Best Killing Floor 3 settings for PC and Steam Deck

With the hellish first-person shooter finally in early access, we've taken time to compile the best Killing Floor 3 settings for PC and Steam Deck. While the game runs relatively smoothly for an early access title, there need to be some major improvements before the game is ready for launch, as our testing shows.

You won't need the best graphics card from our helpful buying guide to run Killing Floor 3, but its complex lighting system demands a lot of horsepower if you're also going to maintain a fast frame rate. You wouldn't know this just by looking at the Killing Floor 3 system requirements, though, which only stretch to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 and don't specify what performance to expect as a result.

• VSync: Off
• Field of View: 100
• Frame Rate Cap: Unlimited
• Motion Blur: Off
• Depth of Field: Off
• View Distance Quality: High
• Reflection Quality: High
• Post Process Quality: High
• Shadow Quality: High
• Global Ullumination Quality: Medium
• Texture Quality: High
• Foliage Quality: Medium
• Shading Quality: Medium
• Bloom: Standard
• Lens Flare: On
• Lens Flare Intensity: 8
• Reflection Method: Lumen
• Global Illumination Method: Lumen
• Nvidia Reflex: Enabled + Boost, if applicable
• Supersampling Mode: Nvidia DLSS
• DLSS Quality Mode: Quality
• Nvidia DLSS Frame Generation: 2x

Using the above settings on our RTX 4070 testing rig, we achieved an average frame rate of 117fps with 1% lows of 47fps at 1,920 x 1,080. This declined to an average frame rate of 76fps with 1% lows of 31fps at 2,560 x 1,440, and finally, the 4K average frame rate was 43fps with 1% lows of 30fps.

This is another Unreal Engine 5 game that struggles with frame rate figures. When using Nvidia DLSS and frame generation, the bare minimum we want to be at for the 1% low is 45fps, and we only achieve this at 1080p. Moving up to 1440p or 4K sees this figure drop, although curiously the smallest gap between the average frame rate and 1% low is at 4K.

We tried shifting the lighting settings to improve performance, but the story is the same: no matter what changes we made, the average frame rate and 1% lows are always quite far apart. Disabling frame generation would naturally see the average frame rate come crashing down, and at this point, we would want the 1% lows to be at least 60fps, and we're still way off that point with sub-55fps results across all three resolutions.

Despite these issues when assessing the data, what's most important is that playing Killing Floor 3 feels perfectly fine, with very few noticeable cases of stuttering or frame drops.

All in all, Killing Floor 3 performs like a game in early access. We've seen similar issues, albeit with worse performance, in our best Wuchang Fallen Feathers settings guide, where we also needed DLSS and frame generation to hit passable 1% lows, even if the average frame rate is fairly decent. However, in the case of Wuchang, there were other factors such as complete game crashes and major stuttering/general instability that made it a much more frustrating experience overall. There is also the fact that Wuchang is considered a full release, as opposed to being in early access.

Best Killing Floor 3 settings for Steam Deck

• VSync: On
• Field of View: 90
• Frame Rate Cap: 60
• Motion Blur: Off
• Depth of Field: Off
• View Distance Quality: Low
• Reflection Quality: Low
• Post Process Quality: Low
• Shadow Quality: Low
• Global Ullumination Quality: Low
• Texture Quality: Low
• Foliage Quality: Low
• Shading Quality: Low
• Bloom: Standard
• Lens Flare: Off
• Reflection Method: SSR
• Global Illumination Method: SSR
• Supersampling Mode: AMD FSR
• AMD FSR Quality Mode: Balanced

Like many other Unreal Engine 5 titles, including Wuchang Fallen Feathers, Killing Floor 3 struggles on the Steam Deck. However, due to the volume of adjustable graphics settings, it is possible to get Killing Floor 3 running on the Deck with an acceptable frame rate.

Using our above settings, Killing Floor 3 runs at between 40fps and 50fps during missions. When simply navigating the hub area, this can even reach as high as 60fps. The image quality suffers a bit in comparison to PC due to the upscaling used against a much lower native resolution, but the game is easily playable, and future updates could improve performance further.

Killing Floor 3 graphics presets

There are currently four graphics presets in Killing Floor 3.

• Low
• Medium
• High
• Ultra

The difference between the lowest and highest preset is truly monstrous, especially when it comes to the lighting quality. Flipping between the two feels the same as when you flip between modern and original graphics in the Halo Master Chief Collection.

The primary reason for this is the difference in using Screen Space Reflection (SSR) lighting and Lumen lighting. While Lumen looks much better, as you can see in the image above, it's also more demanding for a system to run. Despite this, even when flipping over to SSR lighting, the average and 1% low frame rates only increase by around 15% in our testing, suggesting that there are still further optimizations that can be made to improve overall performance in Killing Floor 3, as we would expect that difference to be much greater.

How we tested Killing Floor 3

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 Killing Floor 3 includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in dual-channel configuration, and an 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 using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. Finally, we also test in 4K. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Killing Floor 3 need an SSD?

Killing Floor 3 requires the use of an SSD, as per the system requirements. The game can be downloaded and booted from a traditional HDD, but you may encounter performance issues or outright crashes as a result.

If you grab yourself the best gaming SSD from our buying guide for your existing gaming PC, it will really help keep game loading times in check while also providing some minor performance boosts.

How to monitor performance in Killing Floor 3

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Killing Floor 3, we have an easy method that works whether you're using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have 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.

With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.

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