The official Phantom Blade Zero PC requirements start at a GTX 1660 or RX 5500 XT, an i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600 and 16 GB of RAM. That gets you 1080p at 30 FPS with upscaling on. For 1440p at 60 FPS, S-GAME recommends an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT, and path tracing at 4K/60 needs an RTX 5080. The install is about 145 GB on an SSD, but S-GAME asks for 300 GB of free space while the pre-load unpacks. The game unlocks on PC and PS5 on October 29 at 02:00 UTC, which is October 28 at 7 pm PT.
This guide puts every official spec tier in one table. It covers the storage and driver steps from S-GAME’s own pre-load guide, then turns the first launch benchmarks into a starting point for your settings. The PS5 and PS5 Pro graphics modes are covered too.
- Minimum (1080p/30 FPS, upscaling on): GTX 1660 6 GB / RX 5500 XT 8 GB, i7-8700K / Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB RAM.
- Recommended (1440p/60 FPS, upscaling on): RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB / RX 6700 XT 12 GB, i5-10600K / Ryzen 5 5600X, 16 GB RAM.
- Ray tracing (1080p/60 FPS): RTX 5060 8 GB. Path tracing (4K/60 FPS): RTX 5080 16 GB. Both tiers assume upscaling.
- Storage: about 145 GB, SSD required, and at least 300 GB free during the pre-load.
- Upscalers: TSR, DLSS, FSR and XeSS, plus frame generation up to 6x on RTX 50 cards, according to Wccftech’s look at the settings menu.
- Steam Deck: Valve hasn’t rated it yet. PS5: three graphics modes, and the game is PS5 Pro Enhanced.
Table of Contents
Phantom Blade Zero PC requirements
S-GAME published the minimum and recommended specs on the Steam store page. It repeated them, with a storage figure added, in its pre-load announcement on October 26. The ray tracing and path tracing tiers come from the developer’s August spec reveal, which GamingBolt and Multiplayer.it reported. All four targets assume upscaling is on.
| Tier | Target | GPU | CPU | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | 1080p / 30 FPS, RT and PT off | GTX 1660 6 GB / RX 5500 XT 8 GB | Core i7-8700K / Ryzen 5 3600 | 16 GB |
| Recommended | 1440p / 60 FPS, RT and PT off | RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB / RX 6700 XT 12 GB | Core i5-10600K / Ryzen 5 5600X | 16 GB |
| Ray tracing | 1080p / 60 FPS | RTX 5060 8 GB | not listed | not listed |
| Path tracing | 2160p (4K) / 60 FPS | RTX 5080 16 GB | not listed | not listed |
Every tier needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), DirectX 12 and an SSD. The game is Windows-only on Steam, with no Mac or Linux version. The Steam page also shows that it uses Denuvo, which is third-party DRM. S-GAME only gave NVIDIA cards for the two ray-traced tiers. Path tracing is a PC-only feature: NVIDIA calls it “PC-exclusive”, and it’s refined by DLSS Ray Reconstruction on RTX cards.
The official minimum and recommended specs, both with ray tracing and path tracing off. Image: S-GAME
How much storage does Phantom Blade Zero need?
About 145 GB once it’s installed. S-GAME’s pre-load guide asks for at least 300 GB of free space on the drive first, because “temporary files and the complete game files must coexist during the unlock process.” Once the unlock finishes, the game drops back to about 145 GB. If a download or update fails for lack of space, the studio’s advice is to free up room and download again.
The studio also says to install on an SSD and, where you can, not on your system drive (C:). That keeps Windows disk activity from hurting frame rate stability. To check your drive type, open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc), go to the Performance tab and select the disk.
On PS5, Push Square reported a size of about 134 GB, based on PlayStation database trackers. S-GAME hasn’t confirmed a console file size. Our Phantom Blade Zero release date and editions guide has the unlock time in every region and the pre-order bonuses.
