How to improve FPS in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (PC)
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is Nixxes' PC port of Insomniac Games' PS5 exclusive, built on an evolution of the Insomniac Engine we already saw in Spider-Man Remastered and Miles Morales. The big difference from those two entries is scale: all of Manhattan is open at once, with instant transitions between Peter Parker and Miles Morales, and ray tracing is present by default in reflections and shadows across almost every quality level, not as an extra option reserved for specific modes. Swinging at top speed across the whole city forces the engine to stream geometry, textures, and NPCs continuously, while RT rays recalculate reflections on storefronts and puddles in real time throughout the traversal.
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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 +49% free FPS.
Ray-Traced Reflections
Traced reflections on storefronts, puddles, and metallic surfaces across Manhattan are among the port's most expensive effects, especially during fast swinging where the reflected scene keeps changing constantly. Turning them off and letting the game fall back to screen-space reflections frees up a considerable amount of FPS.
RT Shadows
Ray-traced shadows replace the traditional shadow maps and add a noticeable GPU cost in outdoor scenes with a lot of geometric detail, like the city's rooftops and alleyways.
Crowd Density
Controls how many pedestrians the engine simulates and renders at once on Manhattan's streets; on Very High the CPU has to manage the AI for quite a few more simultaneous NPCs than you'd ever notice while swinging.
Traffic Density
Just like pedestrian density, this setting adds physics and collision simulation cost for cars driving through the city, a load that's rarely noticed while flying above the buildings.
Hair Quality
Physics-driven hair simulation only affects a handful of characters out of costume (Harry, MJ, Peter unmasked in cutscenes), so its cost on Very High almost never pays off outside those specific scenes.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
RT Ambient Occlusion
Ray-traced ambient occlusion reinforces contact between nearby geometry, but the engine already uses a competent rasterized SSAO/HBAO+ that covers most cases at a much lower cost.
Weather Particle Quality
Rain and snow sequences generate a large number of simulated particles that pile up especially in panoramic shots of the city, a cost that on Very High shows up more in the FPS counter than on screen.
Level of Detail
Determines how far away the engine reduces polygon detail on buildings and NPCs as you move quickly through Manhattan; lowering it from Very High to High frees up CPU and streaming bandwidth without noticeable popping.
Screen Space Reflections
When ray-traced reflections are disabled, this rasterized setting takes over the job; its cost on Ultra rises more than you'd notice except in large puddles and glass seen up close.
Texture Filtering
Anisotropic filtering affects the sharpness of angled textures, like the asphalt seen from above while swinging; its cost is low even at maximum on modern GPUs.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS
+35% FPSThe game supports DLSS 3 with Frame Generation, the most cost-effective option on RTX 40 GPUs to keep RT Reflections on at 1440p or 4K without sacrificing smoothness during high-speed swinging.
AMD FSR
+28% FPSFSR 3.1 works on any card, NVIDIA and AMD included, and its associated Frame Generation especially helps CPUs that are more limited by the open city's constant streaming.
Intel XeSS
+26% FPSXeSS 2 comes with its own frame generation and offers better image quality than FSR in fast motion, though its optimal performance is reserved for Intel Arc GPUs.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable DLSS Frame Generation together with RT Reflections on RTX 40 cards to get the best of both worlds: full ray tracing and a high framerate while swinging.
- •Update to the latest Game Ready drivers before playing; Nixxes and NVIDIA released several specific optimizations for this port in the months after launch.
- •On 8 GB VRAM cards, avoid combining Texture Quality on Very High with RT Reflections at the same time; the combined usage can cause stuttering from memory pressure.
AMD
- •If your AMD GPU doesn't have strong RT acceleration, turn off RT Reflections and RT Shadows and lean on FSR 3.1 with Frame Generation to make up the framerate.
- •Enable Radeon Anti-Lag to reduce input latency during fast aerial combat, where the lag is especially noticeable.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS; it helps asset streaming while flying at top speed across the city.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an SSD, preferably NVMe: the continuous streaming of Manhattan's geometry and textures while swinging depends directly on disk read speed.
- •Let the game finish shader compilation on first launch without interrupting it; skipping it or closing the game halfway through is the most common cause of stuttering in the first sessions.
- •If you experience crashes at startup or during loading, verify game file integrity and update to the latest version before touching graphics settings; several of the launch crashes were fixed via patch.
5. Known game issues
Stuttering from shader compilation in the first hours
When you launch the game for the first time or after a driver update, the engine compiles shaders in the background, causing occasional hitches that are especially noticeable during fast swinging through new areas of the city until the cache finishes building.
High VRAM usage with RT and high textures
Combining Ray-Traced Reflections or RT Shadows with Texture Quality on Very High can easily go past 8 GB of VRAM at 1440p, causing stuttering from memory swapping on cards with that amount of VRAM or less.
Crashes and instability at launch
The first weeks after the January 2025 launch brought reports of unexpected shutdowns and hangs during loading transitions, a stability issue that Nixxes kept fixing through successive patches over the following weeks.
6. Frequently asked questions
Is it worth turning on ray tracing in Spider-Man 2?▾
Which setting gives the most FPS with the least visual loss?▾
Why does the game stutter right when I start playing?▾
Does Marvel's Spider-Man 2 have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
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Calculate FPS for Marvel's Spider-Man 2 →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →