Best Madden 26 settings for PC and Steam Deck

Madden 26 hasn't had a major graphical overhaul compared to previous versions of the veteran football game, so getting good performance isn't too difficult. Finding the best Madden 26 settings is still important though, to ensure you're getting the best balance of image quality and performance. It's especially key to take note of the detailed settings menu, which puts other EA Sports titles like FC 25 to shame.

You can check out the Madden 26 system requirements to ensure your gaming PC or laptop is up to the challenge of running Madden 26 before you commit to a purchase. You'll find that you won't need the most expensive options on our best graphics card guide to simply run the game, although inevitably if you're aiming for a high frame rate at a 4K resolution you'll need some powerful hardware.

• Frame Rate: No Limit
• VSync: On
• 3D Grass: Always On
• Advanced Hair: High
• Ambient Occlusion: High
• Ambient Occlusion Method: Ground Truth
• Lens Flare: Auto
• Bloom: Auto
• High Res Circular DOF: On
• Mesh Quality: High
• Texture Quality: High
• Shadow Quality: High
• Crowd Quality: High
• VFX Quality: High
• Motion Blur: Off

Using the above settings, we achieved an average frame rate of 119fps with 1% lows of 78fps at 1,920 x 1,080. At 2,560 x 1,440, the average frame rate dropped slightly to 110fps with a 1% low of 72fps. A bigger drop came when moving to 4K, where the average frame rate was 79fps, with 1% lows of 56fps.

These are all very playable results and are all based on the game running natively, as there are no signs of Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR, or any other resolution scaling tools.

Madden 26 runs a hardware check when first launching that will auto-detect the best settings for your system but, based on our testing, it's far from perfect. It largely placed all settings on "Ultra" for our rig, which saw the average frame rate at 1080p dip to just 78fps with 1% lows of 51fps. This was far from unplayable, but if you have plans to play Madden 26 online, your frame rate can be the difference between a dropped pass and a Hail Mary taken to the house for a touchdown.

Best Madden 26 settings on Steam Deck

Madden 26 does not boot on the Steam Deck due to the implementation of EA anti-cheat, which is incompatible with Linux. You can get around this by booting Windows onto your Deck.

There aren't currently any cloud streaming services offering a way to play Madden 26 that is also compatible with the Steam Deck. However, if you buy a copy of the game on the Xbox Store, you can use Play Anywhere to stream the game to your Deck. In order to do this, you'll need to make sure your Xbox account is signed up to the Insider program and opt in to the beta version of the Xbox App.

Madden 26 graphics presets

There are four graphics presets currently available in Madden 26 on PC.

• Low
• Medium
• High
• Ultra

There is no VRAM calculator to show you the impact of each preset, there is no benchmarking tool, and graphics settings are not changeable once a match has started, meaning the trial-and-error approach will be very time-consuming.

There are some big differences in the quality between the "Low" and "Ultra" presets, as seen in the image above, which you can right-click and open in a new tab to see in greater detail. The main differences can be seen in the quality of the grass, the shallow depth of field (background blurring), visible sweat on the player's arms, and more realistic reflections, lighting, and shadows.

How we tested Madden 26

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 Madden 26 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 Madden 26 need an SSD?

Madden 26 does not require the use of an SSD, as per the system requirements, so the game can be downloaded and booted from a traditional hard drive. However, booting up the game and in-game loading times will be drastically slower using a hard drive - we strongly recommend you use an SSD.

You can find our current SSD recommendations in our best gaming SSD guide. Even if you already have an SSD, an upgrade might get you even faster load times or free up available storage for the 65GB download size of Madden 26.

How to monitor performance in Madden 26

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Madden 26, 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.

If you're getting stuck into this latest football game on PC, you can also check out the best Madden 26 playbooks for offense and defense to get a leg up on the competition. Elsewhere, we've also compiled all of the Madden 26 combine interview answers so you can make sure GMs take a liking to you and you raise your draft stock.

You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We've also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.