How to increase FPS in Rainbow Six Siege: display and graphic options
The display and graphic options of Rainbow Six Siege can be optimized to increase your FPS and improve your gameplay.
On the web, you can find several configuration files to replace yours and boost the fps. Honestly, I don’t like this approach because I want to know exactly what I am changing, so I decided to review all the options in this article.
These adjustments are useful if you are struggling to reach an acceptable amount of fps as you are using a low-spec PC, but also if you have a monitor with a high refresh-rate as you bought it to gain an edge in a competitive shooter such as Rainbow Six Siege.
In-game settings
Launch Rainbow Six Siege, select Options on the top right, and open the Display and the Graphics tabs. I will show you how to set up each option for maximum performance.
Display
Monitor: monitor name.
Select the monitor used to play the game.
Resolution: use your native one.
Using your native resolution is desirable for a better view, but if you badly need a performance boost, decreasing the resolution will greatly improve your fps. 720p is usually a solid compromise between quality and performance.
Display Mode: Full Screen.
Full Screen is the best choice performance-wise, but you might prefer Borderless Window if you have a multi-monitor setup and you wish to move quickly on another display.
Note: you can switch from Full Screen to Borderless Window by pressing Alt+Enter on the keyboard.
Refresh Rate: your monitor refresh rate (60, 120, 144Hz, etc.).
Aspect Ratio: indicate your native one or just select Auto.
VSync: Off.
Widescreen Letterbox: Off.
Field of View: 75/90.
This is a very personal choice, but almost all the pro players prefer to maximize the FoV in Rainbow Six Siege.
A wider field of view (FOV) increases your peripheral vision, but at the same time all the targets are smaller, and it can cause a fisheye effect. In any case, lower values will improve your performance.
Click Apply to save the changes.
Graphics
Overall Quality: Custom.
We will review each option individually.
Texture Quality: High.
The texture quality has almost no impact on the fps as it mostly only drains VRAM. If your video card has at least 3-4GB VRAM, I suggest putting it at High as the game will look a lot better.
Texture Filtering: Linear.
It has a very small impact on the fps, so you might consider using Anisotropic 4X even on older machines.
LOD Quality: Medium.
It indicates at which distance the objects decrease their detail level. I suggest using Medium/High over Low because it may help to spot character models that are partially hidden behind cover.
Shading Quality: Low.
Only small visual changes.
Shadow Quality: Low.
Putting this option at Low removes the shadows completely. It is one of the settings with the biggest impact on the fps.
Turning off the shadows has both pros and cons:
It is easier to spot enemies who try to hide in dark areas of the map.
The shadows of the character models are disabled as well, so you miss extra info useful to detect your opponents.
Reflection Quality: Low.
Only small visual changes.
Ambient Occlusion: Off.
Lens Effect: Off.
Zoom-In Depth of Field: Off.
I warmly recommend disabling the settings above because they generate visual effects on your screen that do not influence negatively only your performance, but also your gameplay.
Anti-Aliasing: Off.
Turning off Anti-Aliasing is the best option if you want to improve your fps.
There is a noticeable quality difference between FXAA and T-AA, so if you want to enable it, I suggest using the latter.
The remaining options are greyed out if Anti-Aliasing is set to Off or FXAA.
Render Scaling: 100.
I warmly recommend to not change this setting if possible. Decreasing the value below 100 will grant more performance at the cost of a blurred image. The quality at 90 is still acceptable, and 75-80 is the minimum value you should consider.
T-AA Sharpness: 0.
Honestly, increasing this setting makes the image blurrier.
Click Apply to save the changes.
