Apex is a game where five settings decide your frame rate and about eight decide whether you can read a fight. The frame rate five are resolution, Model Detail, Effects Detail, the shadow group and Volumetric Lighting — pros run all of them at Low or Disabled. The readability eight are FOV, Sprint View Shake, damage numbers, crosshair damage feedback, ping opacity, brightness, the colour-blind mode and the Performance Display. Set a frame cap slightly below what your PC really holds, get your sensitivity from a converter rather than a stranger's config, and stop there.
The video settings that cost frames
Liquipedia's settings reference explains what each option actually does, which matters because Apex names them oddly. Texture Streaming Budget, for example, is not a quality setting in the usual sense — each step names the amount of GPU VRAM it expects you to have.
| Setting | Low-end value | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 1920x1080 or lower | The single biggest GPU cost, and the one both stretched-resolution pros use to buy frames |
| Anti-Aliasing | None | Smooths jagged edges; the first thing every competitive config turns off |
| Texture Streaming Budget | lowest tier your VRAM allows | Reserves memory for textures; the labels tell you the recommended VRAM per step |
| Texture Filtering | Bilinear | Sharpness of surfaces at an angle; cheap to give up |
| Ambient Occlusion Quality | Disabled | Contact shadowing rendered at a chosen resolution; expensive, invisible in a fight |
| Sun Shadow Coverage / Detail | Low | How far sun shadows reach and how detailed they are |
| Spot Shadow Detail | Low or Disabled | Shadows cast by environment lights |
| Volumetric Lighting | Disabled | Sunbeams in the air; pure atmosphere, real cost |
| Dynamic Spot Shadows | Disabled | Lets environment lights move |
| Model Detail | Low | Detail on objects and legends |
| Effects Detail | Low | Explosions and ability effects, exactly when you need frames most |
| Impact Marks | Disabled | Bullet holes; also visual noise |
| Ragdolls | Low | Physics accuracy of death animations |
| V-Sync | Disabled | Liquipedia states it plainly: a trade-off between tearing and input lag |
That table is not theory. In their ProSettings snapshots, ImperialHal (updated June 2026) runs Model Detail, Effects Detail, all three shadow settings and Ragdolls at Low, with Ambient Occlusion, Volumetric Lighting, Dynamic Spot Shadows and Impact Marks disabled, Anti-Aliasing None, Texture Streaming Budget at the lowest 2 GB tier and Texture Filtering on Bilinear. HisWattson's list is the same, with Spot Shadow Detail off entirely and NVIDIA Reflex enabled. Neither of them is short of hardware — this is a deliberate choice to remove things that move on screen.
Two settings the pro configs disagree on are the ones tied to the monitor: ImperialHal plays 1920x1440 at 4:3 on a 480 Hz panel, HisWattson plays 1920x1080 at 16:9. Across the whole 73-player list, 1920x1080 leads with 42 players, then 1680x1050 with 14 and 1728x1080 with 6 — so roughly a quarter of the field plays stretched.
The settings that make fights readable
Frames are only half of it. Apex hides a lot of information in the gameplay menu, and the readable defaults are not the pretty ones:
- Field of View — 70 to 110. More FOV means more peripheral vision and smaller enemies. See the next section before you pick a number.
- Sprint View Shake: Minimal — HisWattson's setting. Screen shake while sprinting costs you nothing to remove.
- Damage Numbers: Floating or Stacking — the difference between guessing and knowing whether a shot connected. Stacking combines hits into one number, Floating gives each instance its own.
- Crosshair Damage Feedback: X with Shield Icon — Liquipedia describes this option as showing an X plus an icon indicating the target's body shield level. That tells you what armour you are shooting through, mid-fight.
- Hop-up Pop-up: On — a short description of your equipped hop-ups on the HUD.
- Minimap Rotation — pick one and never change it. Off keeps north at the top, On rotates the map to your facing.
- Colour Blind Mode — modifies the important colours for protanopia, deuteranopia or tritanopia. Worth trying even if you have never been tested; it changes how the loot and damage colours separate.
- Performance Display: On — this is the one that lets you troubleshoot instead of guess. It adds a panel showing FPS, latency in milliseconds, packet loss, packet choke and in/out bandwidth.
FOV: what 110 actually means
In the ProSettings snapshot of 5 September 2026, 43 of the 73 listed players run 110 and 16 run 104. There is no third popular value.
The catch is that Apex reads the FOV slider on a 4:3 base, the way the Source engine does, so "110" on a 16:9 monitor is not 110 degrees of horizontal view — it is wider. That is also why an Apex number and a Valorant number cannot be compared directly. If you play more than one shooter and want the same picture in both, put both numbers through the FOV calculator, which converts to vertical FOV and back and shows the formula.
One practical note: higher FOV makes distant enemies smaller and can feel like your sensitivity got faster. If you jump from 90 to 110, expect a week of recalibration.
