Best Dying Light: The Beast Settings for FPS (2026)

The two biggest FPS wins in Dying Light: The Beast are turning Ray Tracing off and lowering the Draw Distance Multiplier from 300 to 150–200 — together they can lift frame rate by well over half with almost no visible loss in normal play. Dying Light: The Beast (Techland, released 18 September 2025) runs on a revamped C-Engine branch with DirectX 12 Ultimate, ray-traced lighting and DirectStorage streaming. It’s broadly well optimized but genuinely heavy at native resolution, so this guide covers the settings that actually cost frames, the upscaling choice for your GPU, and the specific fixes for its two known stutter causes.

Ray Tracing off and a lower draw distance are the two settings that move the frame-rate needle the most.

The heaviest settings, ranked

Not every graphics option matters. In Dying Light: The Beast a handful of settings account for almost all of the frame-rate cost — spend your budget here and leave the rest high.

Setting	FPS impact	Recommended	Why
Ray Tracing	Very high (~halves FPS)	Off for high FPS	The single most expensive option; off is the biggest instant win
Draw Distance Multiplier	High (~20%)	150–200 (default 300)	The heaviest rasterized setting; 150 looks nearly identical in play
Shadow Quality	Medium (~10%)	Medium	Diminishing returns above Medium
Ambient Occlusion	Medium	Medium or Low	”High” over-darkens; Medium is cleaner and faster
Textures	VRAM-bound	Medium on 8 GB, High on 12 GB+	Controls VRAM use and pop-in, not raw FPS
LOD	Low (~3%)	High	Cheap; keep it up to reduce pop-in

Two extra tweaks help image quality for free: enable Screen Space Shadows (adds contact shadows cheaply) and disable Bloom and Lens Flare if you find them distracting in the game’s grimy lighting.

Recommended settings by hardware tier

Start from these and adjust one setting at a time. All assume Ray Tracing off unless you have headroom to spare.

• 8 GB cards (RTX 3060 / RX 6600, 1080p): Textures Medium, Draw Distance 150, Shadows Medium, AO Low, DLSS/FSR Quality. Target a locked 60.
• 12 GB cards (RTX 4070 / RX 7800 XT, 1440p): Textures High, Draw Distance 175, Shadows Medium, AO Medium, DLSS/FSR Quality, optional Frame Generation for 100+ FPS. This is Techland’s recommended 1440p60 tier.
• High-end (RTX 4080/5070+, 1440p–4K): Textures High, Draw Distance 200, Shadows High, DLSS Quality at 4K, and Ray Tracing on only if you’re happy trading roughly half your frame rate for it.

For reference, on an RTX 4090 with a Ryzen 9 7950X at the High preset the game runs about 101 FPS at 1080p, 83 FPS at 1440p, and 53 FPS at 4K — which is why upscaling is worthwhile even on top-tier hardware at 4K.

Upscaling and frame generation: pick by GPU

Dying Light: The Beast supports NVIDIA DLSS (with DLSS Frame Generation) and AMD FSR 3 (with FSR Frame Generation). Use upscaling on almost every PC; use frame generation only to go from a high frame rate to a higher one.

GPU	Upscaler	Frame Generation
NVIDIA RTX 40/50	DLSS Quality	DLSS FG (or FSR FG — see stutter note)
NVIDIA RTX 20/30	DLSS Quality	FSR FG (no DLSS FG on 20/30)
AMD RX 6000/7000/9000	FSR 3 Quality	FSR Frame Generation

Frame generation adds roughly a 60–70% FPS uplift, but it also adds input latency and needs a solid base frame rate to feel right. Keep Reflex (NVIDIA) or Anti-Lag (AMD) on and cap your frame rate a few below your monitor’s refresh — see how to minimize input delay for competitive gaming for the full latency stack.

Fixing stuttering in Dying Light: The Beast

The game isn’t a stutter disaster, but two specific causes account for most reports.

1. Frame-generation stutter on NVIDIA. On some RTX cards, enabling frame generation introduces stutter, and the culprit is Reflex. The reliable fix is to switch to AMD FSR Frame Generation and turn Reflex off for frame-gen sessions. If you’d rather keep DLSS FG, cap your frame rate to stabilize frame timing.
2. Micro-stutter on Intel hybrid CPUs. Players on Intel 12th–14th-gen chips with efficiency (E-) cores have reported micro-stutter that eases when the game is kept on the performance cores. The heavy-handed fix some players use is disabling E-cores in BIOS; a less drastic option is pinning the game to P-cores with a tool like Process Lasso. Try the software route first and only touch BIOS if it persists.

Two more fixes that apply to any UE-style streaming engine:

• Let shaders finish compiling. After a driver update or first launch, stand still for a minute so the shader cache builds; if stutter appeared right after a driver update, clear it — see how to clear shader cache to fix stuttering.
• Cap your frame rate and fix the power plan. An uncapped frame rate makes frame timing worse, not better. Cap it below your refresh, set the Windows power plan to High Performance (or Balanced with maximum processor state 100%), and if hitching persists, check how to fix high DPC latency. The best tools to fix stuttering in games roundup matches each stutter type to the right utility.

System requirements at a glance

• Minimum (1080p30): 6-core CPU, RTX 2060 / RX 6600, 16 GB RAM, SSD, ~70 GB storage.
• Recommended (1440p60 with RT): RTX 4070 / RX 7800 XT, Ryzen 7 5800X / Core i7-12700, 32 GB RAM.
• Ultra (4K): RTX 5070 / RX 9070, Core i9-14900K / Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32 GB RAM.

An SSD is effectively mandatory because of DirectStorage streaming, and 32 GB RAM noticeably smooths asset loading over the 16 GB minimum.

The short version

• Ray Tracing off and Draw Distance 150–200 are the two biggest FPS wins.
• Shadows and Ambient Occlusion to Medium; Textures Medium on 8 GB, High on 12 GB+.
• Use DLSS/FSR Quality on nearly every PC; use frame generation only above 60 FPS.
• Stuttering on NVIDIA frame gen? Switch to FSR FG and disable Reflex. On Intel hybrid CPUs, pin to P-cores before touching BIOS.
• Lock the timer and power plan for smoother frame pacing — the ultimate guide to timer resolution explains why frame timing, not raw FPS, is what makes a game feel smooth.