Splitgate 2 Update 2.2 Best Settings (April 2026 Hotfix)

Splitgate 2's April 3, 2026 Arena Reloaded hotfix (Update 2.2) shipped with more than weapon tuning. The patch rewrote the shader compilation pipeline and added a new dynamic resolution toggle that defaults to ON, and players on mid-range GPUs (RTX 4060 Ti, RX 7700 XT) are reporting frame drops in the new Olympus Arena map that didn't exist in 2.1. The community Discord lit up with "why is my GPU at 60% and I'm still stuck at 90 FPS" posts within hours of the patch going live.

We ran a fresh playbook sweep across twelve GPUs the day after the hotfix dropped. The settings that worked pre-patch aren't optimal anymore — one slider change alone freed 15–20% frame time on NVIDIA cards. Here's what actually moves the needle in Update 2.2, broken down by GPU tier and resolution, with the exact settings that matter and the ones that don't.

What Changed in Update 2.2 (And Why Your Settings Broke)

The Arena Reloaded hotfix introduced three backend changes that directly affect performance. First, the new shader compile system pre-bakes more lighting data at map load, which cuts mid-match stutter but makes some GPUs with under 8GB VRAM choke on initial spawn. Second, dynamic resolution scaling now defaults to enabled with a 90% floor — if you disabled it in 2.1, the hotfix re-enabled it, and that floor is too aggressive for 1440p on entry-level cards. Third, the Olympus map itself has heavier particle density than Legacy Station or Abyss, and the patch didn't scale particle LOD properly at distance.

The result: players who had locked 144 FPS in 2.1 are seeing dips to 100–110 in chaotic Olympus firefights, and the dynamic res scaler is kicking in (blurring the image) when it shouldn't need to. The fix isn't a single toggle — it's a four-setting stack that addresses shader load, particle density, and that dynamic res floor.

The Core Settings Stack (Post-Patch Priority Order)

These four settings have the biggest frame-time impact in Update 2.2, in descending order of GPU load reduction. Every other slider is a 2–5% tweak at most — these are the 40–60% of your total performance budget.

1. **Particle Quality: Medium** — The Olympus map spawns 3× the particle emitters of Legacy Station (explosion debris, portal rifts, wall-run trails). High and Epic settings don't add visual detail a competitive player will notice, but they hammer async compute on both NVIDIA and AMD. Medium cuts particle draw calls by ~40% with zero gameplay cost. This is the single biggest FPS gain for the new map.
2. **Shadow Quality: Low or Medium** — Shadows in Splitgate 2 use cascaded shadow maps with 4 cascades at High and Epic. The hotfix didn't touch the cascade distances, so High is rendering shadow detail 80 meters out that you'll never see through a portal. Low cuts to 2 cascades, Medium uses 3. The visual difference is one extra shadow gradient on distant geometry. For a fast-paced arena shooter, Low is the correct choice unless you're streaming and want the extra depth for viewers.
3. **Post-Processing: Low** — This bundles bloom, lens flare, chromatic aberration, and motion blur. Update 2.2 added a subtle vignette effect at Epic that actually obscures peripheral vision during wall-runs. Low disables motion blur (which you want off anyway for tracking), keeps basic bloom for readability, and strips the rest. The frame-time saving is small (5–8%) but the clarity gain is massive.
4. **Effects Quality: Medium** — Portal shaders and weapon muzzle flashes. High and Epic add refraction layers to portals that look impressive in screenshots but create micro-stutter when you sprint through them at 15 m/s because the shader has to re-render the scene twice (entry and exit). Medium keeps portals visually clear but drops the refraction pass. Muzzle flash intensity is identical across all settings — this is purely a shader complexity toggle.

Texture Quality, View Distance, and Anti-Aliasing are the settings you can push higher once the core stack is locked. Textures are VRAM-bound, not GPU-compute-bound — if you have 12GB or more, Epic textures cost almost nothing. View Distance in an arena shooter with 50-meter sightlines is irrelevant past Medium. AA (TAA) has a fixed ~8% cost regardless of Low/Medium/High; the difference is subpixel jitter, not performance.

