Dead Island: DE - Performance guide

In this guide, we'll be exploring the differences of lowest and highest settings, when it comes to FPS.

Having a bad time with settings? Not bothering test, what is the difference between X and Y?

Now you can take a look at the most FPS-choking options...


Just remember, that some of the settings are VERY location-specific, so you might get a lot of better/worse framerate on other areas.
On all sections, everything is set to lowest possible, so we can see how much each and every setting affects your FPS.

My own rig;
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Processor (6 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
AMD Radeon R9 280x
2x4GB RAM, DDR3
Windows 7 Professional

Looking out of the building

I did get whopping ~147FPS uncapped, when I set everything (except res) to lowest possible/off.


Turning a setting to highest/on.

Name of the setting	Avg. FPS
Ambient Occlusion	~125FPS
Motion Blur (standing still)	~137FPS
Motion Blur (swinging)	~125FPS
Antialiasing	~132FPS
Film grain effect	~145FPS
Chromatic aberration effect	~146FPS
View Distance (to max)	~135FPS

Looking inside the building

I did not get as high FPS as I thought, but still... ~88FPS


Turning a setting to highest/on.

Name of the setting	Avg. FPS
Ambient Occlusion	~80FPS
Motion Blur (standing still)	~84FPS
Motion Blur (swinging)	~81FPS
Antialiasing	~82FPS
Film grain effect	~87FPS
Chromatic aberration effect	~87FPS
View Distance (to max)	~85FPS

Standing on the platform, in front of the spawn

Now, these numbers are the ones you might be actually interested in. Plenty of stuff on the screen on once! Hitting pretty solid ~142FPS.


Turning a setting to highest/on.

Name of the setting	Avg. FPS
Ambient Occlusion	~121FPS
Motion Blur (standing still)	~132FPS
Motion Blur (swinging)	~124FPS
Antialiasing	~127FPS
Film grain effect	~138FPS
Chromatic aberration effect	~141FPS
View Distance (to max)	~114FPS

Menu-only settings | Texture Quality, Shadow Map Size and Foliage Quality

You can change these settings only when you're main menu.

Testing was performed on the platform.

Name of the setting	All set to lowest/off, avg. FPS	This setting set to highest, avg. FPS
Texture Quality	~142FPS	~139FPS
Shadow Map Size	~142FPS	~103FPS
Foliage Quality	~142FPS	~130FPS

Texture Quality: Drop FPS by mere ~3FPS, which isnt noticeable. Therefore, I'd always recommend having this set to High.
Shadow Map Size: Oh man, this causes some serious FPS drops! I'd recommed setting this to Medium or High, because there are some areas where a lot of shadows... exist....
Foliage Quality: Unless you really love grass and/or trees, switch it to Low or Medium. Plants dont look that bad on the lowest settings!

Extra: feedback, ideas, comments...

After all, we all do have different PCs, so some of the settings might not affect as much as you hoped for.

For example, my PC did swing between ~67FPS (highest) and ~140FPS (lowest), which means that finding the sweet spot between graphics and framerate is important.


Be sure to leave comments regarding video settings, combinations that fit for you, your current rig etc, whatever might help others.

[Bunny]

I just keep it at 60 because my monitor is 60 hz
I have a gt 630 on the shelf, and a gtx 1650 inside my pc.

[Robert_Pawlson]

i always have 60 fps but it never drops below that

[$L!CK_J.Mi$t@]

i'll lower the foliage settings, i guess.

[Dylbags58]

i only have 2 rads sorry man im ghoulish

[Cyanmurder]

I like AMD pc, Im running one right now, the newer generation: Ryzen 7 2700x dual titan xp (I like the 12gig in the titan than the 11gig in the 1080)

[High Rads | Nuka Cola]

Don't judge AMD Phenom processors, those were the beast!

Also, FPS did vary quite a lot between areas. Haven't touched the game since it came out, but the framerates *should* swing around less than what it did back then.

[Outlandah]

>138FPS

>on a 12 year old Phenom II chipset and an R9 280 from like 2015

oh okay yeah totally

[Cyanmurder]

This post is ancient, please take it down. All of ya rigs are potatoes now.

[BlackRedDead]

...and what about a config file section - if you have bothered with it?

[BlackRedDead]

To the topic - could you just state how much FPS you got from deactivating single options? - that would be easyer to decide what to sacrifice to reach at least 42-60fps stable! - else good work, thx :-)