Wolfenstein Youngblood Most Important Graphics Options – Every Setting Benchmarked
System Requirements
Low vs Ultra Screenshots
GPU Performance Chart
CPU List That Meet System Requirements
GPU List That Meet System Requirements
Comments
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
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User Review
7.32
Optimisation
6.7
Most Demanding
100+
Achtung fellow Nazi-slayers. Wolfenstein: Youngblood is out now on PC, bringing plenty of co-operative mayhem to our favourite blood sport. We’ve already taken a look at Wolf Youngblood’s PC performance in our series of graphics card benchmarks, as well as revealed all of the available PC graphics settings. Now, it’s time to see just how demanding all of those graphics settings are.
We’ve benchmarked each every video option in Wolfenstein: Youngblood, taking an average frame rate in order to determine the performance cost of enabling these graphical features. This allows you to see, at a glance, where the performance hits are going to come from, as well as which graphics settings we think you should enable (high priority score) and those which you can leave on Low (low priority score).
Wolfenstein: Youngblood System Requirements
Meanwhile, here are a couple of Low vs Ultra screenshots for you to play around with
Wolfenstein: Youngblood Low Vs Ultra Comparison GTX 1060
Wolfenstein: Youngblood Low Vs Ultra Comparison Radeon RX 5700
For the benchmark results below we used a PNY GeForce GTX 2060 6GB, an Intel Core i7-5820K processor clocked @ 4.2 GHz, and 16GB DDR4 memory. We tested the second campaign level in Youngblood, utilising the same area we did for our series of GPU benchmarks.
Wolfenstein Youngblood Graphics Options Performance Breakdown
The further right the bar goes, the more demanding the graphics option is when switching from Low to Ultra. In the case of the Nvidia Adaptive Shading technology, enabling this graphics setting actually improves performance, hence its FPS cost bar is inverted.
Wolfenstein Youngblood Graphics Settings
Wolfenstein Youngblood is a decent looking game with a huge array of graphics options to tweak. The problem? Most of them have very little performance or visual impact. Side by side, Low and Ultra look almost identical. It does mean those playing on Low don’t miss out on much but, for those who love to max everything out, you’re not getting a hugely better deal considering your frame rate.
Anyway, the main graphics setting to look out for is Shadows. This is biggest-hitter in terms of frame rates and, arguably, visual quality. You’ll want to get it as high as you can but just be wary it can carve close to 20% off your FPS.
Aside from that, we’d really recommend you mess around with the antialiasing, sharpening, chromatic aberration, motion blur, and depth of field settings. By default, Wolfenstein: Youngblood looks mighty blurry on a PC screen. Some would ‘cinematic’, we guess, but if you want a sharper, crisper experience then you can find it with some tweaking.
Motion Blur (Toggle)
This setting toggles Motion Blur on or off in Wolfenstein Youngblood. Also features an adaptive setting.
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 1/5
Antialiasing
Youngblood comes with several antialiasing solutions, including SMAA, FXAA, TAA, and TSSAA.
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 3/5
Lights
This sets the quality of the lights.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 4/5
Shadows
This setting improves the quality of shadows in Youngblood. It’s the most taxing graphics setting found in the game, although it’s one of the few which can dramatically improve the visual quality.
Performance Impact – 4/5
Priority – 4/5
Particles
Affects the quality of particle effects in Youngblood. Requires a game restart in order to take effect. This is a small but sometimes noticeable visual element which can improve flickering embers etc.
Performance Impact – 1/5
Priority – 2/5
Directional Occlusion
An advancement of SSAO, Direction Occlusion is a method of faking global illumination using a single bounce of indirect illumination.
Performance Impact – 1/5
Priority – 2/5
Reflections
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 3/5
Decals
This setting turns up the quantity and quality of decals, such as bullet holes.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 2/5
Motion Blur (Strength)
Strength/Quality, take your pick, but if you’ve got Motion Blur enabled, you can decide just how aggressive it is here. This setting helps to cover minor performance hiccups.
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 0/5
Image Streaming
Changes the image streaming quality. Is affected by the available pool of video memory.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 1/5
Water Quality
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 3/5
Volumetric Quality
Performance Impact – 3/5
Priority – 4/5
Material Aniso Filter
Performance Impact – 2/5
Priority – 2/5
Decal Filtering
Performance Impact – 1/5
Priority – 2/5
Lightmap Aniso Filter
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 2/5
Image Aniso Filter
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 2/5
LOD Switch
This setting affects the distance at which Level of Detail (LOD) settings change.
Performance Impact – 1/5
Priority – 3/5
GPU Culling
Toggle GPU triangle culling. AMD users are recommended to turn this on, Nvidia users should turn this off.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 0/5
Nvidia Adaptive Shading
Nvidia’s Adaptive shading techology uses machine learning to adjust the shading rate base on motion data. As a result, enabling NAS actually improves performance while having very little impact on overall visual quality.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 5/5
Chromatic Aberration
Performance Impact – 1/5
Priority – 0/5
Depth of Field
Depth of Field causes whatever is outside your cone of vision to become out of focus. This one is a matter of taste, although by default it is turned on in Wolf Youngblood.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 2/5
DoF Antialiasing
This one’s pretty tricky to notice, to be honest, but it’s an antialiasing filter on the Depth of Field effect. If you don’t have DoF enabled, you don’t need to worry about this.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 2/5
HDR Bloom
Only really applicable to folks with snazzy HDR monitors, HDR Bloom adds, well, HDR bloom effects to bright lighting sources.
Performance Impact – 1/5
Priority – 0/5
Sharpening
Honestly, this is one of the most graphics settings you should be taking a look at in Wolfenstein Youngblood. It’s tucked away right at the bottom of the advanced graphics settings menu but cranking this up has zero performance cost and makes Youngblood look so much crisper. Definitely, have a play around with this one if you’re finding Wolfenstein looks too murky or blurry at distance, in conjunction with DoF, Film Grain, Motion Blur, and Chromatic Aberration. All of these post-process effects dramatically affect image quality.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 5/5
Film Grain
Our recommendation is this setting absolute does not go above 1.0/4.0. Any higher and the hazy effect becomes too much. Personally, I’d be tempted to set it to 0.
Performance Impact – 0/5
Priority – 0/5