Madden NFL 21 has launched for PC and consoles. Having a smooth and fluid experience in sports games is important especially in multiplayer. In our Madden NFL 21 PC Tweaks guide, we’ll help players with how to get 60 FPS along with a recommendation for each of the game’s graphical settings for mid-range systems.
Madden NFL 21 is a good looking game and is fairly optimized. However, older or mid-range systems can find it difficult to run the game at 60 FPS. In our PC tweaks guide, I’ll take you through each fo the game’s graphical settings, their impact on the performance, and what is the best setting to use for mid-range GPU and CPUs in order to achieve that consistent 60 FPS target.
Madden NFL 21 PC Tweaks
Before we start with Madden 21 PC tweaks, let’s get few things out of the way. First, make sure you have installed the latest GPU drivers.
If you are confused about the game performance on HDD vs SSD, the only advantage the SSD will provide in this game will be in the loading times. The game is not an open-world game where textures need to be streamed all the time, so installing the game on an HDD won’t impact performance that much.
Note that the recommended settings will be for a mid-range system. By mid-range PC I mean at least an 8th-Gen Core i5 CPU with a GTX 1060 and 8 GB of RAM. The recommended settings are for a 60 FPS experience, however, if you want to play the game at 30 FPS, then you can turn the graphical settings up a notch.
The following are Madden NFL 21 graphical settings along with their function and impact on performance. With our Madden NFL 21 PC Tweaks guide, players will have enough understanding of the game’s graphical settings that they can easily achieve 1080P/60 FPS performance.
Window Mode
This graphical setting is the display mode, you have your standard Windowed and Fullscreen modes. Fullscreen mode is recommended here for better performance.
Frame Rate, How To Lock At 30 FPS
As the name suggests the “Frame Rate” setting allows players to lock the game at a certain FPS. If 60 FPS is your target then set it at 60 FPS.
In case, you want to lock the game at 30 FPS, don’t use this in-game setting. Instead, force it through the GPU driver. Open Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > select the game. Turn on the “Max FPS Limit” and set the value to 30. This will lock the game’s FPS to 30.
Vsync, Tripple Buffering
Vsync or Vertical Synchronization is a graphical setting that eliminates screen tearing by syncing the frames being rendered by your GPU. If you have a G.sync or a Free Sync display, you don’t need to enable it, just keep it disabled along with Tripple Buffering.
If you have a normal display then keep V.sync and Tripple Buffering off and force it through the GPU driver. Open Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > select Madden 21. Scroll through the options and set Vertical Sync to “On” and set “Tripple Buffering” to “On”.
Recommended: Force it through display driver
DirectX Version
The recommended DirectX version here is 11 since it’s more stable compared to DirectX 12.
Recommended: DirectX 11
3D Grass
As the name suggests, this graphical setting enables the 3D grass rendering on the field. This setting will impact the performance especially when the camera is close to the field. I recommend that you disable this the 3D grass but enable it if you are playing at 30 FPS.
Recommended: Off
Bloom
Bloom doesn’t impact the game’s performance that much so keep it enabled for realistic lighting effects.
Recommended: On
SSAO
Space Screen Ambient Occlusion or SSAO is a graphical setting in madden NFL 21 that makes the game’s environment look grounded and realistic. What it does is that it creates realistic shadows under small objects to make them feel grounded in the environment.
The Space Screen Ambient Occlusion only creates these effects only for on-screen objects which means it won’t be heavy on the GPU. So keep it on but, disable it if you feel you can squeeze more FPS out of the game.
Recommended: On
Depth Fog
This graphical setting will come into play when there is foggy weather. Enabling it will create a more realistic looking fog effect but can cost performance. I recommend that you keep this setting off.
Recommended: Off
Lens Flares
This graphical setting has a negligible impact on performance enabling it is more of player preference. If you like Lends Flare then turn it on, otherwise, turn it off as it makes to difference to the game’s performance.
Recommended: Player preference
High Red Circular DOF
Depth Of Field makes in-game scenes, especially in Face of the Franchise mode, look really good. However, the depth of field isn’t cheap and hence this setting needs to be turned off for a 60 FPS experience.
Recommended: Off
Mesh Quality
Mesh quality is a graphical setting that has a serious impact on performance. This setting determines the polygon count of each in-game object in the scene to make them look detailed. I recommend keeping this setting at medium for better performance.
Recommended: Medium
Shadow Quality
This is pretty much self-explanatory. This graphical setting in MAdden 21 determines the quality of shadows and of course, the higher this setting the higher will be the performance cost. The recommended setting here is Medium.
Recommended: Medium
Crowd Quality
Crowd Quality determines how detailed the crowd looks down to the individuals. Since most of the time players will be looking at the field and the performance impact of this setting is noticeable, the recommended setting is medium.
Recommended: Medium
How To Get 1080p/60 FPS
The main goal of this Madden NFL 21 PC Tweaks guide is to get that 1080p/60 FPS experience. Now that you understand which graphical settings impact the performance the most, some of you might not hit that 60 FPS target without adjusting the GPU driver settings.
Open Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > select the game. Make the following changes.
Anti-aliasing-FXAA – “Off”
Anti-aliasing-Gamma Correction – “Off”
CUDA GPUs – “All”
Low Latency Mode – depends on the player.
Set Power Management to “Prefer Maximum Performance”
Shader Cache – “On” only if you are using an HDD. Don’t need to enable it for an SSD.
Set Texture filtering – Quality to “High Performance”
Triple Buffering – “Off”
Set Vertical Syn to “On”
Apply the changes and players should notice a boost in performance.
That is all for our Madden NFL 21 PC Tweaks guide with tips on how to get the game running at 1080p/60 FPS and which graphical settings have the most impact on performance. If you are facing errors and issues with other PC games or your PC then also see our hub for commonly occurring PC errors and their fixes.