What are the best Dune Awakening settings for PC and Steam Deck? While not a traditional MMORPG, in that the RPG elements have been replaced with survival crafting, Dune Awakening is still incredibly easy to run. Getting a fast frame rate out of Dune won't be hard, provided you meet the minimum demands.
The best graphics cards.
Best Dune Awakening settings for PC
- Anti-Aliasing Quality: Ultra
- View Distance: Ultra
- Post Processing: Ultra
- Shadow Quality: Ultra
- Effects Quality: Ultra
- Texture Quality: Ultra
- Foliage Quality: Ultra
- Hair Quality: Ultra
- Motion Blur: Off
- Global Illumination Method: Quality
- Global Illumination Quality: Ultra
- Global Illumination Reflections Quality: Ultra
- Upscaler: Nvidia DLSS
- Upscaler Quality: Quality
- Frame Generation: On
- VSync: Off
Using the above settings on our RTX 4070 rig, we were able to achieve an average frame rate of 142fps, with 1% lows of 100fps, which is great for an online crafting survival game. If you find that your gaming PC isn't quite capable of pushing Dune Awakening to its limits, adjusting the global illumination is a good place to start.
From there, you can work on either lowering the quality of other settings like textures, or increasing the upscaling you use to a profile like Balanced or Performance.
Dune Awakening has a free benchmarking tool you can to skip most of the trial-and-error routine when it comes to finding the best settings. However, it's not a complete replacement for gameplay, and you may find that your best frame rate from the benchmarks is a little higher compared to live gameplay.
Dune Awakening Benchmarks
| Player Built Bases | Harko Village | Sandworm Emerges | |
| Ultra | 133.9 | 143.5 | 172 |
| High | 152.6 | 157.2 | 189.3 |
| Medium | 173.3 | 181.4 | 207 |
| Low | 184.1 | 188.2 | 214.1 |
Best Dune Awakening settings for Steam Deck
- Anti-Aliasing Quality: Low
- View Distance: Low
- Post Processing: Low
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Effects Quality: Low
- Texture Quality: Medium
- Foliage Quality: Low
- Hair Quality: Medium
- Motion Blur: Off
- Global Illumination Method: Performance
- Global Illumination Quality: Medium
- Global Illumination Reflections Quality: Medium
- Upscaler: AMD FSR
- Upscaler Quality: Balanced
- Frame Generation: Off
- VSync: Off
Dune Awakening runs surprisingly well on the Steam Deck, with decent image quality despite some aggressive upscaling. In fact, while the above settings netted us an average frame rate of around 48fps, there's room to adjust some settings for better image quality if you're fine with locking to 30fps.
It's unlikely that Dune Awakening will be Verified for Steam Deck, but a Playable rating would be fair given its current state.
Dune Awakening Steam Deck benchmarks
| Player Built Bases | Harko Village | Sandworm Emerges | |
| Low | 41.1 | 46.9 | 55.6 |
| Medium | 39.8 | 44.8 | 52.1 |
| High | 35.1 | 39.2 | 47.4 |
| Ultra | 28.7 | 31.5 | 33.6 |
How we tested Dune Awakening
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 Dune Awakening includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration, and 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 using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.
Does Dune Awakening need an SSD?
Dune Awakening does not require an SSD, regardless of whether you're aiming for the minimum or recommended system requirements. Still, upgrading to one of the best gaming SSD options would really help keep game loading times in check while also boosting your speeds.
How to monitor performance in Dune Awakening
If you want to keep an eye on performance in Dune Awakening, 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 free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.
With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.
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