The Ultimate R6 FPS Guide

In this guide I'm gonna show you what you can do to help with clarity within the game and also how to increase your FPS

TL;DR

• LOD Quality should be ultra.
  
• Shadow Quality should be Medium.
  
• Don't use Ambient Occlusion.
  
• Texture Quality doesn't matter too much...
  
• I show a simple trick in my Display Settings section on how to get the most fps using your specific aspect ratio (It's cooler than it sounds).

The Intro B)

Hey! This is my first guide so I hope I did things right. Be sure to comment and tell me what you think about it and if there's anything you'd like me to add. Enjoy :D

As a person who is a cheapskate slowly upgrading their PC, I've always tried to find out how to get the most out of my hardware.

I always look around online to see if there's anything I can do to get better performance using the same old hardware.

So now, I thought I'd finally show you all my findings; most tips I actually found on my own through tinkering and others I found through websites and YouTube videos.

Up until very recently I was stuck with a GTX 950, a 2GB card from 2015, but I was lucky enough to get an upgrade from a family member due to it being unused hardware (Thanks Burak :D) and have now upgraded to an RX 580, an 8GB card from 2017, and so this guide is for both NVidia and AMD users.

Display Settings

In-Game Settings

So, depending on your settings and preferences, you may already know the settings you like -- as changing your aspect ratio and render scaling can actually affect your aim and how fast/slow the game feels-- however, sometimes, it's better to trade in some of your "muscle memory" for stable and/or decent fps. However(x2), I also think it's a good thing to not be at a disadvantage by sliding your render scaling all the way to -2,000,000 and not see the quick peeking Ash 360 your ass.

So...

Aspect Ratio and Resolutions

By changing aspect ratio you can turn down the resolution and have the game look the same but increase performance. Something which could obviously be abused my friends ;)

While screenshots do look weird, I can promise you it looks basically same and it'll feel a lot smoother.


(I tried to get the most common ones but if you have some weird display you can use this website -- https://www.digitalrebellion.com/webapps/aspectcalc -- to calculate)
No matter your monitor, you can pick any of these but if you really need the fps boost you can always turn it down to 1080p or 720p or whatever :3

Resolutions
-----------------720p-------------------1080p-------------------1440p----

5:4 -------> 900 x 720 -------> 1350 x 1080 -------> 1800 x 1440
4:3 -------> 960 x 720 -------> 1440 x 1080 -------> 1920 x 1440
3:2 -----> 1080 x 720 -------> 1620 x 1080 -------> 2160 x 1440
16:10 --> 1152 x 720 -------> 1728 x 1080 -------> 2304 x 1440
5:3 -----> 1200 x 720 -------> 1800 x 1080 -------> 2400 x 1440
16:9 ---> 1280 x 720 -------> 1920 x 1080 -------> 2560 x 1440
19:10 -> 1368 x 720 -------> 2052 x 1080 -------> 2736 x 1440
21:9 ---> 1680 x 720 -------> 2520 x 1080 -------> 3360 x 1440

Now in-game you probably won't have access to these resolutions... yet. You're gonna have to add it as a custom resolution, thankfully I have both AMD and NVidia instructions for this :D

NVIDIA GPU

Step 1: Open NVidia control panel and navigate to "Change Resolution"


Step 2: Create a custom resolution and enable resolutions not exposed to the display


Step 3: Input the custom resolution off of the list (or your own calculation)

AMD GPU

Step 1: Open AMD Radeon Software and go into Settings (Gear at top right) and Display


Step 2: Click on "Create New" within the Custom Resolutions sub-menu and input the custom resolution off of the list (or your own calculation)

Final Step

Go into R6 settings and look inside the Display section, if you keep clicking through the resolution tab you should be able to find your custom resolution (if not, a quick restart or even reboot should hopefully do the trick)

Render Scaling

For me, changing the scale didn't do much, strangely it gave me less n less decrease in performance as I went on and so, imo, not werf. But if you're really desperate, then you can give this a try.

