It's a big day for fans of high-end visual tech. Metro Exodus has arrived on PC with some graphics card-destroying performance demands and ray-traced global illumination. 4A Games' Metro Exodus has comfortably earned a spot as of the most demanding games on PC, becoming the new Crysis for those who want to max it out.

This Metro 3 PC performance guide can help you hit the sweet spot between graphical excellence and performance. Using the chart below, you can find out just how demanding each graphics option is in Metro Exodus, demonstrating the percentage drop in frame rates when turning the graphics setting from Low to Ultra. This can provide an at-a-glance look at which graphics settings affect the frame rate the most in M:E.

Together with this, we've given priority scores based on how important we believe it is to enable these graphics options for the optimum PC gaming experience with Metro Exodus.

Metro Exodus System Requirements

For the benchmark results below we used a PNY GeForce RTX 2060 6GB XLR8, an Intel Core i7-5820K processor, and 16GB DDR4 memory. The tests were performed in DirectX 12 mode during actual gameplay rather than Metro's benchmark tool.

Metro Exodus Graphics Options Performance Breakdown

The further right the bar goes, the more demanding the graphics option is. In the case of a bar going left of zero, such as DLSS and Shading Rate in the Metro Exodus Remake performance chart below, this indicates that enabling this graphics option actually improves frame rates, but not more on that later.

In terms of available graphics options in Metro Exodus, this is actually a pretty pitiful selection. Aside from the RTX-exclusive effects, the only one that greatly impacts visual quality is, well, 'Quality', a global setting for graphics that appears to impact dozens of different variables. This takes a huge amount of fine-tuning opportunities away and effectively limits Metro's performance down to five different presets. It's disappointing we haven't been given a greater degree of control. The end result is you really don't have much control over how Metro Exodus looks.

What are the most demanding graphics options in Metro Exodus?

Unsurprisingly, if you've got a GeForce RTX graphics card, the most demanding effect is ray tracing, causing an estimated 35% drop in frame rates, although this figure can vary depending upon your resolution and which Quality setting you are using. However, this figure can offset by turning on DLSS. This comes with a big drop in image quality though, resulting in quite blurry visuals in Metro Exodus.

Quality is the second most demanding, causing a 28% frame drop when shifting up from Low to Extreme, a figure that becomes even higher should you also enable it alongside tessellation and texture filtering.

Metro Exodus Graphics Settings

DLSS

DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling, uses the Tensor Cores on the GeForce RTX graphics cards, combined with machine learning, to prioritise the areas which are rendered at a higher resolution. For those with lower-end RTX graphics cards, DLSS can help to significantly improve frame rates while using ray-tracing. However, DLSS causes a big drop in image quality in Metro Exodus. 

Performance Impact - 0/5

Priority - 2/5

HairWorks

A GeForce staple for a while now, HairWorks uses tessellation technology to render realistic hair, particularly notice on AI character models and any hairy enemies.

Performance Impact - 1/5

Priority - 2/5 

Motion Blur

Motion Blur affects which type of Motion Blur is used in Metro Exodus. Low motion blur is recommended for running at high frame rates while High motion blur is recommended for running at lower frame rates. Unfortunately, motion blur cannot be turned off entirely in Metro Exodus.

Performance Impact - 0/5

Priority - 0/5 

Quality

Equivalent to the graphics presets in most games, Quality is a global toggle for the overall quality of Metro Exodus's visuals. Be warned that 'Extreme' can bring even high-end graphics cards to a crawl.

Performance Impact - 5/5

Priority - 5/5 

Ray Tracing

Metro Exodus uses ray-traced global illumination, the first such game to do so. This feature requires an RTX graphics card and carries a very heavy performance hit.

Performance Impact - 5/5

Priority - 3/5 

Shading rate

Shading Rate is a bit of an odd one. By default it's at 1.0 and any options above this are greyed out with a GeForce RTX 2060. However, dropping this setting down below 1.0 will result in a slight increase in FPS, albeit with a fair drop in image quality.

Performance Impact - 0/5

Priority - 0/5 

Tessellation

Tessellation improves the overall quality of models and surfaces, providing a more realistic looking image.

Performance Impact - 1/5

Priority - 3/5 

Texture Filtering

Texture Filtering, or Anisotropic Filtering, improves the quality of textures, particularly when viewed at oblique angles

Performance Impact - 1/5

Priority - 4/5