Ray tracing and path tracing: what they cost
Wccftech’s hardware team benchmarked the launch build on PC. In the Phantom Blade Zero PC benchmarks it published on October 27, ray tracing cost 20-22% of the frame rate compared with the native Ultra preset. Path tracing cost another 35-40% on top of ray tracing, about half the frame rate of plain Ultra. Those numbers come from an RTX 5090 at 4K, and Wccftech notes that results vary with resolution and card.
| Setting (4K, RTX 5090, native) | Average FPS (Wccftech) |
|---|---|
| Low preset | 103 |
| Medium preset | 99 |
| High preset | 85 |
| Very High preset | 72 |
| Ultra preset | 67 |
| Ultra + ray tracing | 52 |
| Ultra + path tracing | 33 |
Wccftech’s game reviewer saw the same pattern on an RTX 4080 at 4K with High settings and DLSS Quality. He got around 100 FPS without ray tracing, the high 50s with ray tracing and about 30 FPS with path tracing. He didn’t think frame generation was worth it there, because reaching the 60 FPS base it needs meant dropping DLSS to Performance. The good news, per the same Wccftech review, is that the game uses pre-baked lighting rather than Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen. That’s why it still looks good with ray tracing off.
Heavy rain scenes like this one are where reviewers saw frame drops, and where path tracing shows the most. Image: S-GAME
Phantom Blade Zero PC graphics settings explained
According to Wccftech, the game runs on Unreal Engine 5.7.4. On first boot it compiles shaders, which takes a while but only happens once. The menu has these options:
- Display: image calibration, output display, window mode, resolution, frame-rate limit, V-Sync, HDR, motion blur, sharpness, camera shake and film grain intensity.
- Graphics preset: the game checks your hardware and picks a recommended preset (Low, Medium, High, Very High or Ultra).
- Super Resolution: TSR, NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR or Intel XeSS, in modes from Ultra Performance to Ultra Quality, plus DLAA, FSR AA and XeSS AA. Dynamic resolution is turned off while DLSS, FSR or XeSS is in use.
- Frame generation: up to 2x with AMD’s version, up to 4x with Intel’s and up to 6x with NVIDIA Multi Frame Generation on RTX 50 cards. NVIDIA says the game supports DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi Frame Generation.
- Lighting mode: Native Rendering, Ray Tracing or Path Tracing (path tracing is off by default).
- Details: shadows, reflections, post-processing, lighting, effects, materials, ambient occlusion, depth of field, motion blur quality, anti-aliasing, view distance, character textures and models, high-quality hair, and environment textures, models and detail.
Best settings for Phantom Blade Zero on PC
Nobody outside the studio has tested every card yet, so treat this as a starting point. It’s built from Wccftech’s launch benchmarks (Ultra preset, native resolution, no upscaling) and S-GAME’s own targets. Your own numbers will move with your CPU, drivers and day-one patches.
| GPU (Wccftech test) | 1080p Ultra | 1440p Ultra | 4K Ultra | Where to start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 5090 | 122 | 100 | 63 | 4K Ultra; path tracing with DLSS and frame generation |
| RTX 5080 | 86 | 72 | 40 | 1440p Ultra, or 4K with DLSS; S-GAME’s path tracing card |
| RTX 5070 Ti / RX 9070 XT | 75 / 67 | 62 / 57 | 34 / 31 | 1440p Very High or Ultra; upscaling for 4K |
| RTX 5070 / RTX 4070 Ti Super | 55 / 56 | 47 / 48 | 25 / 26 | 1440p High with DLSS Quality |
| RTX 5060 Ti / RX 9060 XT 16 GB | 33 / 33 | 34 / 35 | 15 / 15 | 1080p High with upscaling |
| RTX 5060 / RTX 4060 8 GB | 30 / 23 | 31 / 22 | 11 / 7 | 1080p Medium or High with upscaling |
Figures are average FPS from Wccftech’s October 27 benchmarks. The right-hand column is our recommendation, based on those numbers.
- Start one preset below Ultra. In Wccftech’s tests, High and Very High gave the best balance of looks and speed. Ultra looked only slightly better for a further 6-7% frame rate cost. Low and Medium ran within 3-5 FPS of each other and both look much plainer, since High is where Wccftech saw lighting, textures and world detail fill in.
- Turn upscaling on before you lower settings. Every official target assumes it. Use DLSS on RTX cards, FSR on Radeon cards and XeSS on Intel Arc. TSR works on any GPU.
- Use frame generation only from a solid base. Wccftech’s reviewer wanted a 60 FPS base before turning it on. For a game built on parries and counters, that’s a sensible floor.
- Treat path tracing as an RTX 5080 or 5090 feature. Wccftech says frame generation is a must for ray or path tracing. Even the RTX 5090 averaged 43 FPS at 4K with path tracing and DLAA before frame generation.
