Blood of Dawnwalker on PC: best graphic settings and which GPU to choose in 2026

September 3, 2026, midnight. Blood of Dawnwalker lands on Steam and, frankly, it's not the UE5 disaster we could have feared. Rebel Wolves — the studio founded by the former director of The Witcher 3 — has delivered a game that runs correctly . Not "perfectly". Correctly. There's a nuance.

In short: open areas run well, interiors are smooth, but as soon as you arrive in a crowded village during the day — with NPCs, volumetric lighting, vegetation sticking out everywhere — it stings. Even a RTX 4080 can drop below 60 FPS in Ultra native at 1080p. Yes, at 1080p.

But before panicking: there are settings that make a real difference. And with the right upscaling, even a RTX 4060 does very well at 1440p. We're going to break it all down.

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Not all settings are created equal. Shadow Quality on Low instead of Ultra? +15-20% of FPS without it being too noticeable in-game. Texture Quality from Ultra to High? Zero impact on FPS as long as you have enough VRAM. You have to know where to cut.

According to PCGamer's tests and our own trials, here is the order of priority — from the most impactful setting to the least impactful:

This is THE setting to lower first. Ultra → Medium already gives you a good boost. Ultra → Low is a straight +20% FPS in dense areas. Distant shadows lose a bit of detail, but in full action you won't notice the difference. PCGamer measured a jump from 47 FPS to 62 FPS just by lowering the shadows from Ultra to Low.

The fog, the rays of light in the forests, the smoke... It's stunning in Ultra. It's also ruinous for the FPS. Medium gives an almost identical rendering for a GPU cost cut in half. Low if you really want to squeeze the maximum.

The game takes place in a medieval Europe full of forests. Naturally, the vegetation is everywhere. In Ultra, every blade of grass has its cast shadow. In Medium, you still have dense and believable forests, but the GPU breathes. The forest areas easily gain 10-15% FPS.

It controls the density of decorative objects (pebbles, debris, flowers). Ultra displays them at 200 meters. Medium displays them at 50. In combat, you don't care at all. Moderate but cumulative impact with the rest.

Texture Quality — no impact on FPS as long as your VRAM keeps up. Keep Ultra or High. Shading Quality — lowering that distorts the materials, the gain is minimal. Light Quality — keep at least Medium. Low makes the lighting really ugly in interiors.

Rather than putting everything on Medium and calling it a day, here are three tested configs that target a stable 60 FPS:

• Shadow Quality : Low
• Foliage Quality : Medium
• Detail Quality : Medium
• Volumetric Quality : Low
• Texture Quality : High
• Light / Reflections / Effects : Medium
• Upscaling : DLSS/FSR/XeSS Quality
• Motion Blur / Chromatic Aberration : Off

Expected result: 55-70 FPS depending on the scene. Daytime villages will be around 50-55, dungeons and nighttime rise to 65-70.

• Shadow Quality : Medium
• Foliage Quality : High
• Detail Quality : High
• Volumetric Quality : Medium
• Texture Quality : Ultra
• Light / Reflections : High
• Upscaling : DLSS/FSR Équilibré
• Frame Generation : On (if supported)

Expected result: 60-80 FPS. With Frame Gen enabled on RTX 40/50, you can even aim for 90+ FPS with still acceptable latency.

• Shadow Quality : High (not Ultra — the impact is too heavy in 4K)
• Foliage Quality : High
• Volumetric Quality : Medium
• Everything else : Ultra
• Upscaling : DLSS/FSR Quality
• Frame Generation : On

Expected result: 55-75 native FPS (without Frame Gen). With DLSS + Frame Gen on RTX 5080, expect 90-110 displayed FPS.

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GameGPU tested Blood of Dawnwalker on 30 graphics cards at 1080p Ultra native (without upscaling, all settings maxed out). The results provide a good idea of the GPU hierarchy in this game.

Two things to remember. First, the RX 9070 XT matches the RTX 4080 — 71 FPS each. Then, even the RTX 5090 does not exceed 93 FPS in native Ultra 1080p. It's a demanding game, period.

OK, you look at the table above and you say to yourself "37 FPS with a RTX 4060 Ti?! That's terrible". Except that it's native Ultra without upscaling. No one plays like that in 2026. With DLSS Quality or FSR Quality + our optimized settings, the actual numbers are much better.

Here are our three recommendations based on your target resolution.

