Best Marvel Rivals settings for PC and Steam Deck

Getting great performance out of Marvel Rivals on PC is a simple task, thanks to this game's comprehensive graphical settings menus, as well as its use of an art style that lends itself well to performing on older gaming PCs. Still, we can guide you toward the best Marvel Rivals settings for PC and Steam Deck as an alternative to the trial-and-error process.

The Marvel Rivals system requirements show a considerable gap between the minimum and recommended hardware, but both tiers still involve modest hardware from a good few years ago. Even if you want to run the game at its recommended settings, you won't need the very best graphics card to get it running at a solid 60fps frame rate at 1080p or 1440p.

• Graphics Quality: Custom
• Global Illumination: Lumen GI High Quality
• Reflection Quality: Screen Space Reflections
• Model Detail: Low
• Post-Processing: Low
• Shadow Detail: Low
• Texture Detail: Low
• Texture Detail: Low
• Effects Detail: Low
• Foliage Quality: Low
• VSync: Off
• Nvidia Reflex: On
• Anti-Aliasing and Super Resolution: Off
• Super Resolution Mode: Off
• Super Resolution Sharpening: 80

Because Marvel Rivals is a competitive shooter, your best bet for peak performance and ensuring you get the most responsive feel for peak competitiveness is to turn down most of the game's settings. Not only will this get you a higher frame rate, but removal of effects such as post processing can clean up the look of the game, so there's less visual clutter to get in the way of your view.

Crucially, while we recommend turning nearly all the game's graphical settings down for peak performance, this doesn't result in a terrible-looking game, as you can see from the screenshots below. Even without any anti-aliasing, resulting in obvious jagged edges, the game's cartoony style still looks fantastic at 1080p.

What's more, you can, in fact, turn up quite a few of the game's settings without it having a huge impact on performance. You can safely turn on Screen Space Reflections and Global Illumination to get noticeably better-looking reflections and lighting with only a few fps lost. Once you increase all settings, though, performance does steadily drop.

On our test system, at 1080p using the above settings, I averaged 141.9fps with a 1% low of 84.3fps. This resulted in a really snappy-feeling experience that allowed for accurate shots and movement.

Upping the settings to Medium resulted in a drop to 110fps, while all settings on High dropped further to 100fps. Moving all the way up to Ultra dropped even further to just 85fps, with the game feeling quite choppy at this frame rate - it really benefits from Freesync or G-Sync at this frame rate, if you have it.

As for running at different resolutions. Moving up to 2,560 x 1,440 with the above settings resulted in an average frame rate of 114.9fps with a 1% low of 50.7fps, which is still very playable and again looks great, despite the low resolution and lack of anti-aliasing or upscaling.

Moving all the way up to 4K, though, and performance dropped to just 83fps average with a 22.5fps 1% low, again making for quite a choppy-feeling experience.

If you like to run at a higher resolution but your graphics card doesn't have the grunt, you can enable several different upscaling options in this game, including DLSS and FSR. We generally prefer not to use these modes for competitive games like this, but they certainly get you a higher frame rate.

Best Marvel Rivals settings for Steam Deck

• Graphics Quality: Custom
• Global Illumination: Off
• Reflection Quality: Off
• Model Detail: Performance
• Post-Processing: Low
• Shadow Detail: Low
• Texture Detail: Low
• Texture Detail: Low
• Effects Detail: Low
• Foliage Quality: Low
• VSync: Off
• Anti-Aliasing and Super Resolution: AMD FSR
• Super Resolution Mode: Performance
• Super Resolution Sharpening: 80

Marvel Rivals currently holds a Playable rating on Steam Deck, with the default graphics settings working just fine, but some minor tweaks can squeeze a few extra frames out of the game.

The above settings resulted in an average frame rate of 60fps, with room to increase the visual fidelity while still keeping the average frame rate above 40fps, if you wish.

Marvel Rivals graphics presets

• Low
• Medium
• High
• Ultra

There are only four quite basic graphics presets available in Marvel Rivals, but as seen in the comparison image under PC settings, the quality difference between low and ultra is stark.

If you're worried about the balance between visuals and performance, it's best to stick to the low or medium setting while slowly raising individual settings until you find your preferred sweet spot. Otherwise, follow our above settings for a completely performance-driven approach.

How we tested Marvel Rivals

At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Marvel Rivals includes the following components; Intel Core i7 11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 and 4K using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Marvel Rivals need an SSD?

Marvel Rivals doesn't require an SSD. While you can install and play the game from a hard drive, however, upgrading to one of the best gaming SSD options will help eliminate long game and mission load times, other than waiting for the server to load.

In addition, upgrading to an SSD will make Windows boot much quicker and make your system more responsive. If your motherboard has a PCIe 4.0 M.2 port, we recommend picking up a Samsung 990 Pro at its current price.

How to monitor performance in Marvel Rivals

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Marvel Rivals, we have an easy method that works whether you're using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have GeForce Experience or the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

For those keen to play this game on a handheld, Marvel Rivals Steam Deck compatibility is rated as Playable, and sure enough, we've tested it to make sure both the single and multi-player modes work well. Some interface elements are a little clunky, but the core gameplay works well.

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