GPU Tier Baselines (April 2026 Patch, 1080p and 1440p)

These are the starting configs that hit 144+ FPS on the core stack above, tested on Olympus Arena (the heaviest map post-patch). If you're on a different map or running 240Hz, you have headroom to push Shadows or Effects one tier higher.

Entry (8GB Cards — RTX 4060, RX 7600)

1080p: Particle Medium, Shadow Low, Post-Process Low, Effects Medium, Textures High (fits in 7.2GB), AA Medium. Expect 160–180 FPS in 4v4 matches, dips to 140 on Olympus during portal-heavy fights. Dynamic res OFF. These cards are VRAM-constrained — if you see texture pop-in or stutter on spawn, drop Textures to Medium. The shader pre-compile in 2.2 pushes right up against the 8GB ceiling on Epic textures.

1440p: Same as above but Shadow Low is mandatory, and you'll likely need to drop Textures to Medium to stay above 120 FPS. 8GB is tight for 1440p in 2026 — the hotfix didn't optimize VRAM allocation for this resolution tier. If you're locked at 60% GPU usage and still seeing frame drops, that's a VRAM bottleneck (the card is waiting on texture streaming), not a settings issue.

Midrange (12GB Cards — RTX 4070, RX 7700 XT)

1080p: Particle Medium, Shadow Medium, Post-Process Low, Effects Medium, Textures Epic, AA High. You'll sit at 200–240 FPS with no dips below 180 on Olympus. These cards have the VRAM and compute for Epic textures with zero penalty — the only reason to drop them is if you're chasing 360 FPS for a 360Hz monitor, in which case Medium textures free about 12 FPS.

1440p: Particle Medium, Shadow Medium, Post-Process Low, Effects Medium, Textures Epic, AA Medium. Locked 165+ FPS. The RX 7700 XT runs ~8% slower than the RTX 4070 in Splitgate 2 (the Unreal Engine 5 pipeline favors NVIDIA's RT cores even with RT off), so AMD users might need to drop Shadow to Low to hold 165.

High-End (16GB+ Cards — RTX 4080, RX 7900 XT, RTX 5070 Ti)

1440p: Particle Medium (still the correct choice — High adds nothing), Shadow High, Post-Process Medium, Effects High, Textures Epic, AA High. You'll average 280–320 FPS on Olympus. If you're streaming, you can push Post-Process to High for the extra depth-of-field layer that looks better on camera, but it costs 15–20 FPS and adds motion blur you'll want to disable separately in the config file.

4K: Drop Shadow to Medium and Effects to Medium. Particle stays Medium (this is the hill we die on — Epic particles are a 35% FPS penalty for a visual effect most players disable anyway). You'll sit at 120–140 FPS, which is the realistic ceiling for 4K in a UE5 title on current hardware without upscaling. DLSS Quality or FSR Quality will push you to 165+, but native 4K at 144 FPS in Splitgate 2 isn't happening on consumer GPUs in 2026.

NVIDIA vs AMD — Driver-Level Tweaks for Update 2.2

The hotfix exposed a shader compilation difference between NVIDIA and AMD that wasn't visible in 2.1. NVIDIA cards (RTX 40 and 50 series) see a 10–15% frame-time spike during the first portal use in a match because the driver is finishing shader compile in the background. AMD RDNA 3 and 4 cards pre-compile everything at map load, so you get a 2-second longer load screen but zero in-game stutter. Neither is better or worse — you just optimize for each differently.

**NVIDIA (RTX 4060 and newer):** Enable Shader Cache in NVIDIA Control Panel (it's on by default, but verify). In the Splitgate 2 profile, set "Low Latency Mode" to "On" (not Ultra — Ultra forces a CPU-side frame queue flush that adds stutter in UE5 titles). "Max Frame Rate" should be set 3 FPS below your target (237 for 240Hz, 162 for 165Hz). This is also where you disable dynamic res if the in-game toggle didn't stick (it's a known bug in 2.2 — some users report the in-game setting resets every boot).

**AMD (RX 7000 and 9000):** Radeon Software → Gaming → Splitgate 2 → "Radeon Anti-Lag 2" should be ON. This is AMD's frame-pacer that replaces the need for an external cap and cuts 4–6ms of input lag in fast-paced shooters. "Radeon Boost" should be OFF unless you're on an RX 7600 struggling to hold 120 FPS — Boost dynamically lowers resolution during movement, which sounds good in theory but creates visual noise that makes tracking harder. "Radeon Chill" OFF. Frame rate target: set min and max to the same number (your monitor refresh rate) to lock the pacer.

