SAND: Raiders of Sophie Guide: Best Graphic Settings for Max FPS

SAND: Raiders of Sophie launched with a brief delay, and while it looks great, the shooting-heavy gameplay means any frame drops or stutters can cost you a fight. The good news is that a few targeted changes to the graphics settings can get things running smoothly, even on hardware that only just clears the minimum requirements. Here's exactly what to change and why.

What are the best graphics settings for SAND: Raiders of Sophie?

The settings below were tested on a system running a 32 GB DDR4 RAM, an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, and an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB. That setup comfortably clears the recommended specs, yet lag still appeared before these tweaks were applied. If your rig sits closer to the minimum requirements, lean toward the lower end of any range given.

important

Set Graphics Quality Preset to Custom first. Without that, individual settings may be locked and your changes won't stick.

Custom graphics preset screen

Display and frame rate settings

Display Mode: Fullscreen. Windowed modes add input overhead you don't need.
Resolution: Use your monitor's native resolution. Dropping below native rarely helps as much as the other settings here.
Field of View: 90
V-Sync: Off. SAND is a competitive shooter at heart, and capping your frame generation to the display refresh rate introduces input lag.
Frame Rate: 90 FPS on higher-end hardware, 60 FPS on lower-end machines.
Limit FPS in Background: Off
Limit FPS in Menu: Off

Anti-aliasing and upscaling

Anti-Aliasing: Off. It's one of the heavier post-process costs and the visual difference at native resolution is minimal.
Super Resolution: On, set to Performance if you're still experiencing drops after adjusting everything else. This is your best single-setting rescue for struggling hardware.

Geometry, textures, and materials

Texture Resolution: Medium
Geometry Quality: Medium
Materials Quality: Low
Terrain Tessellation: Off

tip

Terrain Tessellation is one of the most GPU-expensive options in the game. Turning it off gives a noticeable FPS boost with almost no visible change during fast-paced combat.

Shadow settings

Shadows are consistently the biggest performance drain in SAND. Keep every shadow option conservative.

Shadow Quality: Low or Medium. Do not go above Medium under any circumstances.
Shadow Refresh Frequency: Low
Contact Shadows: Low

Lighting and atmosphere

Sky Quality: Low
Volumetric Fog: Low
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO): Medium
Screen Space Global Illumination (SSGI): Low

Post-processing

Post-Processing Quality: Medium
Post-Processing Injection Point: Before Upscaler
Motion Blur: Off. This one hurts readability during combat more than it costs frames.
Bloom: Off
Film Grain: Off
Chromatic Aberration: Off
Vignette: On
Color Filters: Personal preference, no performance impact.

Why these settings matter in a shooter

SAND leans hard on combat responsiveness. Frame pacing matters as much as raw FPS here because inconsistent frame delivery makes enemy movement feel jittery and aiming feel unpredictable. Turning off V-Sync, disabling Motion Blur, and keeping shadows low all contribute directly to how clean the game feels to play, not just how many numbers appear in an FPS counter.

For more help with the game, the Sands of Aura strategy guides collection covers additional systems and mechanics worth knowing. If you're newer to adventure games with heavy combat systems, getting your performance baseline right first makes everything else easier to learn.