- Cap your frame rate in the Display menu if it swings a lot between areas. Insider Gaming saw drops on PS5 Pro in heavy rain in the Pangzhen region, and Wccftech noticed occasional traversal stutter on PC.
If you also play Call of Duty, our MW4 best settings guide covers the same upscaling and frame generation trade-offs for a competitive shooter.
Update your graphics driver before you play
S-GAME’s pre-load guide says to install the newest driver before launch. For NVIDIA it “strongly” recommends GeForce Game Ready Driver 621.01 or newer, which includes optimizations for Phantom Blade Zero and “can significantly improve stability”. You can get it through the NVIDIA app under Drivers. For AMD, the studio says to install the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition and check for a release optimized for the game before launch.
S-GAME's pre-load guide: 145 GB installed, but 300 GB free while the game unlocks. Image: S-GAME
Does Phantom Blade Zero run on Steam Deck?
There’s no official answer yet. When we checked Steam’s Deck compatibility data on October 28 at 02:30 UTC, the game was still unrated, so Valve hasn’t tested it. S-GAME’s minimum spec is a desktop GTX 1660 or RX 5500 XT for 1080p at 30 FPS with upscaling. That’s a much stronger GPU than the Deck’s built-in graphics, and the 145 GB install needs a fast drive. Wait for Valve’s rating or early player reports before you count on handheld play.
Phantom Blade Zero PS5 and PS5 Pro graphics modes
On consoles, Phantom Blade Zero is PS5-only at launch. PlayStation’s game page lists it as PS5 Pro Enhanced. S-GAME hasn’t published resolution or frame rate figures for each mode, so here’s what reviewers reported:
| Console | What reviewers reported | Source |
|---|---|---|
| PS5 Pro | Three graphics modes. The reviewer spent most of the time in Balanced Mode but found Performance Mode the best overall. Drops only in heavy rain in Pangzhen. | Insider Gaming |
| PS5 Pro | Performance Mode with an extra ray tracing option turned on ran “very smoothly at 60 frames-per-second”, with drops in some boss battles. | Push Square |
| PS5 Pro | Occasional hitches when new areas loaded and during execution animations. | Press Start |
| Base PS5 | “Silky smooth 60 FPS throughout many of my hours.” | GamingBolt |
Since this is a fast, parry-heavy action game, the reviews point the same way: pick Performance Mode for combat. On a PS5 Pro, try the ray tracing toggle if you can live with the occasional drop in big boss fights. Eurogamer also saw frame rate dips before S-GAME’s 67 GB pre-launch patch and found them improved afterwards. For how the patch changed bosses and difficulty, see our Phantom Blade Zero length, bosses and difficulty guide. Our Phantom Blade Zero reviews roundup has the full critic scores, and the Phantom Blade Zero weapons list covers what you’ll fight with.
FAQ
Can a GTX 1660 run Phantom Blade Zero?
Yes. The GTX 1660 6 GB is S-GAME’s minimum GPU, and it targets 1080p at 30 FPS with upscaling on and ray tracing off. You’ll also need a CPU at the i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600 level, 16 GB of RAM and an SSD.
Is Phantom Blade Zero on Xbox?
Not at launch. It’s out on PS5 and PC (Steam and the Epic Games Store). The fine print on the release date trailer said it won’t come to other consoles until at least 12 months after release, as MP1st reported. No Xbox version has been announced.
Does Phantom Blade Zero have Denuvo?
Yes. The Steam store page says it “incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo” and requires agreeing to a third-party EULA.
Does Phantom Blade Zero support DLSS and FSR?
Yes. According to Wccftech’s look at the settings menu, the game supports TSR, DLSS, FSR and XeSS upscaling, with frame generation for all three GPU brands. NVIDIA confirms DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction.
What time does Phantom Blade Zero unlock on PC?
October 28 at 7:00 pm PDT, which is October 29 at 02:00 UTC, per S-GAME’s Steam announcement. The PC pre-load opened on October 26 at 7:00 pm PDT.
Sources: S-GAME pre-load guide on Steam (Oct 26, 2026), Steam store page, GamingBolt and Multiplayer.it (RT/PT tiers), NVIDIA, Wccftech benchmarks and review, Insider Gaming, Push Square, Press Start, GamingBolt review, Eurogamer, PlayStation, MP1st. Checked October 28, 2026 at 02:30 UTC.
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