60 Render: +14.85% from 70 (GTX 950: 116FPS)
70 Render: +3.96% (GTX 950: 105FPS)
80 Render: +0.99% (GTX 950: 102FPS)
90 Render: 100% (GTX 950: 101FPS)

Examples

(Showing you the differences of my game) Sidenote: I play on 4:3

1920x1080:

1440x1080:

-

1920x1080:

1440x1080:

-

1920x1080:

1440x1080:

-

1920x1080:

1440x1080:

-

1920x1080:

1440x1080:

Graphics Settings

Self pity

So, you wanna be able to get good FPS but not be at a disadvantage. Trust me, I was scared that, through turning things down, I wouldn't be able to see enemies as well or miss things that people could see (I learned this the hard way through turning down shadows a lil too much xD) and choosing the Low "Overall quality" sucked ass and I knew I could get my game looking better, and so I would change a setting, run a benchmark and write it down on a notepad and repeat; comparing what did what and how something would affect my FPS and the visuals of the game.

So what does every setting look like and do!?

(You can click the images to get a better look - Also sorry I don't have screenshots of the restart needed settings, it's quite a lot of work but I'll add them eventually :P)

Texture filtering

(~Low-Medium performance impact~Smooths out edges of textures and helps get rid of jagged lines)


Linear



Anisotropic 2X



Anisotropic 4X



Anisotropic 8X



Anisotropic 16X




LOD

(~Low performance impact~From my understanding it is the render distance of objects and the clarity of player models)


Low



Medium



High



Very High



Ultra




Shadow Quality

(~Medium to High performance impact~How clean shadows look and which shadows you can see)


Low



Medium



High



Very High




Ambient Occlusion

(~High performance impact~From my understanding, it gives shadows a better gradient so that they slowly fade out rather than being refined)

Off



SSBC



SSBC+




Lens Effects

(~Very low performance impact~Again, from my understanding this chooses how light reacts when looking through cams)

Off


Bloom



Bloom + Lens Flare




Zoom-in Depth

(~No/Very low performance impact~If you can properly see your sight peripherals or not)

On



Off




Anti-Aliasing

(~Performance Impact depends, however changing the sharpness scale has very low impact on performance, please read on~From my understanding, it helps smooth out the edges in the game. Render scaling and sharpness for the T-AA examples are 100)

T-AA can help performance if render scaling is lowered



Off



FXAA ~Medium performance impact~



T-AA-2x ~High performance impact~



T-AA-4x ~Very High performance impact (187 fps -> 67 @ 100 render scaling)

Quick Misc

Note

Imo this is just stuff you should do and/or already have done.

.ini

For windows, if you go into your documents you can usually find a "My Games" folder. Next, find "Rainbow Six - Siege" click that subfolder and then edit the "GameSettings.ini".

• Turn off motion blur : "MotionBlur=0"
  
• Limit FPS (For FreeSync and GSync) : "FPSLimit=X"
  
• Choose your GPU frame queue (The higher the number the more stable your fps but the higher the input lag, I'd recommend a value between 0->2 no higher than 3) MaxGPUBufferedFrame=X

RainbowSix.exe

If you find the installation folder of R6 you can find the .exe, if you right click it and go on properties there is a compatibility section, in there you can see "Disable fullscreen optimisations" and turn it on, it helps :P

Game mode

Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't, you can find it easy through windows settings. I have read when Enabled people have less input lag, but I have also read that it can cause more input lag and frame drops when enabled.

Personally, it didn't really make a difference for me until recently where I started getting frame drops so I turned it off.

