Permafrost Best Settings

Know your hardware first

Permafrost is built on Unreal Engine 5 and is demanding for a survival game. The Steam page lists a GTX 1060 6GB or RX 590 as the minimum and an RTX 3070 Ti 8GB or RX 6750 XT 12GB as recommended. Both tiers need 16 GB of RAM and 30 GB of storage on Windows 10.

The minimum uses DirectX 11, while the recommended setup lists DirectX 12. That matters for the crash fix later on this page. If you are on a laptop, check can my laptop run Permafrost before tweaking anything.

What players saw in the preview

Performance varied a lot during the October 2026 preview. These are reports players and creators posted, not official benchmarks. They give a rough idea of what to expect.

Stutter was the more common complaint than low averages. Players saw hitching when entering new zones or Cold Zones, while mining and right after fast travel. One reviewer who tried High and Medium saw little difference in performance between them.

Even top-end systems were not immune. A player with an RTX 4090 and 64 GB of RAM capped the game at 120 FPS but still saw sudden lag spikes and freezes. Another player with similar hardware said it ran smoothly on max settings and suggested checking drivers first.

A good starting setup

There is no official recommended settings guide, so this setup combines what worked for players. Start here, play for a while in a busy area, then adjust. Change one thing at a time so you know what helped.

1. Choose the Medium preset.
2. Turn on DLSS (NVIDIA) or FSR in Quality mode.
3. Enable frame generation if your graphics card supports it.
4. Lower shadows and post-processing before anything else.
5. Turn off motion blur and camera shake.
6. Cap your frame rate, for example at 60 or 120.

If you have no upscaler, lower the screen percentage below 100% instead. It has a similar effect at a cost in sharpness. Capping the frame rate keeps spikes from feeling worse than they are.

Upscaling and frame generation

Upscaling is the biggest single gain because it renders the game at a lower resolution and rebuilds the image. A requirements guide recommends switching DLSS or FSR to Quality mode before turning shadows down. It also notes that at 1080p the gain is smaller and the image loses some sharpness.

Frame generation made a large difference in the preview. One creator said they struggled to stay above 50 to 60 FPS without it, and that it nearly doubled the number when enabled. It does not remove the stutter on zone loads, though.

Players on high-end cards also compared DLAA and DLSS. DLAA looked better but cost frames, while DLSS Quality gave a noticeable boost. On most systems DLSS or FSR Quality is the better balance.

Comfort and control options

Motion blur and camera shake options were added in a 2024 demo update, and they are worth turning off. One player with motion sickness disabled motion blur straight away. An early known issue said motion blur off could cause display problems on some hardware, so test it once.

Other useful options include invert camera, mouse sensitivity and measurement units. You can toggle the HUD for clean screenshots, which used the End key in the playtest. Some keys could not be rebound in the playtest, and full rebinding was promised.

Controller support is partial for now. A developer said about half of full controller support was done, with the inventory being the hardest part. Keep a mouse nearby for crafting menus if you play on a pad.

Fixing crashes and black screens

The fix players shared most was launching in DirectX 11 mode. Several players crashed on DirectX 12 at character creation with an Unreal Engine GPU crash message, or hung while loading. Switching to DirectX 11 let them play normally.

• Launch in DirectX 11 if DirectX 12 crashes.
• Update or reinstall your graphics driver.
• Disable overlays such as Discord, the NVIDIA app or Steam's overlay.
• Return any overclock or undervolt to stock while testing.
• Install the game on an SSD to reduce loading stutter.

Overlays are a frequent cause of micro-stutter, according to a hardware guide. On laptops, play plugged in with a performance power plan. If fullscreen stutters on Windows 11, borderless window mode may help.

Driver and graphics card tips

A few settings outside the game can help as well. A hardware guide on Permafrost's requirements lists these driver-level tweaks for each brand. None of them are official recommendations from the developers.

• Turn on Resizable BAR (NVIDIA) or Smart Access Memory (AMD) if your system supports it.
• Use NVIDIA's low-latency mode for a more responsive feel.
• Do not force anti-aliasing in the driver control panel; let the game handle it.
• Turn Radeon Chill off while you measure performance on AMD cards.

After changing driver settings, restart the game before judging the result. Compare the same area at the same time of day, because weather and night change the load. A storm in a busy town is a good stress test.

What the developers are doing

After the demo, the team listed performance as a key goal. Their plan was to reduce FPS drops and stuttering, fix memory leaks in long sessions and improve optimisation for lower-end hardware. A demo patch already cut video memory use from about 6 GB to 4.3 GB in tests.

A later development update promised quicker loading times, steadier frame rates and faster UI rendering. When players reported crashes before launch, an official reply said those issues are handled separately from the content roadmap. Expect settings advice to change as patches arrive.

Re-test your settings after each update, since a fix may let you raise quality again. All numbers on this page come from the preview build. See Permafrost on Steam for the latest official news.