Skip to main content

Deathloop PC system requirements: Can your PC play Deathloop?

fDeathloop is an easy candidate for game of the year, but that may depend on what platform you’re playing the game on. PlayStation 5 owners are having a wonderful time with the ’60s-themed time-looping title, while PC users have been left in a lurch, thanks to shoddy performance optimization. However, that doesn’t mean that PC players can’t enjoy the game all the same. With some simple tweaks, any PC player with Deathloop‘s recommended hardware can meet or even exceed the game’s performance on the PS5.

As opposed to consoles, you’ll have a vast number of options for what graphics settings you can change on PC, although some will impact your performance much more than others. For testing, I used my personal computer, which sports a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU running at its stock speeds and a Radeon RX 5700. The latter is exactly what Arkane suggests as the recommended GPU for Deathloop while the former is only slightly better than the Ryzen 7 2700x the developer lists. All the same, I was able to squeeze out some admirable performance from my rig that stacked up to what players were experiencing on the PS5.

How does Deathloop perform?

Colt kicks an enemy in Deathloop.

I’m going to glean over the obvious and let you know that with the recommended specs, Deathloop hit the frame rate cap at its lowest quality presets. However, it’s once the medium preset was hit that there were some frame dips. Without any other changes to the settings, the medium preset for Deathloop ran at around 60 to 80 frames per second. However, after turning on AMD’s Fidelity FX Super Resolution in the game’s settings, a simple upscaling process, there was a boost in the minimum frame rate to at least 70 while out in one of the game’s main areas.

Of course, there’s an elephant in the room whenever you’re discussing Deathloop. The game has issues on PC, and while we never experienced some of the reported drops to single-digit frames per second, we did experience regular hitching in the game caused by spikes in frame time. That isn’t anything that you can do anything about — it’s not due to faulty hardware — but it’s worth noting that the issue varies from person to person and PC to PC. Arkane is currently investigating this issue, although it’s not clear when it will actually be solved.

What are the best settings for Deathloop?

Colt using a Slab and about to kill an enemy.

After tooling around with the game’s settings a decent amount, though, it was clear that there are some settings players can lower for a few extra frames here or there, as long as you’re willing to make some compromises.

Turn off motion blur

Admittedly, this first one isn’t a compromise; it’s more that we’re doing you a favor. Motion blur in Deathloop looks pretty ugly, and it uses up a bit more of your GPU’s processing power to boot. Unless you’re running this game at just barely 30 fps and you want to smooth some of that out, leave motion blur off.

Lower water quality

This may seem like a strange setting to lower at first, but once you’ve played Deathloop for around 10 hours and realize just how little of that is spent looking at the water, it makes more sense. Dialing down the game’s water quality settings just a bit, from high to medium, for instance, can lead to a decent improvement in your game’s frame rate if it’s struggling somewhat.

Turn texture quality down

Texture quality is precious to PC gamers, but in this case, it’s not the worst to turn down. Of course, the game looks best when texture quality is above medium, but setting it down that low doesn’t hurt the game’s stylish visuals too much and even gives you a decent boost in frames per second to boot. Just do yourself a favor and don’t look at any of the mountains or vistas far off in the distance once the game’s texture settings are on medium. Mountains end up looking more like melted piles of chocolate ice cream at that point.

Forget about shadow quality

Deathloop‘s implementation of shadow quality is a bit outlandish, only rendering the shadows farther away from you at a higher resolution the more it’s turned up. Even at its lowest settings, the shadows closest to you (aka, the ones you’ll notice the most) are passable in quality. By turning down shadow quality as far as it can go, you’ll see an instant improvement in your FPS.

Deathloop PC requirements

Here are Deathloop‘s various tiers of PC requirements, which everyone should take into account. Naturally, the game will run better if you have an RTX 3080, but if your computer’s parts are worse than what’s listed in the minimum specs, it may not be worth picking the game up at this time.

Similarly, if you really want to match the experience PS5 players are getting with Deathloop, we highly recommend running the game off an NVMe solid-state drive. Ideally, you’ll have one that’s PCIe Gen4, the same standard as what you’ll find in a PS5 or Xbox Series X|S. However, a PCIe Gen3 NVMe SSD will also do just fine compared to a regular old mechanical hard drive.

Deathloop minimum specs

  • OS — 64-bit Windows 10 Version 1909 or higher
  • CPU — Intel Core i5-8400 and 2.80GHz / AMD Ryzen 5 1600
  • Memory — 12GB
  • Storage — 30GB (HDD)
  • GPU — Nvidia GTX 1060 (6GB) / AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)

Deathloop recommended specs

  • OS — 64 bit Windows 10 Version 1909 or higher
  • CPU — Intel Core i7-9700K @ 3.60GHz / AMd Ryzen 7 2700X
  • Memory — 16GB
  • Storage — 30GB (SSD)
  • GPU — Nvidia RTX 2060 (6GB) / AMD Radeon RX 5700 (8GB)

Deathloop ultra 4K specs

  • OS — 64-bit Windows 10 Version 1909 or higher
  • CPU — Intel Core i9-10900K at 3.70GHz / AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT
  • Memory — 16 GB
  • Storage — 30 GB (SSD)
  • GPU — Nvidia RTX 3080 (10GB) / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16GB)

Editors' Recommendations

Otto Kratky
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…
Can you use PSVR2 on PC?
The back of a man's head wearing the PSVR2.

There are now a decent number of VR headsets on the market, and the newest headset on the block, the PlayStation VR2, is one of the most powerful in terms of technology. This upgrade from the original PSVR makes many improvements over the original design, including trimming down the necessary cables to a single USB-C. Being the only headset on the market made by a console maker, many PC gamers may be wondering if the PSVR2 would be a worthy investment if they could also use it on their PCs.

If you're mainly a PC gamer, or have yet to get your hands on a PlayStation 5, and are interested in the PSVR2, here's whether or not it will work on other hardware.
Does PSVR2 work on PC?

Read more
The best free FPS games you can play right now
10 essential tips for Arena Mode in Apex Legends

A few years ago, it was hard to find any decent free-to-play games that weren't MMORPGs, and good free first-person shooter (FPS) games were almost non-existent. The few that were around usually came from less-than-reputable sources and usually experienced a host of bugs and connectivity issues.

With battle royale games offering a boon to the free-to-play model, though, AAA studios have started releasing high-quality, free FPS games. Games like Warframe paved the way for Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0. 

Read more
Best gaming PC deals: Save on RTX 3070, 3080, 3090 PCs
The Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition Gaming Desktop, placed on a desk.

Gamers shouldn't be ashamed to buy a pre-built PC if they don't know how to build a PC from scratch. Top brands such as HP, Lenovo, and Alienware have rolled out gaming PCs, so you wouldn't have to worry about reliability. If you're interested but you're not sure where to start, we've got your back -- we've rounded up some of the best gaming PC deals that are online right now. Whether you're interested in an entry-level gaming desktop to enjoy free-to-play games or a top-of-the-line gaming machine to pair with the best 4K gaming monitors, at least one of these offers will surely catch your eye.
Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition R14 with RTX 3050 -- $900, was $1,300

Why Buy:

Read more