best Marvel Rivals settings
Best Marvel Rivals settings for FPS and frame-time consistency
Last updated
What are the best Marvel Rivals settings on PC?
Marvel Rivals runs on Unreal Engine 5, and one setting dominates everything else: Lumen global illumination. Turning it off, or down to a screen-space alternative, recovers more performance than every other graphics option combined. After that, cap the frame rate to something you can hold, enable Reflex, and if you installed the high-resolution texture pack and have 8GB of VRAM, remove it.
An Unreal Engine 5 title, so its two dominant performance costs are Lumen global illumination and shader compilation -- both of which have specific, known fixes rather than general tuning.
Recommended Marvel Rivals settings
| Setting | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Global Illumination (Lumen) | Off, or SSGI Low | By a wide margin the most expensive setting in the game. Unreal Engine 5's Lumen is a fully dynamic GI solution and it is not designed around competitive frame rates. |
| Reflection Quality | Low or Screen Space | Lumen reflections carry the same cost profile as Lumen GI. Screen-space reflections are a fraction of the price. |
| Model Detail | Low or Medium | Drives draw calls and geometry cost. In a hero shooter, character silhouettes stay readable at Low. |
| Shadow Detail | Low | One of the most expensive categories in any engine, and lowering it makes enemies in shadowed areas easier to see rather than harder. |
| Post Processing | Low | Bloom, depth of field and similar. Low removes cost and clutter together. |
| Anti-Aliasing / Upscaling | DLSS or FSR at Quality | Better frame-time cost than native TAA at similar clarity. Use the upscaler native to your GPU. |
| NVIDIA Reflex | On | Shortens the render queue. The most effective latency option in the menu. |
| High-Resolution Texture Pack | Uninstall on 8GB cards | It is an optional download that pushes VRAM past what an 8GB card can hold, and the resulting eviction presents as stutter rather than as lower FPS. |
| Your GPU | Lumen GI | Sensible target |
|---|---|---|
| 8GB VRAM, entry tier | Off | Cap at a rate you hold during a full team fight, not in the practice range. |
| 12GB VRAM, mid tier | Off for competitive, SSGI Low for casual | Hold your monitor's refresh rate if you can; otherwise cap below your worst case. |
| 16GB+ VRAM, high tier | Your choice — it is still the most expensive setting | Even here, Lumen off is the difference between holding a high refresh rate and not. |
Why Lumen costs so much
Lumen is Unreal Engine 5's dynamic global illumination system. Rather than baking lighting ahead of time, it computes indirect light as the scene changes, which is what allows lighting to respond to a destroyed wall or a moved light source. That flexibility is expensive every single frame.
In a competitive hero shooter, the visual benefit is largely invisible during play and the cost is not. Screen-space global illumination approximates the effect using information already on screen at a small fraction of the price, which is why SSGI Low is the sensible middle option.
Cap the frame rate to your worst case, not your best
The most common mistake in this game is setting a cap based on what the frame rate does in a quiet moment. A rate that sits at 140 in the lobby and drops to 55 in a full team fight feels considerably worse than a steady 90, because the swing itself is what the eye notices.
Play a few full matches, watch what the frame rate does during the worst fights, and cap slightly below that. A steady number you always meet is worth more than a high number you sometimes meet.
Force the right GPU on a laptop
On laptops with both integrated and discrete graphics, Windows sometimes runs the game on the integrated GPU, which produces frame rates far below what the hardware should deliver.
Set it explicitly in Settings, System, Display, Graphics: add the game executable and set its preference to High performance. This is worth checking before any settings work, because it makes every other change irrelevant if it is wrong.
What do people get wrong when tuning Marvel Rivals?
- Leaving Lumen global illumination on and then lowering every other setting, which gives up visual quality without addressing the actual cost.
- Installing the high-resolution texture pack on an 8GB card and treating the resulting eviction stutter as a hardware limit.
- Capping the frame rate based on lobby performance rather than on what happens during a full team fight.
- Running on the integrated GPU on a laptop without realising it.
- Leaving Discord, Steam and browser overlays running, each of which hooks the presentation path.
- Changing several settings at once, so nothing can be attributed when the result improves or does not.
What else is worth knowing?
- Clear the DirectX shader cache if stutter appears suddenly mid-session. Unreal Engine titles are particularly sensitive to a stale cache.
- Turn Lumen off first and measure. It is the one setting in this game where the difference is large enough to see without an overlay.
- Keep textures reasonably high if you have the VRAM. Texture resolution costs memory, not frame time, and character readability matters in a hero shooter.
- Select the nearest server region explicitly rather than leaving it automatic, and check it after every patch.
Can you apply the Windows-side changes automatically?
Everything above that lives inside Marvel Rivals you set yourself — no tool should be changing your in-game options for you. The Windows-side items are a different matter: power plans, background processes, service start types and network adapter settings are the same work on every machine, and working through them by hand while keeping track of what you altered is the tedious part.
JINSHI Tweaks is a one-time purchase that applies those Windows-side changes in one pass, creates a System Restore Point first, and lets each one be reversed individually. It does not touch game files, read game memory, inject into any process, or install a driver. Our settings reference documents what each change does.
Marvel Rivals performance: frequently asked questions
Why is Marvel Rivals so demanding?
It is an Unreal Engine 5 title using Lumen dynamic global illumination, which computes indirect lighting every frame rather than baking it ahead of time. That single feature is the dominant cost, which is why turning it off recovers more than every other setting combined.
Should I turn off Lumen global illumination?
For competitive play, yes. The visual benefit is largely invisible during a fight and the cost is large and constant. SSGI Low is a reasonable middle ground for casual play.
Is 8GB of VRAM enough?
For the base game with Lumen off, yes. With the optional high-resolution texture pack installed, no -- it pushes past what an 8GB card holds, and the eviction that follows presents as stutter.
Why does it stutter at the start of a match?
Shader compilation. Unreal Engine compiles shaders on first encounter, so the first match after an update or a cache clear hitches while it builds. It should settle from the second match onwards.
Does frame generation help?
It raises the counter without improving responsiveness, because generated frames carry no new input. In a game where aim precision decides fights, that is the wrong trade.