Gamers want the best performance possible out of their games while also having a great visual experience too. Depending on the game type and individual what defines a "great visual experience" can vary, but with Star Citizen, one of the many things that is praised are the visuals and environments! High fidelity graphics comes an equally high demand on the computer and various hardware that will be running it, with the graphics card bearing a huge part of that load.
Adjusting graphics settings can help improve game performance at a slight cost to graphical quality within the game. Here below we will go over some of the more impactful settings within the game that can help players fine tune their Star Citizen experience.
VRAM
What is VRAM?
Video Random Access Memory or VRAM is dedicated memory for use with processing graphics information on your computer. This helps with processing power as it takes load off of the main CPU (Central Processing Unit). How much memory will be used depends on both what you are doing in game and your various graphics settings. If you run out of VRAM, then your computer's RAM (Random Access Memory) has to make up for the deficit. This is when game performance can start taking a hit.
Working Within Your VRAM Budget
While inside the Graphics Options menu in the game, there will be a horizontal bar on the bottom right which will show the estimated maximum video memory the game will use with your chosen screen resolution and other graphics settings. If you are running other software and apps while also playing Star Citizen, you will want to keep this below the recommended maximum. This is especially true to keep in mind if you are intending to run any recording or streaming software! Leave enough headroom with this bar to allow those other programs to run without effecting your game.
Running out of VRAM will cause a huge performance drop so it is important to take a look at this indicator bar to judge how to adjust the settings and ensure game performance remains high. You will receive a warning message and the memory usage bar will begin flashing red if your chosen graphics settings are too much for your VRAM to handle.
Graphics Renderer
This setting will change what sort of graphics API (Application Programming Interface) will be used to render the various visuals and graphic elements of the game. As such, the settings you chose here can greatly affect the performance and experience. The options here will be between some version of DirectX or Vulkan
Vulkan
We recommend that players avoid using any beta or experimental drivers, and instead stick with the latest "safe" driver. If any version of this graphics API causes trouble, you should revert to the last working graphics driver version. Be certain to report any issues to both the video card manufacturer and on the Issue Council.
Based on our own testing, CPU performance should be better under Vulkan and most other aspects should be similar.
Driver-Related Overrides
If you are utilizing some sort of driver-related override for some reason, we recommend disabling these if you begin to experience any performance issues. If you have no idea what this means, then it's likely not anything you need to worry about.
We have seen players report trouble with two in particular: Nvidia Smooth Motion and AMD Fluid Motion Frames. The reports we have seen involve players encountering a black screen. If you have run into this issue, disable these overrides if you have them running.
Resolution
This refers to to the size of the pixels that will be displayed when rendering graphics for display, and is usually shown as a value like "1920 x 1440". This setting has one of the largest impacts on your VRAM usage and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) as having more pixels displayed means your GPU needs to process that much more information. Reducing this can result in a big difference in game performance, though at the cost of display area.
Upscaling
This is related to how the graphics resolution (above) is processed, using various methods to adjust to using a lower resolution to render higher resolution images without sacrificing any quality. This can help save on VRAM usage and assist with GPU performance.
Upscaling Technique
If you are using an Nvidia video card, the option for DLSS will be available and is recommended.
Otherwise, the option we recommend is CIG-TSR.
Upscaling Model (DLSS Only)
This allows for changing how the DLSS upscaling will work, which can help with fine tuning game performance.
Textures Quality
Textures refers to game art assets which are used to cover or "wrap" objects in the game world. Basically, this is the art that you see that makes up everything in the game. This setting will change how much of your VRAM will be used for streaming textures and also relates to the target resolution of said textures.
Lowering this will result in smaller texture assets and thus less processing power needed, though lowering this will result in a drop in visual texture quality at the low end.