How to improve FPS in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (PC)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II recreates 1403 medieval Bohemia on a very demanding CryEngine build: dense forests, endless farmland, and towns like Kuttenberg packed with NPCs running real-time simulated routines and schedules. Unlike many modern open worlds, load here doesn't depend only on the GPU — the social simulation engine and procedural vegetation weigh heavily on the processor. This guide helps you find the balance between visual fidelity and frame stability, both out in the open countryside and in the busiest urban areas.
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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 +48% free FPS.
Shadow Quality
Shadows are the setting with the biggest performance impact in KCD2: they affect the entire field of view simultaneously, from Bohemia's trees to tavern interiors. Dropping from High to Medium drastically cuts GPU cost with a moderate detail loss, mostly noticeable in the edges of distant shadows.
Vegetation Density
Bohemia's forests use very dense procedural vegetation that hits both CPU (foliage physics) and GPU (grass and bush rendering). Reducing this density frees up notable frames while galloping through wooded areas without the landscape looking empty.
Object Draw Distance
Controls how far detail like fences, carts, tools, and decorative elements in towns and camps loads. Dropping from Ultra to High is barely noticeable except staring at the horizon, but reduces the engine's streaming load.
Screen Space Reflections (SSR)
Screen-space reflections show up mostly on water, polished metal, and surfaces wet after rain. At Medium you keep a believable approximation without the extra rendering cost of full resolution at Ultra.
Anti-Aliasing (TAA)
CryEngine's TAA is effective but has a notable render cost at Ultra. Keeping it at High preserves edge stability on foliage and armor chainmail without the extra cost of the maximum level.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Global Illumination (GI)
Global illumination recalculates light bounces in real time inside churches, taverns, and castles, and is one of the game's biggest GPU consumers. Dropping to Medium sacrifices some realism in interior shadow depth in exchange for a considerable performance jump.
Volumetrics (fog and god rays)
Light shafts through trees at dawn and morning fog over the fields are a visual trademark of KCD2, but also a heavy GPU consumer. Medium preserves the overall atmospheric effect by reducing volumetric sampling resolution.
Texture Quality
Depends almost entirely on available VRAM rather than compute power. With 8GB of VRAM or less, dropping from Ultra to High avoids micro-hitching from texture swapping when entering detail-heavy towns.
NPC and Crowd Density
Adjusts how many villagers, merchants, and guards are actively simulated in busy areas like Kuttenberg's marketplace. It's the most direct lever against the CPU bottleneck in towns, since it reduces the number of AI routines calculated per frame.
Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
Adds contact shading in corners, under carts, and among vegetation. At Ultra the cost grows disproportionately to the visual improvement, especially in grass-heavy scenes.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS (Transformer)
+35% FPSDLSS's Transformer model is the recommended option on RTX GPUs: in Quality mode it reconstructs a sharper image than FSR with a notable performance gain, especially useful in Kuttenberg and other NPC-heavy areas.
AMD FSR 3.1
+30% FPSCompatible with any DX12 GPU, including NVIDIA and Intel. In Quality mode it offers a good balance, though it introduces somewhat more softening on dense foliage than DLSS.
Intel XeSS
+28% FPSA solid alternative for GPUs without DLSS support, with better detail reconstruction than FSR on Intel Arc hardware, and reasonable performance on cards from other brands.
Frame Generation
+55% FPSAvailable on compatible GPUs, it can push framerate above 120 FPS in open scenes. Adds some input latency, noticeable especially during sword combat, so it's recommended to start from a real base of 60 FPS before enabling it.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable DLSS in Transformer mode from the graphics menu for the best sharpness/performance ratio on RTX 30 and 40 series.
- •Update to the newest Game Ready drivers: KCD2 has received several NVIDIA-specific performance patches since launch.
- •On GPUs with 8GB of VRAM or less, avoid combining Ultra textures with the high-resolution Resource Pack to prevent micro-hitching.
AMD
- •Use FSR 3.1 in Quality mode as a starting point; it's the best-optimized FSR implementation in CryEngine's catalog to date.
- •Enable Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) in the BIOS: on CryEngine it brings a measurable improvement in heavily vegetated areas.
- •Ryzen CPUs with 3D cache (X3D) make a real difference in Kuttenberg compared to non-cache models, more than any graphics setting.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an SSD: asset streaming in large towns causes noticeable popping on mechanical drives.
- •Allocate at least 16GB of RAM; with 8GB the game falls back on the page file and causes hitching when entering and exiting interiors.
- •Enable the "High performance" power profile in Windows and disable GPU power saving to avoid occasional clock drops during long combat sessions.
5. Known game issues
Streaming hitches when entering towns
When crossing into a large city like Kuttenberg, the engine loads hundreds of NPCs and assets all at once, causing a brief one- or two-second FPS drop, more pronounced on mechanical drives or with less than 16GB of RAM.
Estado: Patch 1.3
CPU bottleneck in crowds
In markets and festivals with dozens of NPCs simulated at once, performance can drop 20-35% compared to the open countryside regardless of the GPU used, since the limit is set by single-threaded AI simulation.
VRAM fluctuations with the high-resolution Resource Pack
The optional high-resolution texture pack can saturate cards with 8GB of VRAM in detail-heavy scenes, causing temporarily blurry textures while the engine reloads the buffer.
Estado: Patch 1.2
6. Frequently asked questions
Why does my FPS drop so much in Kuttenberg but not out in the countryside?▾
Is it worth enabling DLSS or FSR in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II?▾
Which graphics setting has the biggest performance impact?▾
How much VRAM do I need to play with high textures?▾
Want to know exactly how many FPS YOUR PC will get?
Enter your GPU and CPU in our calculator and measure the real impact of each setting.
Calculate FPS for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →