The Overwatch 2 beta is finally live, and just like its predecessor, having a high frame rate is really important. Much has changed in the six years since the original Overwatch released, but the core game is the same.
Following best practices from the first release, we’ve identified four settings you can tweak to boost your frames per second (fps) in Overwatch 2. If you want a full breakdown, make sure to read our guide on the best settings for Overwatch 2.
Turn on FSR and lower your render resolution
One of the most important innovations since Overwatch launched in 2016 are upsampling algorithms, which render the game at a lower resolution to boost performance. Overwatch 2 support’s AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), which works with virtually any graphics card.
While official support for FSR 1.0 only goes as far back as Nvidia’s GTX 10-series and AMD’s RX 400-series, it does work with most GPUs. Combining FSR with a decreased render resolution can net you a massive performance improvement. In our test system, which uses an Intel Core i9-10900K and RTX 3090, we were able to achieve about 70% more frames by turning FSR on and turning the render resolution down to 50%.
Overwatch 2 has its own built-in upscaler as well. However, we found that FSR is around 5% faster for a given render resolution.
Turn dynamic reflections down or off
Other than resolution, we found that dynamic reflections were a really intensive graphics option. Unlike local reflections, dynamic reflections are focused on reflecting the fast-paced actions of players in the game. We improved the average frame rate by 30% when we set dynamic reflections from High to Off. The 1% low fps (which basically measures consistency — higher is better) also improved significantly, with a 24% boost in frames.
In a faced-paced shooter like Overwatch 2, frames tend to be more important than eye candy. However, there is a Low option for dynamic reflections that still performs noticeably better than the High option while offering improved visual quality (similar to the first Overwatch).