My Settings

First off I'll show off my settings right now (with my new GPU) and why. Then my old settings and why:

RX580:

• Texture Quality - Ultra - just because I had the memory to do so
  
• Texture filtering - Anisotropic 16X - for best clarity
  
• LOD Quality - Ultra - so I could see the most from as far away as possible
  
• Shading Quality - Medium - this was more so of a "Hey this'll make my game look a bit better" choice than a fully practical one
  
• Shadow Quality - High - So I can see sneaky bois around the corner
  
• Reflection Quality - Medium - again, just to make the game look a bit better
  
• Ambient Occlusion - Off - for clarity
  
• Lens Effects - Off - I prefer lens effects off
  
• Zoom-in Depth of Field - Off - I hate it and imo it does nothing
  
• Anti-Aliasing - Off/(FXAA) - I'm stuck between the 2 but honestly, both look clear to me so it's just preference really. (I did kinda like FXAA but the game started to feel like there was some input lag and I'd get random fps drops)

"GTX 950":

• Texture Quality - Low - although I did have a 2GB card, for some reason my performance would be less consistent on medium so Low it is. And tbh, I didn't really care, at least I could play the game.
  
• Texture filtering - Anisotropic 16X/Linear - it would depend tbh but I personally think you should use 16 or nothing
  
• LOD Quality - Ultra - so I could see the most from as far away as possible
  
• Shading Quality - Low - I just didn't see it as necessary, so down it goes
  
• Shadow Quality - Medium - When I was on low I couldn't see someones shadow round the corner when my friend could, so medium it was
  
• Reflection Quality - Low - again, I didn't care so down it went
  
• Ambient Occlusion - Off - for clarity and the FPS ;)
  
• Lens Effects - Off - I prefer lens effects off
  
• Zoom-in Depth of Field - Off - I hate it and imo does nothing
  
• Anti-Aliasing - Off - for the FPS boost and honestly, I barely even noticed

Conclusion and a thank you

A very quick wrap up

To conclude, I'd say, don't be afraid to change settings in your game and keep experimenting. Look through your NVidia Control Panel ("Manage 3D Settings") or your AMD Radeon Settings ("Settings" then "Graphics") and see what you can do. I honestly have tinkered with that stuff daily. Just change something and see how it feels.

Thank you :D

Thank you for reading my guide, I hope it helped your game run just a little bit better or made it more playable. This was my first guide but I put in a lot of time to write it and I would appreciate your feedback or any another comments :3

So, once again, thank you and I hope you enjoyed! :D

[Logic]

Jackeroni - Yeah, some of the old classics are a good way to start actually enjoying your experience on pc as a "laptop gamer". Hopefully, when the RTX 3000 series and Ryzen 5000 series become more available/convenient, the prices for these low-budget systems actually go down... Imo, the prices on GTX 1050 Ti cards (~£300 / ~$400 / ~€400) are still a lil absurd.

[Jackeronie]

yeah, the valve complete pack is great for laptop gamers because everything in it can run on a potato and it only costs 12$ on sale 65$ normally

[Logic]

Jackeroni - Dude, I understand the struggles of iGPU gaming haha! It's always so cool to go back to games you could barely run on low and run them smoothly on the highest settings.

[Jackeronie]

I have a 2070 super so i can just play on max, but alas I know the pain of low budget gamers as I used to be a l a p t o p g a m e r Intel integrated graphics of course

[Logic]

Ceará - Yeah I'd argue that Siege is quite a CPU bound game so you really notice a difference changing to a more powerful CPU. I used to have a i3 6100 (shit was a dual core haha!) and my game really did not run well till I started implementing a few tricks here n there.

[jumper]

Lol I have the exact same Graphics card but with a bad processor

[Logic]

CloudedRainbow - Np :D

[CloudedRainbow]

Yeah I really didnt know why LOD was and this help me figure it out same with filtering help me get better settings thx alot

[Logic]

CloudedRainbow - I hope I somewhat explained the settings well ^_^ It kinda sucks that Ubi aren't so transparent about the settings. I'm glad you checked it out :D thank you <3

[Logic]

Mr Quasar - Thank you very much :D