Sensitivity: real numbers, then a converter
Apex uses the same yaw as CS2 (0.022 degrees per count at sensitivity 1), so a CS2 sensitivity carries into Apex one to one, and a Valorant one does not. Here is what the top of the field is running:
| Player | DPI | Sens | ADS multiplier | eDPI | Approx. cm/360 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ImperialHal (Falcons) | 800 | 1.1 | 1.0 | 880 | ~47 cm |
| Genburten (100 Thieves) | 800 | 1.5 | 1.0 | 1200 | ~35 cm |
| HisWattson | 800 | 1.54 | per-optic | 1232 | ~34 cm |
| Rogue (Team Liquid) | 400 | 1.9 | 1.0 | 760 | ~55 cm |
| Hakis (Alliance) | 1600 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 1280 | ~32 cm |
Across the 55 players in that list who publish both numbers, the median eDPI is about 1120 — 800 DPI at 1.4, if you want a starting point. The distances above are calculated with the same yaw our tools use, so they line up with what the sensitivity converter will tell you when you bring a sensitivity over from CS2, Valorant or Fortnite, and with the eDPI calculator if you only want to compare numbers between players.
Two more things the list settles. DPI: 33 of the 73 play at 800, which is the plurality by a distance; 400 and 1600 split most of the rest. Polling rate: 47 play at 1000 Hz, and only seven are above it, so 4000 and 8000 Hz mice are still an experiment rather than a standard. If you are not sure your mouse is doing what its box says, the polling rate test measures it in the browser.
The ADS multiplier is where people over-tune. Almost the entire list leaves it at 1.0. HisWattson is the exception, with per-optic values of 0.9 for 1x, 1.1 for 2x, 1.2 for 3x, 1.3 for 4x and 1.0 for everything longer — that is a config built over years, not a shortcut you should copy.
Frame cap, launch options and the menu lock
Apex takes launch options through Steam or the EA app, and two of them are worth having.
+fps_max 190 — set it a little under what your PC holds in a busy third-party fight, not at your best-case number. A cap you constantly bounce off gives you uneven frame times, and uneven frame times are what people describe as "choppy despite good FPS". A July 2026 thread on r/apexlegends adds a stranger reason to cap manually: several players report packet loss that appears above a certain frame rate on their machine and goes away when they cap below it. That has no official confirmation, and the exact numbers people post differ from player to player, so treat it as something to test with the Performance Display on rather than a rule.
+lobby_max_fps 120 — the lobby is capped separately from the match, and a player in an August 2026 thread reports this line removing the 60 FPS menu lock in Season 30. It changes nothing in a game.
If your PC is weak
Do these in order and stop when you are happy:
- Drop resolution first. It is the only setting that scales every frame linearly.
- Set everything in the table above to its Low or Disabled value.
- Texture Streaming Budget to the tier that matches your actual VRAM, not the one above it.
- Cap frames below your worst case, then check the Performance Display for packet loss and choke as well as FPS — a "lag" problem that is really a network problem does not respond to graphics settings.
- Only then start looking at drivers and background software.
And a reality check from the same subreddit: a player with a Ryzen 5 5500X3D and an RTX 2060 reports about 160 FPS at 1080p on low settings, and another with an i5-14400F and an RTX 5060 Ti reports that 1440p at 144 FPS drops into the 90s while 1080p at 180 stays smooth. Apex leans hard on the CPU in late-game fights, so above a certain point more graphics card stops helping and settings stop mattering.
FAQ
What FOV do Apex pros use?
Mostly 110, the maximum. In the ProSettings list of 73 players snapshotted on 5 September 2026, 43 run 110 and 16 run 104; everything else is a handful of outliers between 90 and 120. Apex reads the slider on a 4:3 base like the Source engine, so 110 there is wider than 110 degrees of real horizontal view on a 16:9 monitor.
What is a good Apex sensitivity?
The pro middle is an eDPI near 1120, which is DPI multiplied by in-game sensitivity: 800 DPI at 1.4, or 800 at 1.1 like ImperialHal for a slower 880. Take your current sensitivity from another shooter through a converter instead of guessing, because Apex uses the same 0.022 yaw as CS2 and your number carries over one to one.
Should I cap FPS in Apex Legends?
Cap it a little under what your PC holds in a busy third-party fight, using +fps_max in the launch options. A cap you keep bouncing off produces uneven frame times, which is what actually feels bad. Several players in mid-2026 threads also report packet loss and momentum bugs at particular frame rates, and a manual cap is how they work around it.
Which Apex settings cost the most frames?
Resolution, Model Detail, Effects Detail, the three shadow options and Volumetric Lighting. Both ImperialHal and HisWattson run every one of them at Low or Disabled, with Anti-Aliasing off and Texture Streaming Budget at the lowest VRAM tier.
Why is my main menu locked at 60 FPS?
Apex caps the lobby separately from the match. A player in an August 2026 thread reports that adding +lobby_max_fps 120 to the Steam or EA launch options removes the Season 30 menu lock. It changes nothing in a match.
Sources
- Liquipedia: Apex Legends settings reference (what each option does)
- ProSettings: Apex Legends pro settings list (snapshot 5 Sep 2026, 73 players)
- ProSettings: ImperialHal (updated 8 Jun 2026)
- ProSettings: HisWattson (updated 15 Dec 2025)
- ProSettings: Genburten (updated 20 Jun 2025)
- r/apexlegends: uncapping the 60 FPS main-menu lock in Season 30 (Aug 2026)
- r/apexlegends: fps_max and packet loss reports (Jul 2026)
- r/apexlegends: what PC holds 1440p at 180 FPS (Jul 2026)