Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is finally out for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. We’ve made this optimization guide for those of you playing on PC who want to ensure that your gaming experience is as smooth as can be.
Thankfully, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice runs pretty smooth on PC, but if you’re still having issues or just want better frame rates, there are lots of things you can do, and we’ll teach you all of them here.
Ready? Let’s start optimizing!
First of all, ensure that your gaming setup meets the recommended system requirements listed below. If you’re meeting those, you can at least expect some lag, but hopefully, this guide should be able to help you as well.
Minimum System Requirements For Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 or AMD FX-6300
- RAM: 4GB
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or AMD Radeon HD 7950
- HDD: 25GB available space required
Recommended System Requirements For Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen 5 1400
- RAM: 8GB
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 570
- HDD: 25GB available space required
Table of ContentsShow
PC Settings
Do you have a gaming laptop? If so, make sure that the battery mode is on the High-Performance option. Also, ensure that your graphics card drivers are up to date, as both NVIDIA and AMD usually roll out a significant update that will boost the performance significantly before these launches.
If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, we recommend that you also perform the following optimizations. Note that some of these settings may not be available to you.
- Open the NVIDIA Control Panel and navigate to Manage 3D Settings.
- Select the tab Program Settings and find Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. If you can’t find it, click on Add and try to find it here (try running the game first and close it down again if you can’t find it) .
- Under the dropdown called Select the preferred graphics processor for this program, select High-performance NVIDIA processor. This ensures that the game does not use your integrated GPU, which many people were reporting issues with.
- Set Maximum pre-rendered frames to 1.
- Set Monitor Technology to G-SYNC (if applicable).
- Set Multi-Display/Mixed GPU Acceleration to Single display performance mode.
- Set Power Management Mode to Prefer maximum performance.
- Set Texture filtering – Quality to Performance.
- Disable Vertical Sync.
- Enable Threaded Optimization.
- Set Preferred Refresh Rate to Highest available.
- Apply the changes and navigate to Adjust desktop size and position.
- Check the checkbox Override the scaling mode set by games and programs and click on Apply.
Optimize Your Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Game
Let’s now optimize the game itself. These are our recommended settings, so you should probably adjust them a bit to your liking.
- Launch Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
- Click on Options and then Graphics Options.
- Set Screen Mode to Fullscreen.
- Set Screen Resolution to your monitor’s native resolution.
- Set Quality Settings to High.
- You have the option of choosing Automatic Rendering Adjustment. If you have this at On, the game will adjust the rendering automatically when the frame rate drops. It’s a pretty good option, but we like tweaking the settings ourselves instead of letting the game decide. If you don’t want to use it, then follow the rest of the recommended settings below.
- Click on Advanced Settings.
- Set Texture Quality to Max.
- Set Antialiasing Application to OFF. This setting has a high-performance impact.
- Set SSAO to Off. This setting has a high-performance impact.
- Set Depth of Field to Max.
- Set Motion Blur to High.
- Set Shadow Quality to Medium. This setting has a very high-performance impact.
- Set Lighting Quality to Max.
- Set Effects Quality to Max.
- Set Volumetric Quality to Max.
- Set Reflections Quality to Medium.
- Set Water Surface Quality to Medium.
- Set Shader Quality to High.
Disable Windows Update Delivery Optimization
Let us disable Windows Update Delivery Optimization now. Simply follow these instructions:
- Open the Windows Start Menu, enter Windows Update settings and click on the search result for it.
- Click on Advanced Options.
- Click on Delivery Optimization.
- Ensure that the Allow downloads from other PCs setting is off.
Disable OneDrive
We recommend that you disable OneDrive if you’re not using it. Right-click on the OneDrive icon on your taskbar and click on Exit.
Optimizing Discord
If you happen to use Discord, ensure that you optimize it as well to boost your FPS in all your games!
- Open up Discord and go to the User Settings page.
- Click on the Appearance tab and uncheck the Hardware Acceleration setting.
Optimizing Google Chrome
You can also turn off hardware acceleration in Google Chrome, so that background applications executed by Chrome do not consume too many resources when you’re playing Sekiro.
- Open up Google Chrome and go to the Settings page.
- Scroll down and click on the Advanced tab.
- Again, scroll down and make sure that the setting Use hardware acceleration when available is switched off.
- Relaunch Google Chrome and close it again.
Clean Your Temporary Files
- Press the Start button, search after %localappdata% and press Enter.
- Open the Temp folder.
- Now press CTRL + A to select all files in the folder.
- Press the Delete button on your keyboard to delete these temporary files. Skip the ones it can’t delete.
- Finally, empty your recycle bin.
You can also use CCleaner — the free version will do the trick just fine.
Finally, restart your PC and start enjoying Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice to its fullest!
We also recommend that you invest in a better gaming monitor, gaming mouse and a good gaming headset.