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Official targets and what they mean for your PC
Steam lists two performance targets for Valor Mortis. The minimum tier aims for 30 frames per second at 1080p on Low with upscaling. The recommended tier aims for 60 frames per second at 1440p on Medium with upscaling. These are targets, not guarantees for every scene or graphics-card driver, but they provide a useful baseline for choosing settings.
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| Target | Resolution and frame rate | Graphics setting | Example GPU class | Other listed requirements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | 1080p at 30 FPS | Low with upscaling | AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti | 16GB RAM, DirectX 12, Windows 10/11, 60GB storage, SSD |
| Recommended | 1440p at 60 FPS | Medium with upscaling | AMD Radeon RX 6800 or Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 | 16GB RAM, DirectX 12, Windows 10/11, 60GB storage, SSD |
The storage requirement is specifically an SSD with at least 60GB free. A hard-disk installation does not meet the published requirement, and moving the game to an SSD is a prerequisite rather than an optional optimization. Leave additional free space for Windows, shader caches and updates instead of filling the drive to its limit.
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Start by deciding whether you are trying to hold 30, 60 or a higher refresh-rate target. A stable 60 FPS usually feels better than an uncapped rate that repeatedly falls into the 40s. If your monitor refreshes at 60Hz, cap the game at 60 FPS or slightly below. For a 144Hz or 165Hz display, use the highest cap your system can hold consistently; do not chase a number that causes frequent frame-time spikes.
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1080p performance profile
This profile is for systems below the recommended class or for players who prefer consistent frame pacing over extra detail.
- Resolution: 1920×1080.
- Preset: Begin at Medium if your GPU is near the recommended class; otherwise begin at Low.
- Upscaler: Quality mode first. Move to Balanced only if the frame rate remains below your display target.
- Ray tracing: Off.
- Motion blur: Off when blur makes first-person attacks or camera movement harder to read.
- Frame cap: Set 30 FPS for the official minimum target, or a higher cap only when testing confirms stable frame times.
Use the 30-FPS minimum target as a floor, not an objective for every computer. Once frame pacing is stable, raise texture or lighting quality one option at a time and retest the same demanding area.
1440p balanced profile
This is the closest match to Steam’s recommended specification.
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- Preset: Medium.
- Upscaler: DLSS Quality on supported Nvidia hardware; FSR Quality on supported AMD hardware; XeSS or TSR when those options are exposed and stable on your system.
- Ray tracing: Off while establishing a 60-FPS baseline.
- Motion blur: Off if you value a sharper image during combat.
- Frame cap: 60 FPS, or a cap just below your monitor’s refresh rate if that produces steadier pacing.
Quality upscaling renders the internal image below the output resolution and reconstructs detail. It generally preserves more clarity than dropping the entire preset, so it should be your first performance adjustment after confirming that drivers and storage meet the requirements.
High-fidelity profile
Use this profile only when your hardware has clear headroom above the recommended class.
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- Preset: High, increased one setting at a time rather than switching every option at once.
- Upscaler: Quality mode, or the game’s native anti-aliasing equivalent if the GPU can sustain the target without reconstruction artifacts.
- Ray tracing: Optional. Treat it as the first visual feature to disable when frame time rises.
- Frame generation: Consider it only after the base frame rate already feels responsive. A launch-menu guide reports an FSR 3 frame-generation control, but availability can vary by build.
- Frame cap: Choose a cap that the system can hold in heavy combat, not just in quiet interiors.
No reliable independent multi-GPU average-FPS or 1% low table is available for the final build, so a universal “this card gets this frame rate” claim would be misleading. Use the official hardware tiers and your own frame-time behavior to set expectations.
Upscaling: DLSS, FSR, XeSS and TSR
Launch guides show DLSS, FSR, XeSS and TSR controls in captured settings menus. Those reports identify the options seen in particular builds; they are not an official, exhaustive list for every release or hardware combination. A menu can also expose an option that behaves differently after a game update.
Start with Quality mode
Set the upscaler to Quality before lowering the preset. Play through a repeatable demanding section for several minutes, watching both the instantaneous frame rate and whether camera movement remains smooth. If the target is still missed, try Balanced. Performance modes can recover more GPU time, but they reduce the internal resolution and make shimmering, fine geometry and distant detail more noticeable.
Which upscaler should you pick?
| Option | Best first use | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| DLSS | Supported Nvidia GPUs, beginning with Quality | Reconstruction artifacts or ghosting in motion; behavior depends on the installed game build and driver. |
| FSR | Supported AMD hardware and systems where FSR is the most stable exposed option | Shimmering and loss of fine detail as you move from Quality to Balanced or Performance. |
| XeSS | Systems where the option is exposed and stable | Image stability and frame-time consistency in your particular scene. |
| TSR | A useful alternative when the other reconstruction options are unavailable or less stable | Temporal artifacts, softness and whether the output remains clear during fast turns. |
There is no universal winner independent of GPU, driver and game build. Keep the option that delivers the clearest moving image while holding your chosen frame-time target. Changing upscalers without changing any other setting makes it easier to identify which reconstruction method suits your system.
Ray tracing and the settings that cost the most
A launch guide reports that High-and-above modes for an indirect-lighting, sky-shadow and ambient-occlusion setting use more accurate ray-tracing methods. Those methods improve lighting fidelity but add GPU work. Because the exact control naming and grouping can vary between builds, look for the game’s ray-traced lighting, shadows or ambient-occlusion controls rather than assuming every menu uses the same label.
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Use ray tracing as a late-stage toggle
- Turn ray tracing off and establish your target frame rate with the desired resolution, preset and upscaler.
- Confirm that heavy combat and camera turns do not produce repeated frame-time spikes.
- Enable the ray-traced option and repeat the same test.
- If the target is no longer stable, disable ray tracing before reducing the upscaler below Quality.
This order protects image clarity: you keep a higher-resolution reconstructed image and the Medium or High preset before sacrificing the expensive lighting feature. If you have substantial headroom, ray tracing can be worthwhile for atmosphere, but it should not be enabled by default on a system that is still struggling to hold 60 FPS.
Motion blur, frame caps and combat clarity
Motion blur is a preference control rather than a guaranteed performance fix. The launch-menu guide reports a motion-blur setting, and disabling it is sensible when blur obscures first-person attacks, makes camera movement difficult to track or leaves the image looking soft. If you enjoy cinematic movement and can read attacks clearly, leaving it enabled is also valid; test it in combat rather than judging it from a static room.
A frame cap limits the renderer’s workload and can reduce oscillation between very high and very low frame rates. Set the cap to a level your system can sustain in the most demanding scenes. A cap slightly below the monitor refresh rate can improve pacing when an uncapped game repeatedly collides with the display’s refresh ceiling. The best cap is the one that produces consistent frame times, not necessarily the highest number shown by an overlay.
How to tune settings without losing track of the cause
Changing many options simultaneously makes troubleshooting difficult. Use a controlled sequence so every result has an identifiable cause.
- Prepare the test: Close unnecessary background applications, launch the game from the SSD and choose a repeatable area with combat or dense effects.
- Set the output: Select your monitor’s native 1080p or 1440p resolution and choose a frame cap that matches your goal.
- Choose the baseline: Use Low or Medium, Quality upscaling and ray tracing off.
- Check pacing: Observe several minutes of movement and combat instead of relying on a short peak-FPS reading.
- Raise one option: Increase texture, lighting or shadow quality individually, then retest the same route.
- Test expensive features last: Try ray tracing and, if available in your build, frame generation only after the base image feels responsive.
- Keep the last stable configuration: If a change introduces spikes or distracting artifacts, revert that option rather than compensating by lowering every other setting.
Frame generation deserves particular caution. It can increase the displayed frame rate, but it does not replace a responsive base frame rate. If camera input already feels delayed or uneven before enabling it, fix the underlying GPU or CPU limitation first.