48 FPS in native Ultra doesn't sound great, it's true. But enable DLSS Quality (or XeSS for the Arc B580), lower Shadow to Low, Volumetric to Medium, and you're at 60-65 stable FPS at 1080p . At 1440p with DLSS Balanced, it's playable too — 50-55 FPS in the worst case.

The RTX 4060 is the GPU officially recommended by the devs for a reason. And the Arc B580 remains the cheapest option if you play exclusively at 1080p — the XeSS is native and the 8 GB of VRAM is more than enough.

Observed price: RTX 4060 around 290-320€, Arc B580 between 220-260€ depending on the models. This is the most reasonable entry point.

71 FPS in native Ultra 1080p. One could say you are comfortable. But the real interest of the RX 9070 XT is 1440p. According to PurePC tests, it delivers 75 FPS at 1440p Medium — and with our optimized settings (not Medium everywhere, just where it matters), you're comfortably above 60 FPS at all times.

The funny thing: it matches the RTX 4080 in this game. 71 vs 71 at 1080p Ultra, 75 vs 73 at 1440p Medium. Except that the RX 9070 XT costs 600-650€ compared to 900€+ for an RTX 4080. The choice is quickly made.

Only downside: no Frame Generation FSR as mature as DLSS. AMD has made progress with FSR 4, but Nvidia's DLSS still leads in latency. If Frame Gen is crucial for you, the RTX 5070 Ti (64 FPS native 1080p Ultra, with DLSS + Frame Gen → 100+ FPS at 1440p) is Nvidia's alternative at the same price tier.

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73 FPS at 1080p Ultra native, it puts you on the same level as the RX 7900 XTX. But the real advantage of the RTX 5080 is the entire Nvidia ecosystem for 4K: DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, Reflex for latency, and Ray Reconstruction if you enable ray tracing.

Specifically in 4K with our optimized preset + DLSS Quality, you're between 65 and 80 FPS. Activate Frame Gen and you exceed 100 FPS displayed. For a game as beautiful — the night forests with ray tracing, it's something — the RTX 5080 is the card that offers the best balance between 4K performance and price (around 1000-1100€).

Afterwards, if you just want raw performance: the RTX 4090 outputs 77 FPS at native 1080p and remains a monster at 4K. But at €1600+, that's another conversation.

Blood of Dawnwalker supports the three upscaling technologies. Here is what you need to know.

DLSS (Nvidia RTX 20/30/40/50) remains the king. In Quality mode, the visual loss is almost invisible and the FPS gain is around 40-60%. The cherry on top: Multi Frame Generation on RTX 40/50 which nearly doubles the displayed FPS — with controlled latency thanks to Reflex.

FSR 4 (AMD, but works on any GPU) has made a lot of progress. In Quality, it is clean on static scenes. But in fast motion — night fights with particles — ghosting remains more visible than with DLSS. The Frame Gen FSR exists but adds more latency than the Nvidia version.

XeSS (Intel Arc) runs well on the Arc B580 natively. On non-Intel GPUs, it also works but in DP4a mode instead of XMX — slightly worse results than DLSS. If you have an Intel card, it's your default upscaler. Otherwise, prefer DLSS or FSR.

In summary: Nvidia GPU → DLSS. AMD GPU → FSR 4. Intel GPU → XeSS. And in all cases, Quality or Balanced — avoids Performance and Ultra Performance except in 4K, the blur becomes too visible.

Yes. The populated areas during the day (markets, villages with many NPCs) are the most demanding. This is related to the number of characters and the daytime lighting. Lower Shadow to Low and Foliage to Medium, it helps a lot. An optimization patch is expected in the coming weeks.

If you have an RTX 4070 Ti or better, you can enable RT on Medium without too much suffering. Below that, forget it — the game is already demanding enough without it. The RT reflections in the puddles of blood at night are beautiful, but it costs 20-30% of FPS.

In 1080p with Textures on High, yes. In 1440p Ultra, it's borderline — you risk stuttering when the game loads new areas. 12 GB minimum for comfortable 1440p, 16 GB for 4K.

If your base FPS is already above 40-45, yes. Frame Gen (DLSS or FSR) works poorly below 30 base FPS — artifacts become visible. Simple rule: if you're at 45+ FPS without Frame Gen, turn it on. Otherwise, lower the settings first.

26 FPS in native Ultra. It's not playable as is. But with our Low/Medium settings + DLSS Performance at 1080p, you should reach 40-50 FPS. It's not a stable 60 FPS, but it's playable for a single-player game. The real enemy here is the 12 GB of slow DDR6 VRAM — texture loading can cause stuttering.