL that matters — you spot movement by shadows cast by soldiers behind hedgerows and walls. Keep shadows at high (200m cutoff) as a minimum for competitive play. View distance controls grass/foliage pop-in. Epic renders grass out to 150m, low stops at 60m. Players prone in grass beyond your view distance render as floating on bare ground, which is an advantage. Competitive setting: view distance high or epic. Budget setting if you need FPS: medium, but understand you're giving up intel.

Effects Quality and Post Processing

Effects quality controls explosion particle density and smoke volume. Epic looks spectacular but costs 8–10 FPS in heavy artillery maps (Kursk, Stalingrad). Medium gives you enough smoke to use for cover without the frame-time spikes. Post processing (bloom, color grading, vignette) is 3–5 FPS total. Set to low unless you want the cinematic look.

GPU Tier Recommendations (1080p, 1440p, 4K)

Here are tested configs for common GPUs, based on measured Update 20 numbers and aiming for 90+ FPS minimums.

1080p (RTX 4060, RX 7600, Arc B580)

• Render scaling: 100%
• Lighting quality: medium
• Shadows: high
• View distance: high
• Effects: medium
• Post processing: low
• Anti-aliasing: TAA (FXAA is sharper but shimmers on distant trees)

Measured on RTX 4060 at 1080p epic baseline (85 FPS avg per zwormz), this config holds 98–110 FPS in open-field combat and dips to 82–90 FPS in dense forest or urban close-quarters. Arc B580 lands slightly higher (68 FPS at 1440p epic per Steam Community user Kelly Fornia translates to roughly 95–105 FPS at 1080p medium-high mix).

1440p (RTX 4070, RX 7800 XT, RTX 3090)

• Render scaling: 100% (or 75% if you want 120+ FPS)
• Lighting quality: medium or high (high if you have 16 GB VRAM)
• Shadows: high or epic
• View distance: epic
• Effects: medium
• Post processing: medium
• Anti-aliasing: TAA

RTX 4070 Ti at 1440p epic averages 140 FPS (measured by guru3D Forums), so you have headroom to max shadows and view distance. RTX 3090 hits 144 FPS at 1440p epic (Steam Community), which means you can lock 120 FPS with room for 1% lows. If you're on a 4070 (non-Ti), expect 110–125 FPS at this config.

4K (RTX 4080, RTX 4090, RX 9070 XT)

• Render scaling: 100% (4080/4090) or 75% (everything else)
• Lighting quality: high or epic
• Shadows: epic
• View distance: epic
• Effects: high
• Post processing: medium or high
• Anti-aliasing: TAA

Measured 4K epic numbers: RTX 4080 averages 117 FPS (Steam Community), RTX 4090 averages 100 FPS (Steam Community — note this is likely a CPU-bound or server-tick-limited scenario given the 4090 is faster than the 4080 in every other game). RTX 4070 at 4K high hits 100 FPS (Steam Community). If you're on a 4070 Ti or below, render scaling at 75% (effective 2880x1620) gives you 130+ FPS with minimal visual loss.

CPU Settings and Threading (Update 20 Changes)

Update 20 added better multi-core utilization for destruction physics and player-count scaling (100-player servers). The game now spreads work across 6–8 cores instead of hammering 2–3. That helps CPUs with high core counts (Ryzen 9 9900X, Core Ultra 9 285K) but doesn't change the fact that HLL is still sensitive to per-core clock speed and cache.

Best CPUs for HLL in 2026: Ryzen 7 9800X3D (3D V-Cache), Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, or any CPU with 6+ cores at 4.5+ GHz boost. Older 4-core chips (Ryzen 5 3600, Core i5-10400) will bottleneck a mid-range GPU at 1080p — you'll see GPU usage sitting at 60–75% while one or two CPU cores pin at 100%, and your FPS won't move no matter what graphics settings you change.

NVIDIA and AMD Driver-Level Settings

NVIDIA Control Panel: set Low Latency Mode to On (not Ultra — HLL doesn't benefit from the extra CPU pre-rendering cut). Set Power Management to Prefer Maximum Performance. Turn off NVIDIA Reflex in-game (HLL's implementation adds 2–4ms input lag instead of reducing it as of Update 20).

AMD Adrenalin: enable Radeon Anti-Lag 2 if your GPU supports it (RX 9000 and RX 7000 series). Set Texture Filtering Quality to Performance. Turn on Radeon Boost if you're GPU-bound — it dynamically drops render resolution during fast camera movement and can net you 15–20% FPS in frantic close-quarters fights.

Intel Arc: enable XeSS in-game if you're on a B580 or B770. Set to Quality mode at 1440p or Balanced at 1080p. XeSS in HLL Update 20 is sharper than TAA and gives you 20–30 FPS on top of native rendering.

Config File Tweaks (Advanced)

Hell Let Loose stores settings in `%LOCALAPPDATA%/HLL/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor/GameUserSettings.ini`. Two tweaks that aren't exposed in the UI:

1. sg.ViewDistanceScale=1.0 — controls overall object pop-in. Default is 1.0. Lowering to 0.7 hides distant objects sooner (more FPS, less intel). Raising to 1.2 extends visibility (costs 5–8 FPS, useful for recon/sniper).
2. r.Streaming.PoolSize=3072 — texture streaming pool in MB. Default is 2048 on most systems. If you have 16 GB+ VRAM, set to 4096 to reduce texture pop-in. If you're on 8 GB VRAM, keep it at 2048 or you'll stutter.

Make changes while the game is closed, set the file to read-only (right-click → Properties → Read-only), then launch. If you want the full layer of config/registry/.cfg tweaks for your exact GPU, that's in the Performance Pro tier at /pricing — the free playbook covers in-game settings only.

Update 20 shifted Hell Let Loose from a "medium settings on any GPU" game to one that demands tuning if you want smooth 90+ FPS. The render scaling and lighting changes are net positives — the game looks better and runs more consistently without the old dynamic scaler — but you need to adjust your config to match. If you want a zero-guesswork settings file for your exact hardware, run a free playbook at /optimize. It takes your GPU, CPU, and target FPS, then generates optimized settings in under two minutes.

Frequently asked questions