Steelrising Performance & Vram Guide

Here is a small overview of the Vram consumption of the textures:
Ultra Textures 1080p: 12GB, 1440p: 13 GB, 4k: 15GB
High Textures: 1080p: 7.5GB, 1440p: 8.5 GB, 4k: 12GB
Medium textures: 1080p: 5.5 gb, 1440p: 7.5 gb, 4k: 10 gb

This is the measured vram consumption.
And please don't rely on the vram display in the main menu. The vram will continue to increase quite a bit, this is an estimated value only.

As you can see from my screenshots, the game predicts 5.7 GB of vram, but the task manager shows the actual vram consumption. And that is 6.2 gb vram. So a lot higher. If you use the high textures, the game shows 7.6 GB vram, but the actual value is then around 8.5 GB vram. So you should never rely on what the game shows you, the actual vram consumption is always a lot higher.

I've now tested several hours, with a variety of settings. Here's my experience:
Regarding the detail distance: Up to high you lose almost no fps, with ultra then the fps collapse. Gpu consumption suddenly increases by 500mb. Shadow details and distance. No problems up there either, with ultra, no matter which of the two options, the fps drops. The gpu vram increases by 700 mb. If you play with high textures and set the shadow details and distance to low, you first have 7.5 GB of vram, but after about 3 minutes you have over 8 GB. So the vram consumption grows despite the low shadow. The two light options consume about 10 fps each on ultra, no fps loss on half. The only option that really helps permanently is to leave the texture details on medium, because then it doesn't matter and you can set both shadow options to high. Ingame vsync causes framedrops of about 5-7 fps. Depending on the situation (fight or run, fast camera movement). Without no fps drops.

I let taskamanger run for several hours. CPU usage was mostly at 39%, so steelrising is effectively using 4 cores (I have 10). The only problem is the Vram. The high textures and low shadows between 7.5 gb and then exceeded the 8GB limit after a few minutes. With the medium textures, the vram utilization is then at 90%. It doesn't matter whether the shadows are low or high.

The main problem for bad performance and ugly textures are the texture settings from high. This becomes noticeable very quickly (1-2 minutes) through ugly ground textures, rocks and trees. None of this happens on medium.

My Settings:
Textures medium!! Don't forget to set the anisotopic filtering to 16x, then the medium textures will look nice too. Shadow resolution and distance to high and detail distance to high. You can leave the rest at maximum. Dlss: Quality. You must leave the indirect lighting on full. Halfway there are pixel errors with the lighting. Noticeable on the green hedges.

If you really need even more fps, there are two ways to achieve this without dlss and the white pixel error:
Both light options on half, then either fsr, which isn't very pretty, then better on native 70%. You don't quite have the performance of dlss (- 5-7 fps), but very close, and there are no errors with the lighting and you also have a few more fps. With this setting you get about +10 fps. But I play on full light and dlss quality because my performance is fine.

Disable ingame vsync. If you don't have vsnc or gsync, enable fastsync via the driver. This fixes frame drops.

For more Fps:
If you have the shadow distance and the detail distance on ultra, and also the shadow resolution, set the 3 things to high. Detail distance makes a big difference. These 3 things bring the most fps. Otherwise detail distance medium or low.

Steelrising's own vsync only uses double-buffered vsync (no triple buffering), which leads to these framedros.

I have screen mode on full screen borderless. But please also test the full screen and full screen borderless mode if you notice any differences (micro stutter). Depends on gsync/freesync, vsync mode. Doesn't work the same for everyone.

I play on 1440p, i9 10850k, 32gb ram, rtx 3070 amp, gsync and 70fps lock (via drivers). I have absolutely no more frame drops and the fps are stable at 70. My minimum fps was 65, but only very rarely.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the medium textures fill up the vram quite a bit. The cpu utilization is quite good and stable for me.

The most important thing: the vram no longer fills up, and the textures remain beautiful, and no more frame drops as a result. You must set textures to medium.

And as you can see from the screenshoots, the medium textures are consistently pretty.

Unfortunately there is no option to lower the volumetric fog. I hope this option will come. I think this is set way too high.

If you want to save storage space and don't need this ultra texture pack, I've found a way to remove it. Simply go to the pack folder via steamapps/common/steelrising/packs and delete both of the following files:
datapchighres.sdk and datapchighres.txt
You then have + 46 gb.
But note that you can still select the high and ultra textures via the game, but these are no longer available. And then of course there are texture errors. Only the medium textures are then displayed correctly. You would then have to download it again via play/repair.

If you want to remove the camera shake, film grain effects and motion blur in the between sequences, you have to deactivate the camera effects in the ingame options.

And one more thing for the controller.
I have a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller and the game didn't recognize it. You go to steam on steelrising, options and controller settings. Activate overwrite for Steelrising there (in my case). It may also be that you have to deactivate it, depending on the controller. But one of the two options should definitely work.

If I compare the game visually with current aaa titles, steelrising is a lot better. Very high grass and lod distance. You can always see all the details of the buildings, even from a very long distance. No popping up of trees or bushes (mesh). 95% of the current aaa titles cannot keep up optically. It's really very nicely done. If the developers were able to reduce the vram consumption by just 1-2 gb, all graphics card owners would be happy.

I hope I was able to help you.

Optimized Graphic Settings

[EJ141720]

I appreciate the effort put into this. I'm currently assessing the impact on my gameplay. What I can confirm so far is that, as of May 27, 2025, there is no file named *datapchighres.txt*. Additionally, deleting the file *datapchighres.sdk* causes the game to crash during launch. My texture settings were set to 'Medium,' so I'm unsure what might be causing the crash.

[Killer]

Game is beautiful in that screens but not when we play green grassy arreas or bastille water

[MasterZoen]

You mention "Shadows Distance" and "Details Distance". However, your screenshot only has a "Shadows Range" setting, which I assume is what you meant by "Shadows Distance". Unfortunately I'm not seeing a setting that corresponds to "Details Distance".

[AigisABC]

Thanks for making this guide, I was having problems and getting weird feedback from the game. This helped a lot.

[ICEBREAKER]

Fsr 2.0 is quite complex to implement as far as I know. I can't answer if they still do that. But I wouldn't bet on it.

[gr4j0m3r]

I think it runs smoother but still dips below 60FPS in some areas, so leave the high res texture is better. Anyway, this game require FSR or DLSS to run better. If only they have implement FSR2.0 instead.

[ICEBREAKER]

Yes, only the vram consumption will be lower, since these are the textures for high and ultra.

[gr4j0m3r]

I did move the files out but notice no performance gain and the game looks worse.

[ICEBREAKER]

So I also have a txt with me. The only important thing is the stc anyway, this is the texture file.

[gr4j0m3r]

It's dtapchighres.stc, not txt.