ARC Raiders Update 2.3.0: Best PC Settings and FSR 4.1.1 Fix

ARC Raiders just turned one year old, and Embark Studios marked the occasion by rolling the extraction shooter back onto its regular fix cadence with Live Update 2.3.0, released October 27. It isn't a content update — Frozen Trail already delivered that on October 8 — but it quietly touches almost everything a PC player cares about: the FidelityFX Super Resolution plugin moves to version 4.1.1, there's a workaround for a ray tracing crash that's been hitting AMD Radeon RX 7000 cards, and a new camera bob toggle lands in Gameplay settings. Here's what actually changed on PC, and how to get your settings dialed in correctly after installing it.

01What Update 2.3.0 Changes for PC

Embark's own patch notes, posted to the game's Steam Community page, list the update under ten categories — ARC, Animation, Audio, Gameplay, Map, Performance, Quest, Stability, UI and VFX — but three lines matter most if you're troubleshooting performance. Under Performance, the patch notes read simply: "Updated FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) plugin to version 4.1.1." Under Stability: "Added a workaround that mitigates a ray tracing related GPU crash on AMD RX 7000 series GPUs." And under UI: "Added a camera bob option in Gameplay settings." None of that is dramatic on its own, but together it's the most PC-focused patch ARC Raiders has shipped since Frozen Trail, and it's worth walking through each piece rather than just restarting the client and hoping for the best.

The update also disables the Expedition Vault (refunding purchased slots as Bronze Statuettes and moving its contents to your stash), adds a small new player project called Souls Offering, and ships dozens of smaller collision and animation fixes. None of that affects your graphics settings, so this guide sticks to the parts that do.

A few of the Stability-section fixes are worth knowing about even though they're not settings you can toggle yourself. Embark reduced memory usage on the Frigate "to address rare crashes when exploring its cargo hold with larger groups," and separately reduced audio memory usage on Xbox Series S specifically to cut down on out-of-memory crashes near the same Frigate encounter. If you've been crashing mid-Frigate on a lower-spec PC or on Series S, 2.3.0 is squarely aimed at that problem, and it's worth retrying before assuming your hardware is at fault.

02Minimum and Recommended Specs, Confirmed

Before touching any sliders, it's worth checking your rig against Embark's own listed requirements on the Steam store page, since they haven't changed with 2.3.0:

• Minimum: Windows 10 64-bit, Intel Core i5-6600K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 12 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 580 / Intel Arc A380, DirectX 12.
• Recommended: Windows 10 64-bit, Intel Core i5-9600K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 / AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT / Intel Arc B570, DirectX 12.

If you're sitting right at the minimum spec, treat everything below as a guide for getting a stable 60 fps rather than chasing a high quality preset — the Quality settings section further down has the specific sliders that cost the most frame time.

03Turning On FSR 4.1.1 the Right Way

The FSR plugin bump is invisible until you actually select it. ARC Raiders' Display settings separate the upscaler choice from its quality tier and from frame generation, so it's easy to have one set correctly and the other left on a default that doesn't match your GPU. The menu itself offers three upscaler families — NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR 3, and Intel XeSS — each with its own quality tier (for DLSS specifically, there's also a separate DLSS Model selector), plus an independent AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation / NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation toggle that works on top of whichever upscaler you pick. FSR is the only one of the three that 2.3.0 touches, so if you're on an AMD card or an older GPU that doesn't support DLSS or XeSS, this is the setting that's actually different after updating:

How to Apply FSR 4.1.1 and Check the RX 7000 Fix

1. 1Restart ARC Raiders through Steam, the Epic launcher, or your console so the client downloads Update 2.3.0 before you change any settings.2 min
2. 2From the main menu, go to Settings > Display and find the AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation / NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation row along with the upscaler selector above it.1 min
3. 3Set Resolution Scaling Method to AMD FSR 3 if you're on an AMD card or an older GPU; the 4.1.1 plugin update applies automatically once FSR is already selected.1 min
4. 4Pick an upscaled resolution quality preset — Quality for the closest look to native, Performance if your GPU is near the minimum spec.1 min
5. 5If you own an AMD RX 7000 card, turn NVIDIA RTX Global Illumination back on from the Ray Tracing tab and play one full round to confirm the crash workaround holds before leaving it on long-term.5 min

If you were already running AMD FSR 3 Quality before 2.3.0, you don't need to change anything else — the plugin update applies automatically the next time you launch. The difference should show up as fewer shimmering edges on foliage and particle-heavy fights like the Frigate boarding sequence, since 4.1.1 is a stability and image-quality revision rather than a new upscaling mode.

