ARK Survival Ascended: Improve Performance - How to Increase your FPS

If you're still having performance issues in ARK: Survival Ascended (ASA), we have some tips for you to improve your FPS. From Steam launch options to settings to console commands, you can more than double your FPS with our tips.

Here's what you can expect in our guide:

• • You get the best settings to get the most performance out of the game without sacrificing quality.

• • Steam launch options and various console commands provide further FPS boosts if you want even more performance.

Before you Start ASA: These Options are Important for Maximum FPS

Before you start ARK: Survival Ascended, you should make sure that you have installed the game on an SSD hard drive if you have one available. Studio Wildcard also recommends this and will improve FPS and loading times.

If you have installed ASA correctly, you can also adjust the Steam launch options to get even better performance:

1. 1. Open your Steam library.
   2. Right-click on ARK: Survival Acended and select Properties.
   3. Under General, you will find a text area at the bottom where you can add launch options.
   4. Enter -USEALLAVAILABLECORES here and close the window.

If you start ARK now, all available cores of your computer will be used, and the load will be distributed better. This can improve performance, depending on your computer. The option doesn't hurt, so you should include it.

ARK Performance Boost with these Game Settings

If you're in the game and have poor performance, you can still get a lot out of it with the game settings without completely lowering the quality. We were able to improve our performance from around 25 FPS to 60 FPS with our RTX 3080ti ultra-widescreen setup.

You should pay attention to the following things in the video settings:

• • Resolution: 1920x1080 or your native screen resolution. In our case, we left the resolution at 3440x1440.

• • Window Mode: Fullscreen.

• • Resolution Scale: 70 to 100 – depends on your FPS.

• • Advanced Graphics: Medium.

• • Anti Aliasing: Low.

• • View Distance: Low.

• • Textures:
    • • 8 GB VRAM: High.
    • • 6 GB VRAM: Medium.
    • • 4 GB VRAM: Low.

• • Post Processing: Medium.

• • General Shadows: Medium or High.

• • Global Illumination Quality: High.

• • Effects Quality: Medium. Set it to Low when the FPS drops when many effects are active.

• • Foliage Quality: Medium.

• • Max-Framerate: Here you should remove the checkmark or alternatively limit the FPS below your maximum. For example, if you reach 70 FPS, set it to 60 FPS. If you reach 60, set it to 50-55.

• • Motion Blur: Off.

• • Light Bloom: Off.

• • Light Shafts: Off.

• • Low-Light Enhancement: Off.

• • Enable Foliage & Fluid Interactions: Off.

• • Foliage Interaction Distance Multiplier: 0.01.

• • Foliage Interaction Distance Limit: 0.5.

• • Foliage Interaction Quantity Limit: 0.5.

• • Enable Footstep Particles: Off.

• • Enable Footstep Decals: Off.

• • Disable HLOD: Off.

If you have an Nvidia graphics card, pay attention to the following things in the RTX settings:

• • Nvidia DLSS: ON.

• • Frame Generation: ON. (If available).

• • Super Resolution: Quality.

• • Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: ON.

Once you have applied all the settings, save them and return to the main menu. Then enter your server or single-player store again to see the result.

In the comparison above, you can see on the left how ASA looks on the highest settings but only runs at around 20 FPS. On the right is the version with the above settings. Visually, this is admittedly a downgrade, mainly the detail density, but ASA still looks good, and the FPS boost is well worth it.

Even more FPS in ASA Thanks to Console Commands

If you want to get even more FPS out of your game, you can use the console commands to disable some resource-hogging options. We'll tell you how!

If you are playing on your server or in single-player, you must first activate the admin console. You do this via the game options:

1. 1. Press Esc and click on Options.
   2. Click on the “Advanced” tab.
   3. Activate the console on the left side: “Console Access: ON”.
   4. Save the change and return to the game.

Using the ^ key at the top left of your keyboard, next to the 1, opens the console. This is a small black text window at the bottom of the screen. Now you can enter various commands that will further improve your performance.

The best options:

• • r.VolumetricCloud 0 – Turns off the volumetric clouds.

• • r.VolumetricFog 0 – Turns off the volumetric fog.

With the clouds and fog turned off, you get about 10 to 15 FPS more. In addition, the colors look much stronger and the visual downgrade of the previous options is somewhat compensated.

With our setup, we were able to achieve a stable 70-75 FPS. Studio Wildcard is still working on performance improvements that will hopefully soon make it unnecessary to turn down the settings so much.

Share your thoughts in the comments below. For more ARK: Survival Evolved guides, take a look at our guide overview, and join our Discord server to chat with other players and us.