How to improve FPS in Metro Exodus (PC)
Metro Exodus runs on 4A Games' 4A Engine, a proprietary engine that already stood out at its original 2019 launch for volumetric lighting and semi-open levels heavily loaded with vegetation and particles. The Enhanced Edition (2021) went much further: it completely replaced the traditional lighting pipeline with mandatory Ray Tracing Global Illumination (RT GI), becoming one of the market's first "RT-only" games, with no option to disable ray tracing. This spikes GPU requirements even at low resolutions, especially in semi-open stretches like the Caspian, where draw distance and sand/storm simulation saturate both GPU and CPU. This guide covers how to tell the original version apart from the Enhanced one, which settings have a real FPS impact, and how to get the most out of DLSS/FSR/XeSS without sacrificing the image quality that defines the game.
This is what you'd gain with a NVIDIA RTX 3050
Want the RTX 3050 at the best price?
Check the current price on Amazon.
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 +33% free FPS.
Volumetric Quality
4A Engine's volumetric fog and light rays are among the most expensive effects in the scene, especially indoors in the metro with filtered light. Dropping it from Ultra to Medium noticeably reduces shader load without the fog losing its atmospheric function.
Tessellation
Tessellation affects the detail of the Caspian's sand and rocky surfaces; on Ultra it generates a disproportionate geometry cost relative to the barely perceptible visual improvement at normal play distance.
Motion Blur
Low but not zero cost, and many players disable it anyway because it interferes with combat aiming and creates a feeling of reduced perceived smoothness.
Depth of Field
Depth of field blur in cutscenes and while aiming has a measurable post-processing cost; disabling it also improves overall image sharpness in combat.
Advanced PhysX
Enables cloth, smoke, and additional destruction effects that heavily depend on NVIDIA CPU/GPU; on AMD GPUs or mid-range hardware the FPS impact is greater than the visual gain, especially in areas with many enemies.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Ray Traced GI Quality
Only available in Enhanced Edition. It's the setting with the biggest FPS impact in the whole game because it controls the resolution and ray count of the global GI; dropping from Ultra to Medium still keeps lighting far superior to the original non-RT version.
Texture Filtering (Anisotropic)
Dropping from x16 to x8 is barely noticeable at usual play distances, but frees up memory bandwidth that especially helps on VRAM-limited GPUs in the Caspian.
Vegetation Quality
The Volga and Taiga levels are loaded with vegetation with simulated physics; reducing from Ultra to Medium reduces geometry count and wind simulation cost without leaving the environment visually empty.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows still cost separately from RT GI because they cover contact shadows and small objects; dropping from Ultra to High reduces shadow resolution without generating obvious jaggedness.
Screen Space Reflections
In Enhanced Edition, reflections already partially rely on RT, so traditional SSR loses relevance; lowering it frees up performance on water surfaces and puddles without degrading the image much.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS
+45% FPSMetro Exodus Enhanced Edition was one of the first games to integrate DLSS alongside mandatory RT GI, being the original use case the technology was designed for: offsetting the cost of ray tracing. In Quality mode it offers the best FPS/quality ratio on RTX 20/30/40, and is practically essential on mid-range GPUs to maintain 60 FPS in the Caspian.
AMD FSR 2.0
+35% FPSAdded in later Enhanced Edition updates, it works on any GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel). It offers less sharpness than DLSS in fast motion but is still a notable FPS jump over native rendering, especially useful for AMD GPUs that bear the full RT GI cost with no dedicated tensor-core acceleration.
Intel XeSS
+30% FPSMore recent support, mainly aimed at Arc but also available on NVIDIA/AMD via the DP4a path. Somewhat lower gain than DLSS under equal conditions, but a consistent improvement over native resolution, useful as an alternative when FSR 2.0 shows more ghosting.
NVIDIA DLAA
+0% FPSIt's not upscaling but antialiasing based on DLSS's neural network at native resolution. It costs some performance compared to TAA but improves image sharpness; only recommended on GPUs with headroom to spare that already reach the target framerate without needing to scale.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable DLSS in Quality mode as the first step before touching any other graphics setting: it's the highest-impact lever in Enhanced Edition.
- •On mid-range RTX 20 and 30 series, leave Ray Traced GI Quality on Medium; on RTX 40 you can keep High/Ultra with DLSS enabled with no serious penalty.
- •Update to the Metro Exodus-specific Game Ready drivers if you're still on the original version, since they fixed several crashes associated with Advanced PhysX.
AMD
- •Use FSR 2.0 in Quality mode: it's practically mandatory on RX 6000/7000 given that these GPUs bear the full RT GI cost with no dedicated acceleration.
- •Disable Advanced PhysX entirely; on AMD GPUs the relative cost of this effect is higher than on NVIDIA.
- •If you use an RX 6600 or lower, consider playing the original (non-Enhanced) version if you prioritize stable FPS over RT lighting.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an SSD: texture streaming in the Caspian and the Volga causes noticeable pop-in on HDD, regardless of GPU.
- •Reserve at least 16GB of RAM; with 8GB the game resorts to virtual memory on open levels, generating microstutters on top of the engine's own.
- •Close third-party overlays (Discord, GeForce Experience overlay) if you notice punctual frametime drops, since the 4A Engine is sensitive to extra rendering hooks.
5. Known game issues
Shader compilation stutter on first launch
The first time new areas load (especially entering the Caspian or the Volga), the game compiles shaders on the fly, causing punctual microstutters. It disappears on later loads of the same area.
Crashes associated with Advanced PhysX on AMD GPUs
In the original version, enabling Advanced PhysX on systems with AMD GPUs and low-core-count CPUs could cause crashes or severe FPS drops in fights with simultaneous smoke and destruction.
Estado: Partially mitigated in Enhanced Edition, though it's still recommended to keep it disabled on AMD.
Insufficient VRAM causes low-resolution textures in the Caspian
On GPUs with 4-6GB of VRAM, the Caspian's open area can cause textures to dynamically degrade mid-match due to lack of memory, even with texture settings on Medium.
6. Frequently asked questions
Should I play the original version or the Enhanced Edition of Metro Exodus?▾
Why does the Caspian run much worse than the metro tunnels?▾
Can I disable ray tracing in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition?▾
Does DLSS or FSR 2.0 give more FPS in Metro Exodus?▾
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 Metro Exodus →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →