What are the Payday 3 best settings? Knowing which boxes and sliders to use in the game settings menu is no longer straightforward. We’ve pushed one of our test rigs to the limit to discover which settings you should use to get the most out of your PC build.

Will you need the best graphics card on the market? Thankfully, no. The Payday 3 system requirements paint an accessible picture, but we’re here to bring you the best settings for optimal performance with a balance of visual quality and fast frame rates. The Payday 3 PC settings are quite limited but it’s crucial to optimize any FPS shooter, especially if you want to secure the loot for maximum payout.

Here are the best Payday 3 settings for PC:

• Anti-aliasing: Off
• Effects: Ultra
• Foliage: Ultra
• Postprocessing: Ultra
• Shadows: Ultra
• Textures: Ultra
• Upscaling: Off
• View Distance: Ultra
• Nvidia DLSS: Quality

We at PCGamesN tested these settings on an MSI MPG Trident AS 11th Gen gaming PC. It has the following specs: Intel Core i7-11700F, MSI Ventus Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, 32GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, MSI B560 motherboard, and Windows 11 OS.

Payday 3, just like its predecessors, isn’t the most graphically intense experience, but when a heist goes wrong, it gets very chaotic and you want your system to be able to keep up. With the above settings and uncapped frame rate options, we were able to sit at a steady 120fps, only dropping into the high double digits during moments of mayhem when being swarmed by police when a heist went awry. We did all of our testing at 1080p, so bear in mind pushing for 1440p may require a lowering of key graphical settings to maximize your frame rate.

There is no in-game benchmarking tool, so the only way you’ll be able to get the most out of your components is with live testing. Avoid using the tutorial sections for this, as they’re far less demanding than the heists. We would advise using an invite or friends-only lobby to just cause chaos and really push your build to its limits. 

What do the Payday 3 settings mean?

Anti-aliasing

The anti-aliasing setting is very common in PC games and relates to the smoothing out of jagged edges in-game. During our testing, this setting clashed with DLSS as when both were enabled, there were harsh framerate drops. When only one was selected, performance was as expected. We opted to keep DLSS over anti-aliasing in this case as the ceiling for performance was around 5% higher.

Effects

This setting controls the visibility, and quantity of various effects such as smoke, sparks, flames, explosions, and other visual effects. A game like Payday 3 does benefit from many of these effects, so pushing this to ultra is key for visual quality. 

Foliage

Foliage refers to the density of plants, trees, flowers, etc. by increasing or decreasing the number of objects that are rendered per square area. While foliage isn’t a crucial part of Payday 3, there are plenty of outdoor areas that benefit from having this setting as high as possible.

Postprocessing

This is quite a loaded term, but postprocessing adjusts the quality of depth of field as well as a range of shading effects that all help enhance the quality of Payday 3’s lighting. 

Shadows

Self-explanatory, this setting adjusts the quality of shadows in a scene. With each level of shadow quality, there is a really noticeable increase in quality and we would advise pushing for ultra as a priority if your build can handle it. 

Textures

This is a big setting. Textures refer to the overall quality and sharpness of any textured object within Payday 3. It’s super recognizable when this option is lowered, and while the differences between high and ultra may be marginal, it wasn’t worth the extra 5-10fps gained when lowering this setting. 

Upscaling

Upscaling is a reconstruction technique that improves resolution using a lower-resolution image and stretching it. This setting was off as DLSS was already doing this in part and it’s redundant to have both upscaling and DLSS enabled unless your PC is really struggling with performance. In that case, it’s worth enabling upscaling as well. If your GPU doesn’t support DLSS, and you’re struggling to achieve a decent frame rate, this is also a good setting to enable.

View distance

Simply put, this setting adjusts the quality of images and objects that are in the distance. Depending on how you interact with Payday 3, you might want to lower this as there is a minor fps boost available. However, in our testing, it was better to have it enabled in order to have a clear view of the world rather than just the close-up environment. 

Nvidia DLSS

Given that we used an RTX 3070 for our testing, we had access to DLSS in Payday 3. This setting uses AI to produce a better overall performance of a game depending on the setting you choose. With Payday 3, we tried out the balanced and performance options but the game only came to life when quality was selected.

Need more help getting started with a life of crime outside of Payday 3? Check out the best crime games on PC for inspiration!