Best Overwatch Settings On PC
The best Overwatch settings on PC are vital because especially in arcade shooters, your PC should be optimised for the action. Choppy or needlessly blurry vision can put you at a serious competitive disadvantage. It’s no different for Blizzard Entertainment’s first-person shooter and it will require nothing less than the best Overwatch settings in order for you to maximise your performance. Better yet, there are decent ways to get rid of some of the clutter you will regularly encounter while playing Overwatch.
The good news is that for a game as pretty as Overwatch, the engine is very well optimised and not as hardware-demanding as other AAA titles these days. Even with a low-end gaming PC, you should be seeing triple-digit frames per second with relative ease. Not hitting anywhere near that? We got the best Overwatch settings for you.
- Waiting for the Overwatch 2 release date? Read our guide to find out everything we know
Best Overwatch Settings PC: Video Settings
You can enter your settings by hitting escape at any time, though some of the changes we will be doing will require a restart of the game in order to be put into effect, so make sure you aren’t in a competitive game while trying to optimise your PC, lest it affect your position in the Overwatch ranks.
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Moreover, we are going from the baseline of a low-end PC, but even high-end PCs stand to benefit from these settings and there is practically no such thing as too many frames in a competitive FPS. However, you’re more than welcome to tune your settings up a little bit based on your preferences and your own setup and try it in play against bots on the practice range. Head over to your video settings and let’s get started.
Display Mode - Fullscreen
With anything but Fullscreen, you are running into possible issues with input delay, yes even on Fullscreen Borderless. It will increase the time it takes to tab in and out, but what we don’t do in order to click heads most effectively.
Resolution - 1920 x 1080 (it depends)
Resolution settings really depend on your monitor and what its native resolution and aspect ratio is at. Usually, Overwatch will suggest you this one outright but you can also look it up in your windows settings. Tuning down on the resolution can save you a couple of frames, but for the sake of clarity, it’s not recommended. We can get performance points back elsewhere with less of a drawback, trust!
Field of View - 103
Once again, Field of View is a setting that can be turned down to gain performance points but the expected loss of value isn’t worth it. A lot of Overwatch is gathering as much information as possible, not just clicking heads and limiting the number of things you can see on your screen isn’t going to help you play better.
Aspect Ratio - 16:9 (it depends)
Much like resolution, it depends on your monitor but there are advantages to keeping it to 16:9 as that is what Overwatch gameplay is designed for.
VSync: Off
If you are in the business of dealing headshots, you want your VSync disabled in any competitive FPS title ever, as the possibly resulting input lag is a real killjoy.
Triple Buffering: Off
Triple Buffering is VSync business, which means we should avoid it like the plague again.
Reduce Buffering: On
It doesn’t make a major difference, but it’s worth switching on.
Display Performance / System Clock: Personal Preference
It doesn’t really change anything with your performance but keeping an eye on it can’t hurt, also when keeping track of your bedtime.
Limit FPS: Off
Unless you know what you are doing with G-Sync or FreeSync, you want to stay uncapped and have as much FPS as possible. Even a frame rate above the refresh rate of your monitor will help.
Best Overwatch PC Settings: Graphic Settings
Click to enlargeGraphic Quality: Medium
While others may recommend High, we have preferred Medium as it still provides relative visual clarity at the benefit of a couple of valuable frames. High might be fine based on your hardware too though.
Render Scale: 75% - 100%
75% is a whole mess but sometimes preferable if you aren’t hitting at least your monitors refresh rate. If your PC can run it, going lower than 100% is probably a waste of performance.
Texture Quality: Medium
Not too much to gain by going higher in our opinion. Setting this to low will make you feel like you’re playing Minecraft instead though.
Texture Filtering Quality: Low - 1x
Local Fog Detail - Low
Dynamic Reflections - Off
Shadow Detail - Low
Model Detail - Low
Effects Detail - Low
Lighting Detail - Low
Anti-Alias Quality - Low FXAA
Refraction Quality - Low
Screenshot Quality - Your preference
Local Reflection - Off
Ambient Occlusion - Off
We never said it was going to be pretty but the sacrifice comes with great power. With these settings and customisation in the context of your rig, you should be sitting at least 100 FPS now. If that isn’t the case, we recommend a thorough system check including taking the bread out of what must be a toaster.