Hellblade 2 PC optimized settings – best graphics and performance options

Here's how to get 60fps or more in Hellblade 2 on PC

Ninja Theory

There's no doubt that Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is the best-looking game you can play right now. Despite being grounded in realism with its art style, the game looks gorgeous and is the best example of next-gen graphical features. But that also comes with a cost. What kind of PC hardware does it take to run it above 60fps? Is it possible to exceed its visual quality and performance on the Xbox Series X? The answer is yes, as it's easier to run than you'd expect.

Hellblade 2 is built with Unreal Engine 5, so you already have an idea of how it might scale across different GPUs. It's also a vastly linear experience, making it easy to benchmark and find optimized settings. The game's minimum requirements revealed by developer Ninja Theory are close to reality, unlike many modern PC games on the market.

Hellblade 2 PC benchmarks and best settings

1. Hellblade 2 PC optimized settings
2. Hellblade 2 PC benchmarks

For our testing, we used a PC with the following specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• GPU: Nvidia Geforce RTX 4080
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz
• Storage: WD SN850 M.2 SSD

For our target, we aimed to reach 60fps or above with the RTX 4080 at 4K, which is the resolution appropriate for that GPU. Of course, dropping the resolution to 1440p helped a lot, but it wasn't a good indication of how hard the game hits the GPU.

Hellblade 2 PC optimized settings

Here are the settings for getting the most out of Hellblade 2. / Ninja Theory/GLHF

After playing the game for over a dozen hours, and its length is much shorter than that, here are the optimized settings to get the best performance:

• Post-processing quality: High
• Effects quality: High
• Shadow quality: Medium
• Reflection quality: Medium
• Global illumination quality - Medium
• Volumetrics: Medium
• Texture quality: High
• View distance: High
• Foliage detail: Medium

After changing these settings, it's time to decide what kind of upscaling or resolution scaling you want.

• DLAA - Recommended for modern Nvidia GPUs (RTX 20 series and above)
• Intel XeSS - Recommended for modern Intel GPUs (Arc A series)
• FSR - Recommended for modern AMD GPUs (RX 5000 series and above)
• TSR - Recommended for older GPUs

Hellblade 2 is perhaps the best-looking PC game on the market. / Ninja Theory

Of course, these settings are for getting close to or exceeding 60fps, for GPUs at appropriate resolutions. Using these settings should be enough to run above 60fps on the RTX 3060 Ti at 1440p, or the RTX 4080 at 4K. But the best boost you can get is through upscaling and frame generation.

Using the appropriate DLSS/FSR mode, you can get close to 90fps or above with our optimized settings, provided you're using the correct GPU at the appropriate resolution. We recommend setting DLSS to Balanced mode at 4K, and Quality mode at 1440p on Nvidia GPUs. Combine that with Nvidia's DLSS 3-frame generation to play the game at 120fps or above.

The game lets you preview the scene being rendered from the settings menu, so it's easy to see how your changes impact the game's performance. Note - the frame rate counter in the settings menu won't be accurate when frame generation is enabled. To see the effects of frame generation, you'll have to resume the game to get the correct reading using external tools.

As for VRAM usage, the game uses just over 8GB at 4K at high settings, so don't try to run it at that resolution with mid-range GPUs. If you do, use DLSS to reduce the VRAM usage. DLAA will use the highest amount of VRAM.

Hellblade 2 PC benchmarks

Ninja Theory

Here's a look at how Hellblade 2 ran on our benchmarking PC with these optimized settings:

Resolution and Setting	Average Frame rate (RTX 4080)
4K (High)	45
4K (Optimized)	60
4K (Low)	69
4K (Optimized, DLSS frame generation)	90
4K (Optimized, DLSS frame generation+ DLSS Quality mode)	118
1440p (High)	68
1440p (Optimized)	82
1440p (Optimized, DLSS Quality mode)	93
1440p (Optimized, DLSS frame generation)	112
1440p (Optimized, DLSS quality mode+ frame generation)	160

After configuring the settings to be as perfect as you want, it's time to collect all collectibles and hunt for achievements without thinking about performance dips. We never ran into any major bugs or glitches, as noted in our Hellblade 2 review.

Hellblade 2 is available on PC and Xbox Series X|S, and can also be downloaded from Xbox Game Pass.