Best PC Settings & Performance
Recommended graphics settings for smooth performance, plus how to check if your PC is the bottleneck.
007 First Light runs on IO Interactive's Glacier engine, which has historically scaled well across PC hardware. It supports NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR upscaling plus frame generation, so even mid-range GPUs can hit smooth frame rates with the right tweaks. Here's how to balance the spy-thriller visuals against performance.
System requirements
The game targets modern hardware but isn't especially CPU-heavy — most players are GPU-limited rather than CPU-limited. A minimum of 6GB of VRAM is required; cards with only 4GB may run it but with visual bugs. 16GB of system RAM is the practical baseline, and you'll want an SSD with roughly 80GB free.
- Recommended (1440p/60 or 4K/60 High): Ryzen 5 7600 or Core i5-13500, 16GB RAM, Radeon RX 7800 XT or GeForce RTX 4070.
- 4K/60 High: step up to an RX 7900 XTX or RTX 4080 (16GB VRAM).
- Ultra / 4K high-framerate with DLSS 4.5: Ryzen 7 7700X or Core i5-13600K, 32GB RAM, RTX 5080 (16GB VRAM).
- Storage: ~80GB on an SSD; OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit.
Recommended balanced settings
For a clean balance of image quality and frame rate, run the game in exclusive Fullscreen and let upscaling do the heavy lifting. Textures, terrain, shadows and reflections can sit at High/Ultra on most capable cards with little frame-rate cost; the bigger savings come from volumetric and lighting effects.
- Display Mode: Fullscreen.
- Texture Quality: High–Ultra (with 8x anisotropic filtering).
- Terrain & Shadow Quality: High–Ultra.
- Reflection Quality: High–Ultra (one of the most visible settings, so keep it up if you can).
- Gamma: 1 (raise only on a low-quality panel).
Upscaling and frame generation
Upscaling is the single biggest lever for performance. Use NVIDIA DLSS (Super Resolution) on Quality mode for RTX cards, or AMD FSR at Quality on Radeon cards. Frame generation can then multiply your frame rate — the guidance is that you can target a ~30fps base and use frame gen to double or triple it without ruining the feel.
RTX 50-series owners should use Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation (DMFG), which only adds generated frames when needed. At 4K Ultra with DLSS 4.5 Quality, testing reported a minimum around 80fps and averages of 90–110fps on high-end cards.
- RTX 40-series: DLSS Quality + standard Frame Generation.
- RTX 50-series: DLSS 4.5 Quality + Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation.
- AMD: FSR at Quality or lower depending on your target resolution.
What to lower for more frames
If you need to claw back performance, the effects-heavy settings give the most frames for the least visual loss. Reflection quality and shadows show the clearest difference between low and ultra, so drop those last.
- Lower first: volumetric fog and volumetric effects quality.
- Lower next: global illumination quality.
- Disable optional post-processing you don't like: motion blur, film grain, chromatic aberration.
- Keep VRAM usage near ~6GB on sub-8GB cards and ~10GB on higher-capacity cards.
- Note: ray reconstruction and path tracing are not in the PC version at launch — the developers plan to add them later, so there's no RT to tune yet.
Is your PC the bottleneck?
Because First Light is mostly GPU-bound, stuttering or low frame rates usually point to the graphics card (or VRAM) rather than the CPU. Before you spend hours tweaking sliders, it's worth confirming which component is actually holding you back.
If you're unsure whether your CPU, GPU or RAM is the limiting factor, run a quick hardware bottleneck check — BuildKit's PC Bottleneck Analyzer (pcbottleneck.buildkit.store) reports which part of your build is capping performance so you tune (or upgrade) the right thing.
FAQ
What are the PC system requirements for 007 First Light?
You need Windows 10/11 64-bit, at least 16GB RAM, and a GPU with a minimum of 6GB VRAM. For 1440p/60 or 4K/60 on High, target a Ryzen 5 7600 / Core i5-13500 with an RX 7800 XT or RTX 4070, plus ~80GB of SSD space.
Does 007 First Light support DLSS and frame generation?
Yes. It supports NVIDIA DLSS (including DLSS 4.5 and Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation on RTX 50-series) and AMD FSR, plus frame generation. Upscaling on Quality mode is the best way to boost frame rate with minimal image-quality loss.
What settings should I lower to improve performance in 007 First Light?
Drop volumetric fog and volumetric effects first, then global illumination, and disable motion blur, film grain and chromatic aberration. Keep reflections and shadows higher — they're the most visible quality settings.
Does 007 First Light have ray tracing on PC?
Not at launch. Ray reconstruction and path tracing are planned in a future update, so there are no RT settings to configure in the initial PC release.
How do I know if my PC can run 007 First Light well?
The game is GPU-bound, so your graphics card and VRAM matter most. Run a bottleneck check (for example pcbottleneck.buildkit.store) to confirm whether your GPU, CPU or RAM is the limiting factor before tuning settings.