Street Fighter 6 — best graphics settings (2026)

Typical impact 0-5% · 4% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Texture Quality at High (4% fps cost).

Controls the maximum mipmap resolution loaded for surface textures. Higher levels stream larger texture maps (2K/4K) from disk into VRAM via the texture streaming pool. The GPU samples these during fragment shading using the currently bound sampler state. The FPS cost is minimal when VRAM is sufficient because texture fetch latency is hidden by the cache hierarchy, but exceeding VRAM capacity triggers page-faulting and hitching as textures are swapped between system RAM and VRAM.

In Street Fighter 6: RE Engine streams character and stage textures into a managed VRAM pool. At Highest, the engine loads full 4K surface maps for character skin, costume fabrics, and stage environmental surfaces — these are visibly sharper on fighter costumes at close camera distances during super move cinematics. At 1080p, Medium is essentially indistinguishable during gameplay. The hitching risk only appears if you're under 4 GB VRAM; otherwise the texture fetch latency is hidden entirely by the cache hierarchy.

Typical impact 8-25% · 6% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Shadow Quality at Medium (6% fps cost).

Controls shadow map resolution, filtering method, and cascade count for dynamic shadows. The engine renders the scene from each light source perspective into depth-only shadow map textures. Higher settings increase shadow map resolution (1024 to 4096 texels), add more cascaded shadow map splits for the directional light (improving near-field resolution), and enable softer PCF or PCSS filtering which requires more depth comparison samples per pixel during the lighting pass.

In Street Fighter 6: This is the heaviest single setting in SF6. RE Engine renders cascaded shadow maps for the stage's directional light — Highest pushes shadow map resolution to 4K with additional cascade splits, improving shadow edge definition on character limbs and stage props. Because the scene is geometrically simple (two characters, fixed background), the visual return diminishes quickly. High delivers clean character shadows with a meaningful frame-time saving. Off removes all dynamic shadows, which looks noticeably flat on stage floors.

Typical impact 3-8% · 6% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Model Detail at High (6% fps cost).

Controls the geometric complexity of character and object meshes by selecting between pre-authored LOD tiers. Lower settings swap in reduced-polygon meshes earlier, cutting vertex shader invocations and rasterizer triangle throughput. This also reduces the number of material draw calls since simplified meshes often merge material slots. The CPU cost of skinning and animation blending also scales with vertex count on games that use CPU-side skeletal animation.

In Street Fighter 6: Distinct from Model Quality, this controls the distance thresholds and transition aggressiveness of LOD swaps for fighter and stage prop meshes. In a fighting game with a fixed camera distance, the practical LOD range is narrow — you're always viewing characters at roughly the same screen-space size. As a result, the difference between High and Highest here is negligible during matches. The setting has more relevance in the Battle Hub's open lobby area where many character models are visible at varying distances simultaneously.

Typical impact 3-15% · 5% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Effect Quality at High (5% fps cost).

Controls the visual fidelity of gameplay effects including explosions, weapon impacts, ability VFX, and environmental interactions. Higher settings increase particle emitter counts per effect, use higher-resolution flipbook or mesh particles instead of simple sprites, enable GPU particle simulation via compute shaders, and add dynamic lighting from effects (each explosion spawning a temporary point light). The cost is highly variable — intense combat with multiple overlapping effects can produce 4-8x overdraw from layered transparent particles.

In Street Fighter 6: Drive Impact and Super Arts create flashy particle explosions. Ultra effects look spectacular but can obscure gameplay during critical moments.

Typical impact 2-15% · 3% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Anti-Aliasing at TAA (3% fps cost).

Smooths jagged edges (aliasing) on geometric boundaries. FXAA is a single-pass edge-detection blur — cheap but softens the image. TAA accumulates multiple frames using motion vectors, sampling sub-pixel jitter offsets to reconstruct smoother edges — moderate cost with potential ghosting. SMAA uses pattern-matching edge detection with a more intelligent blend. MSAA runs the rasterizer at 2x/4x the sample count, evaluating coverage for each triangle edge — expensive because it multiplies ROP work and render target memory, but produces sharp geometry edges without blur.

In Street Fighter 6: RE Engine's TAA High mode accumulates sub-pixel jitter across frames with a tighter feedback loop, producing the sharpest stable image of the available options. Standard TAA introduces mild temporal ghosting on fast-moving limbs and projectiles — perceptible during rapid normal strings. FXAA is a single-pass edge blur that costs almost nothing but softens the image noticeably on character outlines. For competitive play at high framerates, FXAA or Off with a CAS sharpen pass is often preferred. TAA High is the quality ceiling if input latency tolerance allows.

Typical impact 3-12% · 4% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Ambient Occlusion at SSAO (4% fps cost).

Computes soft shadowing in crevices and where surfaces meet by estimating how much ambient light is occluded at each pixel. SSAO samples the depth buffer in a hemisphere around each pixel, testing for nearby occluders. HBAO+ uses ray-marching along the depth buffer horizon. GTAO uses a multi-directional horizon search with cosine-weighted integration for physically correct results. Each method runs as a fullscreen compute or pixel shader pass — higher quality modes increase sample count from 4 (SSAO) to 32+ (GTAO Ultra), directly scaling the per-pixel ALU cost.

