Best Civilization 7 settings for max fps

What are the best Civilization settings for PC? Unlike with previous Civ games, you can shell out a fair bit of cash to buy new components and theoretically improve your in-game turn speeds in Civ 7. It’s by no means a requirement though, as even if you just about meet the minimum specs, you can expect a familiar Civ experience.

The Civilization 7 system requirements surprised everyone with demands for 20 and 16-core Intel and AMD CPUs. Thankfully, even if you fall well short of these specs, you can expect an enjoyable and well-paced experience in Civilization 7. You won’t need the best graphics card either, and Civ 7 will even run well on devices like the Steam Deck, so unless you’re running a GPU over ten years old, it shouldn’t be an issue. If you want to know what we think of Sid Meier’s latest exploration sim, check out our Civilization 7 review.

Here are the best Civilization video and accessibility settings for PC:

Best Civilization 7 video settings for PC

Video settings

• Upscale/Anti-Aliasing Mode: AMD FSR 3 Quality
• Asset Quality: High
• Texture Detail: High
• Particle Quality: High
• Shadow Quality: High
• Water Quality: High
• Image Sharpness: High
• Screen Space Shadows: On
• Screen Space Overlay: On
• Bloom: On
• AMD FidelityFX Screen Space Reflections: On
• AMD FidelityFX Ambient Occlusion: High
• VSync: On

At the time of testing, using AMD upscaling and frame generation in Civilization 7 provides a fairly minor increase to the average fps while not improving the 1% lows at all, which varied between 29-33 fps for each of the below tests. While the difference is negligible at face value, there is no sign of blurring or frame tearing with FSR enabled as you zoom around a world map, meaning it makes perfect sense to keep it enabled and enjoy the small performance boost.

Frustratingly, crashes and slowdowns were very common when running the benchmark. The act of running through menus and adjusting settings would also need to be done twice, as changing the overall preset wouldn’t stick at the first time of asking. While the average gamer wouldn’t benchmark the game as frequently as I did, it’s still a problem that just running the benchmark is so sluggish.

As for the AI Benchmark, there were considerable spikes in the time per turn during the first and last turn of the ten-turn benchmark. This skewed results slightly, as for turns 2-9, the time per turn was typically between 11 and 14 seconds, but the overall results ended up being 22 seconds per turn average due to the heavier load in the opening and closing turn.

The AI Benchmark takes place at turn 100 of a simulated game where the maximum number of players are active and taking their turns, this offers valuable insight into how late game turns will play out and how long you can expect to be waiting around to take your next turn. This is where the CPU impact is noticeable.

As I highlighted in our system requirements coverage, the listed CPUs for the Ultra tier are the Intel Core i7 14700F, a 20-core processor, and the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, a 16-core processor. Games rarely demand or use this many CPU cores, but in the case of Civ 7, more cores should mean more efficient and quicker turns even in the later stages of a game, whereas Civ 6 would usually struggle regardless of your processing power.

Civilization 7 accessibility settings

Civ 7 includes a number of accessibility settings at launch, including full control rebinds, colorblind options, a text size scale, subtitles, resolution UI scaling, and narration when hovering over text.

For a 4X game like Civ 7, it feels like all bases have been covered on the accessibility front and any option that could be needed, is present.

How we tested Civilization 7

At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Civilization 7 includes the following components; Intel Core i7 11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 16GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM, MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 and 4K using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Civilization 7 need an SSD?

Civilization 7 requires an SSD, which should come as no surprise given the general shift in modern games looking toward SSDs as the new standard. As such, upgrading to one of the best gaming SSD options will really help keep game and loading times in check.

Any such upgrade is worthwhile anyway, as it will make Windows boot quicker, and make your system more responsive too. If your motherboard has a PCIe 4.0 M.2 port, we recommend picking up a Samsung 990 Pro at its current price. The same goes for a memory upgrade to a fast 32GB kit.

How to monitor performance in Civilization 7

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Civilization 7, we have an easy method that works whether you’re using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

For more on the latest Sid Meier 4X game, you can check out our Civilization 7 leaders guide, or if you need a hand plotting a route to world domination, check out our Civilization 7 victories and win conditions guide. Finally, if you want to know if you can play on Valve’s handheld, check out our Civilization 7 Steam Deck guide.

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