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Fixing stutter and major performance drops
Follow this order so software configuration problems are separated from hardware limits.
1. Update the graphics driver
An October 16, 2026 developer update added GPU-driver detection. The game can now show an automated notification when it detects an outdated driver, and the developer says current drivers can produce meaningful performance and stability improvements. Install the current driver for your GPU, restart Windows, and retest before changing multiple graphics options.
2. Reset carried-over demo or playtest settings
If you played the demo or playtest and now experience stutters or significant drops, the developer recommends deleting this file:
AppData\Local\ValorMortis\Saved\Config\Windows\GameUserSettings.iniExit the game first, delete the file, relaunch and retune the settings. This removes the old game-settings file; it does not change the recommended hardware requirements. Record your preferred options before deleting the file so you can reapply them deliberately rather than restoring every old value at once.
3. Verify the SSD requirement
Confirm that the installation is on an SSD and that at least 60GB is free. If the drive is nearly full, clear space before judging performance. Streaming and loading behavior can be affected by storage constraints, and an HDD installation does not satisfy the published requirement.
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4. Isolate the expensive control
With drivers current and the configuration reset, keep ray tracing off and use Quality upscaling. If the game is stable, enable one feature at a time. A sudden change after ray tracing points to lighting cost; a change after switching from Quality to Balanced or Performance points to reconstruction behavior; a change after enabling frame generation points to that feature’s build-specific implementation. Revert the last change that caused the spike.
Can your PC run Valor Mortis at 1440p?
The clearest official answer is conditional: Steam’s recommended tier targets 60 FPS at 1440p on Medium with upscaling using an RX 6800 or RTX 3070-class GPU, alongside 16GB of RAM, DirectX 12, Windows 10 or 11, and an SSD with 60GB available. A system below that tier may still run at 1440p, but you should expect to use a lower preset, a more aggressive upscaler mode or a lower frame-rate target.
If your GPU is close to the recommended class, begin with Medium, Quality upscaling and ray tracing off. If 60 FPS is not stable, try Balanced before abandoning 1440p. If the image becomes too soft or unstable, 1080p with Quality upscaling can be a better experience than 1440p at Performance mode. Conversely, a system above the recommended tier can test High and ray tracing, but only after proving that Medium at 60 FPS is stable in demanding scenes.
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A practical decision framework
| Symptom | First change | Why |
|---|---|---|
| GPU usage is high and frame rate is below target | Use Quality, then Balanced upscaling; disable ray tracing | These changes reduce render cost while preserving more of the preset than switching everything to Low. |
| Frame rate is high but pacing feels uneven | Apply a stable frame cap and test with ray tracing off | A cap can reduce oscillation and makes frame-time behavior easier to evaluate. |
| Image is hard to read during attacks | Disable motion blur and return the upscaler to Quality | Both changes prioritize motion clarity. |
| Stutter began after using a demo or playtest | Delete the specified GameUserSettings.ini file, relaunch and retune | The developer specifically recommends this reset for carried-over settings. |
| Performance changed after an update | Update the GPU driver and retest the baseline | The October 16 update added driver detection and highlights outdated drivers as a stability concern. |
Recommended starting points at a glance
| Use case | Resolution | Preset | Upscaling | Ray tracing | Motion blur | Frame target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Below recommended hardware | 1080p | Low, or Medium if stable | Quality, then Balanced if necessary | Off | Off for clearer combat | 30 FPS minimum target; higher only when stable |
| Recommended hardware | 1440p | Medium | DLSS Quality on supported Nvidia; FSR Quality on supported AMD; XeSS or TSR if stable | Off initially | Off if preferred | 60 FPS |
| Headroom above recommended | Native target resolution | High, raised one option at a time | Quality or native anti-aliasing equivalent | Optional after baseline | Preference | Your monitor’s sustainable refresh target |
These profiles are starting points, not benchmark guarantees. Build version, driver version, scene complexity and the rest of your system can change the result. The reliable method is to establish a stable baseline, change one control, and keep the clearest configuration that holds your chosen frame-time target.
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