How to improve FPS in 007 First Light (PC)
007 First Light is IO Interactive's reimagining of James Bond's origin story, built on an evolution of the Glacier engine already familiar from the Hitman trilogy. The result is a stealth-action game with dense urban environments, heavily worked dynamic lighting, and espionage set-pieces packed with reactive-AI NPCs. Technically it inherits Glacier's strengths — solid DLSS, FSR, and XeSS support from day one — but also its usual Achilles' heel: shader compilation and asset streaming in open urban scenes. This guide covers the settings with the biggest performance impact without sacrificing the visual readability of stealth sequences.
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Calculations based on our FPS model combined with the % gain of each setting (measured in public benchmarks).
1. Quick wins (no visual loss)
Start here. Each one adds a little, but together they give +22% free FPS.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic ray-traced shadows are the game's biggest performance hog. Dropping from Ultra to Medium noticeably cuts GPU load without hurting readability of stealth scenarios much, where shadows mark out cover zones.
Reflection Quality
Ray-traced reflections on wet surfaces and glass in urban locations carry a very high cost for the visual improvement they add. Dropping to Low frees up a considerable FPS margin, especially in London's nighttime sequences.
Volumetric Fog Quality
Volumetric fog saturates the render budget in exteriors and nighttime espionage-atmosphere scenes. Dropping it to Low is barely noticeable overall but consistently frees up frames.
Motion Blur
Motion blur adds no gameplay advantage in a stealth title where visual precision matters, and its performance cost, though modest, is free to reclaim.
Chromatic Aberration / Film Grain
These post-processing effects degrade image sharpness, especially when combined with upscaling, and their FPS impact is small but stacks up alongside other cosmetic tweaks.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Texture Quality
Textures are the game's biggest VRAM consumer. If your card has 8GB or less, dropping from Ultra to High avoids stutter from video memory saturation, which on Glacier shows up as texture pop-in and micro-stutter when panning the camera.
Global Illumination Quality
Dynamic global illumination is the visual heart of Glacier in this game, recreating how light bounces inside mansions and espionage offices. Dropping it to Medium keeps a believable atmosphere while recovering a notable chunk of performance.
Volumetric Effects Quality
Smoke, steam, and atmospheric effects in high-security interiors carry a high cost in scenes with the most NPCs. Lowering this setting helps especially in infiltration missions with more on-screen activity.
Crowd Density / NPC Density
London's crowded urban scenes are among the most demanding for both CPU and GPU simultaneously, since every NPC runs behavior AI. Dropping density to Medium smooths out load spikes in the busiest zones without emptying out the scenery.
Ambient Occlusion Quality
Ambient occlusion reinforces contrast in corners and cover spots, useful for stealth, but at its highest level adds a disproportionate cost. Medium keeps the visual depth needed to read the environment.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
DLSS 4.5 (NVIDIA)
+35% FPSThe Glacier engine integrates DLSS 4.5 natively, inheriting the solid implementation already seen in the Hitman trilogy. In Quality mode it delivers a sharper image than native resolution thanks to the game's weak default TAA, plus a substantial FPS gain.
DLSS Multi Frame Generation
+60% FPSAvailable on RTX 40 and 50 series cards, multi frame generation lets you double or even quadruple perceived framerate. Recommended to always enable NVIDIA Reflex in On + Boost mode to offset the added latency.
AMD FSR (all GPUs)
+28% FPSThe FSR implementation works on any card, not just Radeon, and is the recommended option for AMD GPUs or NVIDIA models without tensor cores. In Quality mode it noticeably improves performance, though with somewhat less image stability than DLSS.
Intel XeSS
+26% FPSSupported from launch on Arc cards and as an alternative on GPUs from other vendors. Delivers solid results in Quality mode, though somewhat behind DLSS in sharpness of fine detail like urban foliage.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Update to driver 555.xx or newer: earlier versions cause startup freezes from incompatible shader compilation protocols.
- •Enable DLSS Frame Generation only on RTX 40/50; on RTX 30, use DLSS Quality without Frame Generation to avoid artifacts in fast camera-motion scenes.
- •Keep NVIDIA Reflex on On + Boost whenever you use upscaling or frame generation, to minimize input latency in action sequences.
AMD
- •If you've just updated drivers, reset the shader cache from AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition (Gaming > Graphics > Advanced) before your first session.
- •On Radeon cards with 8GB of VRAM, pair Texture Quality High with FSR Quality to avoid saturating memory in the densest urban areas.
- •Anti-Lag+ helps offset latency if you enable FSR Frame Generation on RX 7000 cards.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an NVMe SSD: on HDD or SATA SSD, asset streaming in urban zones causes severe hitching when panning the camera.
- •Let shaders finish compiling in the main menu before you start playing; interrupting this process is the most common cause of micro-stutter in the first few hours.
- •Keep at least 16GB of RAM free and close recording or monitoring software before launching the game, since they consume critical VRAM during startup.
5. Known game issues
Micro-stutter from shader compilation at startup
As in previous IO Interactive games on Glacier, the game compiles shaders on the fly if the process doesn't finish before you start playing. Waiting a few minutes in the main menu after first launch or after a driver update resolves most of the initial hitching.
The game defaults to the integrated GPU on laptops
On systems with both dedicated and integrated GPUs, the launcher can mistakenly select the integrated graphics, causing performance far below expectations. You need to manually force the dedicated GPU from the NVIDIA or AMD control panel.
Streaming hitches on urban zone transitions
In London areas with the highest NPC density, entering a new zone or starting a cutscene can cause a brief framerate drop while textures and models load. An NVMe SSD and keeping VRAM usage below 90% noticeably mitigates the issue.
6. Frequently asked questions
Is ray tracing worth enabling in 007 First Light?▾
Why does the game stutter when entering new zones?▾
How much VRAM do I need to play with high textures?▾
DLSS or FSR, which gives better results in this game?▾
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Calculate FPS for 007 First Light →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →