Battlefield 6: Optimize Performance by Adjusting These 2 Settings

Battlefield 6 is a surprisingly well-optimized game, but on PC, getting the most out of its performance can be tricky. With a long list of complicated settings, you’d be forgiven for not knowing which ones are impacting your frame rate the most. Thanks to Digital Foundry, however, there’s now a clear answer to this quandary.

A Digital Foundry YouTube video confirms that the two biggest performance offenders are Sun Shadow Quality and Screen Space AO & GI. In both cases, the highest settings result in significantly lower frame rates with minimal visual returns.

For Sun Shadow Quality, Digital Foundry recommends the High setting for GPUs equivalent to the RTX 3070 and above, and Medium for GPUs below this threshold. For Screen Space AO & GI, high-end GPUs can use SSGI Low, and lower-end GPUs can use GTAO Low.

Battlefield 6 Gets An FPS Boost With Shadow Setting Tweaks

Don’t Opt For Overkill

Both of these Battlefield 6 settings deal with complicated aspects of shadows, which makes their performance impact unsurprising. Even without ray-tracing, lighting and shadows can be some of the most intensive settings in any game. In Battlefield 6, turning down Sun Shadow Quality to Medium or High will save between six and eight frames, and turning down AO & GI will save between five and fourteen.

As Digital Foundry demonstrates, neither of these settings is worth the performance cost when cranked to max, which is also evidenced by EA’s decision to stick to the lower-end options on PS5. GTAO Low has some drawbacks compared to SSGI, but the difference of 14 FPS is hard to ignore.

The Digital Foundry video covers a wide variety of other setting tweaks to improve performance, promising a “+72% Perf Boost” overall if all the advice is followed. It’s worth trying all the suggestions, but if you only adjust two, Sun Shadow Quality and Screen Space AO & GI have the most significant impact.

Better Battlefield 6 Performance Is Definitely Worth It

Who Needs All Those Sun Shadows, Anyway?

I’m often willing to make performance trade-offs for high shadow settings, as I think they can make a huge difference in how good a game looks. In this case, however, Digital Foundry is definitely right. The highest settings here are essentially overkill— one is literally called that — and I’d rather take the frame rate improvement.

Ofcourse, you don’t have to follow these suggestions if your graphics card can handle it. The more frames the better, for the most part, but there’s not much point in going beyond what your monitor can display if you’re already hitting on par with your refresh rate. For the rest of us, however, maxing out Sun Shadow Quality and SSAO & GI probably isn’t worth it in Battlefield 6.

Systems

Released

October 10, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, In-App Purchases, Users Interact

Developer(s)

Battlefield Studios

Engine

Frostbite