Flintlock The Siege of Dawn Optimization Guide: Every Graphics Setting Benchmarked (2024)

Flintlock: Seige of Dawn is out on Steam, Xbox Game Pass, and consoles. Despite being an average-looking game (without ray-tracing), it is quite intensive on modern GPUs. Even the mighty GeForce RTX 4090 averages less than 40 FPS at 4K “Best” quality settings. Our optimization guide for Flintlock details the performance and quality impact of each graphics option on the game.

Windows/System Settings to Optimize

Enable Resizable BAR (SAM)

Resizable BAR allows the CPU full access to the GPU’s memory bus rather than a small portion of it (256 MB). Intel 10th Gen/AMD Ryzen 3000 CPUs and onward also support reBAR. On the GPU side, the GeForce RTX 30/Radeon RX 6000 cards were the first to enable it. The ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI motherboard guides are linked.

Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling and Windowed Optimizations

To turn on “Hardware Accelerated Scheduling“, open System Settings (Right-click on the Windows logo and click settings) -> Display -> Graphics -> Default graphics settings and enable both options.

Xbox Game Bar and Game Mode

• Go to Windows settings->Gaming tab-> Game Mode. Ensure Game Mode is enabled.
• The Windows power plan is best set to “High Performance” or equivalent. Furthermore, if you’re playing on a laptop, keep it plugged in unless that’s not an option.

Overclock your Graphics Card

Overclocking GPUs is fairly safe and easy and doesn’t void your warranty. It can improve performance by 5-10%. All you need is MSI Afterburner, GPU-Z, and a few games. Here’s a guide to get you started.

Enable XMP/EXPO Memory Profile

XMP (or EXPO) includes a set of pre-tested memory frequencies and timings that run stably on a given memory die. They’re 1-click memory overclocks for grant quick performance bumps. Motherboard vendors include it on the BIOS homepage, under AI Overclock Tuner, Extreme Memory, or DRAM Profile—a guide.

Flintlock The Siege of Dawn: PC System Requirements

The base specifications for Flintlock are modest, requiring a quad-core Ryzen 3 3300X and a GeForce GTX 1060/Radeon RX 580 (6 GB+). The memory and storage requirements are also minimal at 8 GB and 30 GB, respectively. These are probably for achieving 30 FPS at 1080p “Low” quality settings.

The recommended specs include a Ryzen 5 3600X and a GeForce RTX 2060 Super or a Radeon RX 5700 (8 GB+). The memory requirement climbs up to 16 GB. This specification aims for 60 FPS at 1080p “High.”

Test Bench

• CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K.
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero.
• Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360.
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
• Memory: 16GB x2 DDR5-6000 CL30.
• Power Supply: Corsair RM1000e.

Flintlock Siege of Dawn: Resolution & Graphics Quality Presets

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn is highly GPU-intensive, going from 159 FPS at 1080p to 112 FPS at 1440p, and 38 FPS at 4K using the “Best” quality settings. A 4x decrease in performance on switching between 2 million (FHD) and 8 million pixels (UHD) sounds fair. Still, the framerate deficit between 4 million pixels (QHD) and 8 million pixels (UHD) is on the high side at about 3x.

This (likely) concerns geometry scaling with Nanite and perhaps other Unreal Engine 5 technologies.

The “Low” quality graphics preset is 90% faster than “Best,” with the performance deficit between two consecutive presets generally varying from 10-15%. Going from “High” to “Ultra” quality has the largest framerate penalty, with a 40% drop.

View Distance & Foliage Distance: LOD Scaling

View Distance sets the render distance of in-game objects and characters. Flintlock: Siege of Dawn also adjusts the range of various shading technologies, including but not limited to ambient occlusion, global illumination, and vegetation density. Interestingly, it mildly affects performance, reducing frame rates by 6-8% at the “Best” quality setting (versus “Low”).

Foilage Distance is similar to view distance, except it only controls the density and rendering distance of vegetation, including grass, trees, and bushes. The ambient shadows and lighting affected by foliage are also scaled with it. Like view distance, foliage distance has a nominal impact on performance.

Postprocessing & Effects Quality

Postprocessing sets the quality of various late-stage effects, including motion blur, depth of field, bloom, lens flare, eye adaptation, and tone mapping. It has a mild to moderate impact on performance, with “Low” running 7-8% faster than “Best.”

Effects Quality controls several graphics settings, including screen space reflections (SSR), refractions, material quality, ambient occlusion, and magic and fire effects. Flintlock: Siege of Dawn revolves around gunpowder and magic combat. Consequently, it drastically impacts performance, reducing framerates by up to 21% at the “Best” setting.

Shadow Quality

Shadow Quality is the most intensive graphics setting in Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, reducing framerates by up to 62% at the highest setting. The performance drops from 158 FPS at “Low” to 98 FPS at the “Best” setting.

Upscaling & Frame Generation: DLSS & XeSS

Upscaling becomes necessary to play Flintlock at the highest-quality graphics settings. The game features Intel XeSS and NVIDIA DLSS in addition to frame generation. The DLSS “Quality” preset improves performance by 2.4x, while “Performance” is 3.4x faster than 4K native (~40 FPS).

XeSS is slower than DLSS, at least on NVIDIA hardware, but features the “Ultra Quality” preset which can be slightly superior to DLSS “Quality.” DLSS Frame Generation is 4.5x and 3.45x faster than 4K native, averaging 180.5 FPS and 137.7 FPS at the “Performance” and “Quality” presets, respectively. The framerate deficit between higher upscaling and lower frame generation presets is negligible.

Field of View Scaling

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn lets you modify the third-person field of view from 60 to 105 degrees. We recommend (at least) 90 degrees, as anything below it can hinder immersion. Regardless, the performance impact of FOV is nominal.

Flintlock Siege of Dawn: CPU Bottlenecks

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn is predominantly GPU-bound, with a GPU busy deviation of 8% and 5% at 1080p and 1440p “Best” quality settings. Reducing the graphics settings increases this value to 10% at 4K, but that’s the upper limit.

Flintlock Siege of Dawn: Textures & VRAM Usage

The game uses close to 10 GB of graphics memory (VRAM) at the “Best” quality settings at 4K. Reducing the settings to “High” and “Low” reduces the peak VRAM consumption to 8 GB and 6 GB, respectively.

QHD or 1440p uses up to 7.3 GB of graphics memory, while 1080p peaks under 6.5 GB at the “Best” quality settings.

Best Graphics Settings for Flintlock: Siege of Dawn