In Street Fighter 6: RE Engine implements both SSAO and HBAO+ as fullscreen post-process passes. HBAO+ uses horizon-based ray marching through the depth buffer, producing noticeably better contact shadow definition where fighters' feet meet the stage floor and where costume elements fold. SSAO is a cheaper hemisphere-sample pass that still adds grounding but with softer, less accurate occlusion. Given SF6's fixed camera and constrained scene geometry, HBAO+ costs are lower here than in open environments — it's worth keeping on if your GPU is mid-range or above.

Typical impact 0-3% · 1% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Bloom at On (1% fps cost).

Produces a glow around bright light sources by extracting pixels above a brightness threshold and blurring them back into the scene. The implementation uses a bright-pass filter, followed by progressive downsampling with Gaussian blur at each mip level (4-6 levels), then re-compositing the blurred mips into the original image. The multi-pass nature means multiple fullscreen reads/writes, but each successive pass operates on a smaller buffer. Total cost is modest due to separable Gaussian implementation.

In Street Fighter 6: Bloom in SF6 extracts bright pixels from stage lighting, Drive Gauge glow, and super move energy effects, then blurs them through a multi-mip Gaussian pass before compositing back into the scene. The effect is most visible on neon-lit stages like Macho Ring and during Drive Rush activation. RE Engine's implementation is efficient — the progressive downsampling means each blur pass operates on a smaller buffer. The cost is minimal on any modern GPU. Disabling it gives a marginally flatter look but is worth considering only on very constrained hardware.

Typical impact 1-5% · 1% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Motion Blur at On (1% fps cost).

Applies directional blur to moving objects based on per-pixel motion vectors. The engine writes a motion vector buffer during the G-buffer pass — each pixel stores a 2D velocity derived from the difference between current and previous frame positions. The post-process shader samples the color buffer along each pixel's motion vector, averaging multiple taps to produce directional streaking. The cost is a single fullscreen pass with 8-16 dependent texture fetches per pixel. Many competitive players disable this for image clarity.

In Street Fighter 6: SF6 implements per-object motion blur using per-pixel velocity vectors written during the G-buffer pass. When enabled, fast limb movements and dash animations produce directional streaking proportional to movement speed. This is a purely aesthetic toggle — many fighting game players disable it to keep limb positions clear during frame-data-critical moments. The frame-time cost is a single fullscreen resolve pass and is low in absolute terms, but disabling it is an easy free win for players who find it visually distracting.

Typical impact 0-1% · 1% fps cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend Anisotropic Filtering at 16x (1% fps cost).

A dedicated anisotropic texture filtering control that adjusts the maximum number of additional texture samples taken per pixel for surfaces at steep viewing angles. At 16x, up to 16 taps are taken along the anisotropy axis in the texture unit hardware. This computation is overlapped with ALU work in the shader pipeline, so even maximum settings cost virtually nothing on modern architectures. The visual payoff is significant — eliminates blurriness on ground planes and distant walls.

In Street Fighter 6: RE Engine's texture units handle anisotropic filtering in dedicated hardware, making 16x essentially free on any GPU manufactured in the last five years. In SF6, the most visible benefit is on stage floor textures — the Bathers Beach sand, the Macho Ring canvas, and the Nayshall stone tiles all show significantly reduced oblique-angle blur at 16x versus 2x. There is no meaningful frame-time cost to running maximum AF here. Set it to 16x and leave it.

Typical impact 0% · no measurable cost

In Street Fighter 6, we recommend V-Sync at On (no measurable cost).

Synchronizes the GPU's framebuffer swap with the monitor's vertical blanking interval to prevent screen tearing. When enabled, the GPU holds the completed frame until the monitor signals it is ready. If the GPU cannot maintain the refresh rate, VSync forces the frame to wait for the next blanking interval, causing framerate to drop to a fraction (e.g., 60fps to 30fps on a 60Hz display). This introduces up to one full frame of input latency. Triple buffering mitigates the fractional drop but adds more latency.

In Street Fighter 6: With VSync on, RE Engine locks buffer swaps to your display's refresh interval, eliminating screen tearing during fast dashes and screen-flash supers. The trade-off is input latency — if your GPU drops below your refresh rate, the engine waits for the next blanking window, potentially adding a full frame of latency. For a fighting game where single-frame inputs matter, this is significant. Running VSync off with a frame cap set slightly below your monitor's refresh rate (via the in-game limiter or driver) is the standard competitive configuration.

Typical impact -30-80% · no measurable cost

In Street Fighter 6, the recommended preset leaves NVIDIA DLSS off — little visual loss for the frames it returns.

Deep Learning Super Sampling — NVIDIA's AI-based temporal upscaling that runs on dedicated Tensor Core hardware. The engine renders at a lower internal resolution and feeds the reduced-resolution frame, motion vectors, and depth buffer to a neural network that reconstructs a high-resolution output. DLSS 3+ adds optical flow-based frame generation on Ada/Blackwell architectures. The FPS gain comes from rendering fewer pixels — Quality mode renders ~67% of native pixels, Performance ~50%, Ultra Performance ~33%.