Developed by S-Game and powered by Unreal Engine 5, Phantom Blade Zero stands out as a top contender for Game of the Year.
Leveraging UE5 features like Nanite and Lumen, the game delivers surprisingly stable Global Illumination without the usual boiling temporal noise seen in other Unreal Engine 5 titles.
However, achieving high framerates and stable frametimes requires dialing in the right graphics settings.
Here is the breakdown of our friends Benchmarking
Phantom Blade Zero PC Optimization Guide: Best Graphics Settings & Performance Test
Things to noted: Ray Tracing, Scaling & Features
- Ray Tracing & Path Tracing: Enabling standard RT or Path Tracing provides better shadows, reflections, and RTGI. However, it imposes a massive CPU overhead, causing severe traversal stutters and frametime spikes—even on strong CPUs like the Ryzen 7 5700X3D.
Recommendation: Keep RT/Path Tracing disabled for smooth performance. - Super Resolution Output Scale: By default, this is set to “Auto,” which renders below 100% resolution scale (e.g., rendering DLSS Quality below true 1440p), introducing unwanted blurriness. Set this to 100% manually. If you need extra performance, drop your upscaler mode to Balanced instead.
- Dynamic Resolution Quality: Currently broken. Instead of scaling resolution dynamically, it locks internal rendering to 720p regardless of scene complexity. Avoid using it.
- High-Quality Hair: Enables strand-based hair on specific NPCs. The performance hit is massive and simply not worth it for non-main characters. Disable it.
Best Optimized Settings
Apply these settings to maximize framerates while retaining peak visual fidelity:
| Graphic Setting | Recommended Value |
| Shadow Quality | High |
| Reflection Quality | High (Very High if spare GPU overhead) |
| Post-Processing Quality | High |
| Lighting Quality | High |
| Effects Quality | High |
| Material Quality | High |
| Ambient Occlusion Quality | Ultra |
| Depth of Field Quality | Ultra |
| View Distance | High |
| Character Texture Quality | Very High / Ultra |
| Environment Texture Quality | Very High / Ultra (8GB VRAM GPUs) / Medium (if VRAM stutters occur) |
| Character Model Quality | Ultra |
| High-Quality Hair | Disabled |
| Environment Model Quality | High |
| Environment Detail Quality | Medium or High |
💡 Pro-Tip: Want to double your framerate without straining your GPU? Learn how to set up Lossless Scaling on Linux and unlock frame generation on your setup.
Performance Results: Optimized vs. Ultra Preset
Testing these optimized settings against the stock Ultra Preset at 1440p (DLSS Balanced @ 100% output scale):
- Standard areas: Delivers an average 54% FPS improvement.
- Demanding starting areas: Yields up to a massive 65% performance uplift, eliminating heavy stutters and providing a rock-solid gaming experience.
Watch the video by Benchmarking to see a detailed breakdown of the tweaks covered in this post