04Fixing the AMD Radeon RX 7000 Ray Tracing Crash

Embark is explicit that this is a workaround, not a confirmed full fix: the patch note language is "mitigates," not "resolves." If you're on an RX 7000 series card (7600 through 7900 XTX) and ARC Raiders has been crashing to desktop with ray tracing enabled, update to 2.3.0 first, then turn NVIDIA RTX Global Illumination on again from the Ray Tracing section of Settings and play a round before assuming the problem is gone for good. The official notes don't promise it's eliminated, only reduced, so dropping Global Illumination back off remains the reliable fallback until Embark ships something more definitive. Before giving up on ray tracing entirely, a narrower walkthrough built around that fix is worth lining up against whatever you've already changed.

05The Rest of the Graphics Menu, Explained

None of the sliders below changed in 2.3.0, but they're the ones that actually move your frame rate, and it's worth knowing what each does before you start dragging things around:

• Overall Quality Level — the master preset; changing individual sliders below it switches this to Custom.
• View Distance, Shadows, Reflections, Global Illumination Resolution — the heaviest individual costs on mid-range GPUs, roughly in that order on most systems.
• Texture, Effects, Foliage, Post-Processing, Anti-Aliasing — cheaper to run, more about visual clarity in firefights than raw fps.
• Resolution Scaling Method, Upscaled Resolution, Render Resolution — these three work together with your upscaler choice from the Display section above; Render Resolution is the one to drop first if you want more headroom without changing the upscaler quality tier.

Unconfirmed: Embark hasn't published numeric frame-rate deltas for any individual slider, so treat the ordering above as a practical starting point rather than a benchmarked ranking. The Advanced tab also has two settings worth leaving on regardless of your hardware: In-Game Performance Overlay, which gives you a live frame-rate and frame-time readout without a third-party tool, and Idle Energy Saving / Inactive Window Energy Saving, which throttle the game down when you tab out or stop moving — handy on a laptop or handheld where every watt matters.

06Two Smaller Settings Worth Checking

The new camera bob toggle sits in Gameplay settings, not Graphics — if screen shake during sprinting or looting bothers you, it's a separate option from the Motion Blur slider and is new specifically as of 2.3.0. Separately, if you haven't touched Display settings in a while, confirm NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency is on if you're running an NVIDIA card; it reduces input lag without a measurable image-quality cost and matters more in an extraction shooter's close-range fights than almost any graphics slider.

ARC Raiders' Frozen Trail launch trailer (Oct 8, 2026) — the content update these fixes, including the FSR 4.1.1 bump, were built to support.

07Is ARC Raiders Steam Deck Ready?

Valve's own Deck compatibility report for ARC Raiders currently resolves to category 2, "Playable," not the top "Verified" tier. The report's individual test results explain why: the default controller configuration is fully functional, controller glyphs match the Deck's own buttons, and the default configuration is performant — but interface text is flagged as not legible at default settings, and external controllers aren't supported for the primary player. In practice, that means ARC Raiders runs fine on Deck out of the box, but you should expect to manually bump text or UI scale if your settings menu offers it, and plan on the Deck's built-in controls rather than a separate controller. The same Idle Energy Saving and Inactive Window Energy Saving options mentioned above are worth double-checking on Deck specifically, since they have a more noticeable effect on battery life on a handheld than on a desktop plugged into the wall. Embark hasn't published a Deck-specific FSR 4.1.1 note, so there's no confirmation yet that the RX 7000 ray tracing workaround changes anything for Deck's own AMD APU — treat ray tracing on Deck as something to test for yourself rather than assume is fixed.