Avowed has more The Outer Worlds DNA in it than just the Obsidian link, and from a technical perspective, that might be worrisome – the latter RPG’s Spacer’s Choice Edition was one of the most wretchedly broken releases of 2023.
Happily, Avowed does at least launch in much better shape, and with some genuinely fetching fantasy visuals that may even justify flicking on ray tracing. The PC version does, however, still seem to have a few loose wires, which are worth watching out for even if you can tidy some up with the right settings.
Avowed system requirements and PC performance
Avowed’s recommended specs don’t state which settings or monitor resolution they have in mind, so sadly I just don’t know if I’m supposed to spit with indignant rage at them wanting an RTX 3080. Alas. Still, there’s nothing here that’s especially new (and thus more expensive), and 75GB of storage space isn’t as bad as I’ve come to expect for a big, glossy RPG. Note the lack of an SSD requirement too.
Avowed minimum PC specs
- OS: Windows 10/11 with updates
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 / Intel Core i5-8400
- RAM: 16GB
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 / Intel Arc A580
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 75GB available space
Avowed recommended PC specs
- OS: Windows 10/11 with updates
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X / Intel Core i7-10700K
- RAM: 16GB
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT / Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 75GB available space
These reqs seem broadly accurate too, neither overegging Avowed’s hardware needs nor giving false hope for spud rigs. In my free-roaming benchmark tests, the GTX 1070 could handle Low settings at 37fps on native 1080p, and 50fps with Quality-level FSR 3. About what you’d want from a minimum spec GPU, in other words. There might be some wiggle room in the recommended tier, depending on your tolerance for upscaling: the RTX 3070, two levels down from the listed RTX 3080, produced 48fps at 1080p with the Epic preset enabled. After adding DLSS on Quality mode, that rose to 67fps.
Tools like DLSS, FSR, and Unreal Engine 5’s built-in TSR don’t feel outright essential in getting Avowed’ performance wheels turning, though they evidently can deliver a sizeable burst of speed. I suspect DLSS might be a wee bit bugged out, though: on my RTX 4060, if I launched Avowed having previously disabled Nvidia’s upscaler, it would quietly re-enable it without saying so in the settings. Hence much confused benchmarking where my manually ‘enabling’ DLSS in the graphics settings didn’t appear to do anything.
With the upscaling brought to heel, the RTX 4060 would go on to average 39fps on Epic and 61fps on High, both at native 1080p. Not amazing for this particular GPU, though it could be worse, and it likely will be if you have an Intel graphics card. The Arc B580, which can often outpace the RTX 4060 in other games, only managed 46fps at High, and suffered from even more frequent stuttering than the GeForce cards I tested.
Ah yes, traversal stutter, the bumbling spectre that haunts many a UE5 game. Expect at least some of this regardless of your specs, though it is at least easier to cushion the jabs when you’re running at generally higher framerates. Whether that means forgiving DLSS’ trickery – the RTX 4060’s 39fps on Epic shot up to 59fps with Quality upscaling – or just, y’know, having a hench PC. The RTX 4070 Ti, for instance, could combine Quality DLSS with maxed-out visuals for a smooth 73fps at 73fps at 1440p, and that included ray tracing. It could even take these settings to 54fps at 4K, albeit by simultaneously dropping DLSS to Balanced mode. The new RTX 5080, unsurprisingly, proved hardier at this rez, averaging 62fps with Epic visuals, ray tracing on, and DLSS on Quality.
Ray tracing, I must say, is a lot more tempting in Avowed than in most games, almost entirely because its performance tax (versus the Epic-level lighting and reflection effects it replaces) isn’t all that steep. While not a night-and-day difference in terms of looks, I do like how ray tracing gives daytime scenes a more vibrant, higher-contrast pop, which works well in a game where even your character’s face is splashed with fantasy flora. And, while hardware grunt helps with the stuttering, you don’t strictly need a new, high-end GPU for RT effects. At 1440p, the four-year-old RTX 3070 only dropped from 52fps to 47fps after adding ray tracing to its Epic/DLSS Quality config.
Truly lower-end PCs should still steer clear, mind. My MSI GF63 Thin laptop, with its 8GB of RAM and RTX 4050, could just make it over the 30fps line, scoring 32fps at native 1080p with the Low preset. However, DLSS suddenly lost its magic here, with Quality mode only bumping Avowed up to 35fps. The Steam Deck needs major concessions as well, only barely staying playable with the Low preset and FSR on Performance mode.
These systems also see the worst stuttering of the bunch, which is unfortunate when they also don’t get as much help from upscaling. Avowed might not be as buggy as Starfield or as brutal as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, but it does strike an unusual balance between fidelity and wonkiness that almost actively encourages a fine-tuning approach to its various settings. So, let’s do that.
Avowed best settings guide
As has apparently become PC game custom, only a slim minority of Avowed’s individual graphics settings have much of a bearing on performance. If you’re playing fast and loose with the minimum specs then it’s still worth starting with Low settings, but for more capable components, it should be possible to keep most on their best-looking Epic levels while claiming a nice performance upgrade from the few that you do cut.
In Avowed’s case, it was only shadow quality and global illumination quality that bumped performance up once I lowered them on an RTX 4060. All the other quality settings either didn’t improve on Epic preset performance at all, or only added an imperceptible 1-2fps on Low. Those might add up to make the difference when you’re struggling for 30fps, but again, most modern PCs won’t be.
I’m also recommending DLSS and TSR for upscaling; FSR isn’t a terrible alternative for non-RTX graphics cards, but TSR looks a smidge cleaner to my eyes, and isn’t significantly slower. Here’s the detailed list:
- Motion blur: 0%
- Upscaling: Nvidia DLSS 3 on Quality / TSR on 67%
- Shadow quality: Medium
- Global illumination quality: Medium
- Everything else: Epic preset equivalent
These setting got my RTX 4060 up to 82fps, more than double the Epic preset’s native 1080p performance and a good 23fps higher than Epic with DLSS by itself. If your own rig has the headroom for it, consider enabling ray tracing as well: that only dropped average performance down to 75fps, so it’s hardly a path tracing-style devourer of frames.
There’s also one last setting we haven’t discussed, partly because I’m still not quite sure what to make of it myself. On RTX 40 series GPUs and newer, Avowed also supports DLSS 3 frame generation, which can smooth out the visuals even further: again on the RTX 4060, with those custom settings and ray tracing, frame gen sent average performance from 75fps up to 111fps. The added input lag is manageable too, with total system latency rarely spiking above 50ms even when I tested it at more demanding quality settings.
There was, however, one occasional yet very distracting issue with frame generation. It’s weirdly terrible at accurately generating Avowed’s dialogue choices box, producing momentary flashes of misplaced text as you mouse over the options. It’s not as bad as that screenshot makes it look – it doesn’t appear as if the box is melting under a heat lamp, in other words – but there’s clearly something amiss. Frame gen doesn’t trip up on any other UI elements, but still, I wouldn’t fully endorse enabling it until Obsidian (or Nvidia) work out a fix.
That’s suboptimal, sure. But at least it’s not another Spacer’s Choice Edition.