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4.5 Performance

Updated Performance Guide for 4.5

What Changed?

With release of Star Citizen 4.5 the Vulkan Renderer became the default Render Engine in Star Citizen. Prior 4.5 everybody used DX11 as default. The Aim in Development is to eventually switch to Vulkan only on a later date. So without getting into technical details it is clear that most Optimizations and Features now going into the Vulkan engine. It was available before but marked as experimental. On Vulkan you can expect better Optimization, Performance and visuals - so I strongly suggest to use it.

Cant start Star Citizen when Vulkan enabled?

There has been a few who were unable to play if vulkan is enabled. Crash to Desktop or complete refuse to launch. I had the issue myself and wrote a Article about how to fix Star Ctizien Vulkan Startup Crash in my personal blog. I hope it can help you if you find the same issue.

Settings Walk-Through

With Vulkan also previous Recommendations for Optimal Settings changed quite a bit. So I walk through the settings as end of the Year 2025 and what you should consider.

General Graphic Settings

  • Object Detail:

    • High to Very High.
    • You absolutely cannot set this to Low. If you do, some surfaces might not render.

  • Object View Distance:

    • High
    • Medium or High but do not use Ultra. Ultra for many people causes stuttering and frame rate spikes, especially in heavy zones like Area 18.

  • Textures Quality:

    • High
    • but choose depending on you VRAM, in 4.5 settings you now have a expected VRAM usage bar bottom right, set as high as possible while keeping some spare VRAM, do not exceed or max out.
    • This setting has the single biggest impact on your video memory usage, roughly a 4GB difference between Low and Ultra. So for low VRAM cards choose safely.

  • Textures Detail:

    • High
    • Currently there is almost no performance cost or visual difference found between Low and High for character/weapon skins. You might as well leave it on High unless your Hardware is very limited.

  • Textures Ground:

    • High
    • Low looks blurry and bad. High makes planet surfaces look crisp. The VRAM impact is small (about 300MB), so it is worth the visual upgrade.

  • Texture Filtering:

    • High
    • There is basically zero FPS penalty for this. Keep it High for sharper textures.

  • Shadows (Shadow Maps):

    • High to Very High
    • Ultra uses double the resources and eats VRAM. High (100%) looks great and saves memory. Low to blurry.

  • Screen Space Shadows:

    • Medium or High
    • It is very hard to see a visual difference here, so you might as well save a few frames by not maxing it out

  • Planet Volumetric Clouds:

    • Medium or High
    • I suggest NOT to use "Photo Mode" (Ultra) for standard Gameplay. It will drop performance significantly.
    • There is little visual difference between Medium and High, but Very High/Photo Mode will kill your framerate that why I go with Medium

  • Gas Clouds:

    • Low
    • Setting this to High or above can cost you 10-15 FPS with almost no visible difference in the gas clouds in space, as everything here it may change with later patches but for 4.5 I keep it on low

  • Fog:

    • Medium
    • While it doesn't hit FPS hard, higher settings do eat a little VRAM. Since difference above Medium is hard to see, I keep it lower to save resources for other things.

  • Water Caustics:

    • Low
    • Unless you spend your time swimming a lot, you will never see this.

  • Water Sim:

    • Low
    • This appears to be broken in patch 4.5. The water doesn't react much even on high settings right now, so save the resources

  • Shading (Shader Quality):

    • High
    • I actually recommend bumping this up. High adds "parallax occlusion mapping," which makes flat surfaces (like vents and grates) look 3D. The cost is tiny (maybe a few FPS less) for a big visual gain

  • Post Effects:

    • Low
    • It includes things like motion blur and bloom. It eats performance without adding much gameplay value.

  • Video Comms:

    • Low
    • This just changes lighting on the little face of the person calling you.

Resolution and Upscaling

NVIDIA GPU System

If you are running an RTX card, you are in luck. 4.5 added new tech that makes DLSS a very good Option to gain significant FPS without the huge visual impact on previous versions.

Set the Upscaling Methode to DLSS with using the Transformer Model. It offers the best image stability. Compared to other options, it has the least amount of flickering on fence lines and lights while you are moving. Transformer replaces the old "CNN" model. The Transform model is much better at keeping details sharp, especially on grates and text.

For very capable Systems with a 4080/4090, 5080/5090 and adequate CPU use DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing) instead. This doesn't upscale; it runs at native resolution but uses the DLSS tech to smooth out jagged edges. It provides the sharpest, most stable image possible.

For mid-Range Systems use Quality (66%). This gives you a solid frame rate boost without making the game look bad.

AMD GPU System

It may sound counter intuitive but for now Avoid using AMD native FSR. The version of FSR currently in Star Citizen is older and it causes a lot of "shimmering" and flickering on objects when you move. Instead better go for the TSR Option, it is more stable and has less visual noise. Double-check you are on driver 25.12.1 or newer. Older drivers are causing crashes with Vulkan right now. Also, disable "Anti-Lag" and "Smooth Motion" in your driver settings for Vulkan, as it can cause issues.