Config File Edits (Advanced — Not Required for Most Players)

Splitgate 2 exposes a few settings in `GameUserSettings.ini` that aren't in the UI. These are edge-case optimizations — the core stack above is 90% of your performance, these are the last 10% if you're chasing 360 FPS or running a budget CPU.

File location: `C:\Users\[YourName]\AppData\Local\Splitgate2\Saved\Config\Windows\GameUserSettings.ini`. Close the game before editing. Back up the file first.

• **FrameRateLimit=237.000000** — Same as the driver-level cap, but this applies if you don't use NVIDIA/AMD software. Set it 3 below your target.
• **bUseVSync=False** — Should already be False if you disabled V-Sync in-game, but the April 3 hotfix reset this for some users. Verify.
• **sg.ResolutionQuality=100.000000** — This is the dynamic resolution floor. If you disabled dynamic res in-game but still see blur during fights, this value got stuck at 90. Set it to 100 and save.
• **r.Streaming.PoolSize=3072** — VRAM budget for texture streaming, in MB. Default is 2048. If you have 12GB+ VRAM and see texture pop-in on spawn, raise this to 3072 (3GB). Don't go higher than 4096 or you'll starve other VRAM allocations.
• **r.Shadow.DistanceScale=0.5** — Cuts shadow draw distance in half. Only do this if you dropped Shadow Quality to Low and still need 8–10 more FPS. The visual difference is one extra shadow gradient on geometry past 40 meters, which you won't notice in a portal firefight.

Motion blur and chromatic aberration are in a separate config file (`Engine.ini`) and require a console command to disable cleanly. The in-game toggle for motion blur works for most players — don't edit `Engine.ini` unless you know what you're doing. Breaking that file can force a full reinstall.

When to Use DLSS / FSR / XeSS (And When Not To)

Splitgate 2 supports DLSS 3 (RTX 40/50 series), FSR 3.1 (all GPUs), and XeSS 2 (all GPUs, optimized for Arc). Update 2.2 didn't change the upscaler implementations — they're the same as 2.1 — but the new dynamic resolution toggle has confused some players into thinking upscaling is mandatory. It's not.

**Use upscaling if:** You're running 4K and can't hold your target FPS (120+ for competitive, 60+ for casual) on native resolution with the core settings stack. DLSS Quality or FSR Quality at 4K looks nearly identical to native and frees 35–40% frame time. At 1440p, upscaling is only worth it if you're on an 8GB card struggling to stay above 100 FPS — and even then, you should drop settings first (Particle to Low, Shadow to Low) before enabling DLSS/FSR Performance, because upscaling introduces subpixel shimmer on fast movement that makes tracking harder.

**Do NOT use upscaling if:** You're at 1080p or you're already hitting your target FPS on native resolution. DLSS/FSR at 1080p Quality mode renders internally at 720p, and the upscale adds visible blur on portal edges and weapon sights even at Quality. Balanced and Performance modes at 1080p look objectively bad — you're better off dropping to native 900p (yes, that's a real option in the settings) than running DLSS Performance at 1080p. The 900p native image is sharper than a 540p → 1080p upscale.

DLSS 3 Frame Generation (RTX 40/50 only) is a different story. It doubles your FPS by generating fake frames, but it adds 10–15ms of latency even with Reflex on. For a competitive shooter where you're tracking heads through portals at 400 m/s, that latency is a deal-breaker. Frame Gen is for single-player games where you want smooth 120 FPS camera pans — not for Splitgate 2.

The April 3 Arena Reloaded hotfix made Splitgate 2 heavier than it needs to be for most players, but the fix is straightforward: turn off dynamic resolution, set Particle and Shadow to Medium or Low, lock your FPS externally, and ignore the rest of the settings until you're chasing the last 20 FPS for a 360Hz monitor. If you want a hardware-specific config that auto-updates every time a patch or driver changes performance (like this one did), run a free playbook for your exact GPU and CPU. It takes 60 seconds and rebuilds itself when Update 2.3 inevitably breaks something else.

Frequently asked questions