ARK: Survival Ascended: Settings for RTX 4070 series/7800x3d (fixed Shadow flickering and Sun rays not working properly)

Since spending the last two weeks optimizing and finally getting rid of constant flickering, shadows not working properly in every possible way and finally able to run the game on 1440p with around 30-60 frames (50 on average), no stuttering and no drops under 30fps with pretty graphics I needed to protect anyone with a lower frustration tolerancy than me:

NOTE: ASA is a very VRAM intense game, this setup is on the edge of playing smoothly and was designed this way on purpose. Any better performance/fps in ASA can only be achieved by upgrading to more VRAM.

Take a screenshot of your previous settings or set them specifically for ASA in your nvidia settings. Not taking any responsibility for other games not working and/or crashing when using these settings.
Please make sure Mainboard, Processor and Graphics Card drivers are up to date.

First you want to deoptimize ark from nvidia app (in case ASA isn’t optimized via app skip this step):

Rightclick on nvidia settings (bottom right corner) —> NVIDIA app —> Graphics —> Program settings —> Select ASA —> hit Reset
(You can always reoptimize ASA again)

Rightclick on nvidia settings (bottom right corner) –> NVIDIA Control Panel

Apply the slightly altered 3D program settings for ASA, they are mostly the same as mentioned by Panjno here:

How to Optimize Nvidia Control Panel For GAMING & Performance The Ultimate GUIDE 2024 *NEW*

Different options to tick for this setup:
Texture filtering Anisotropic sample optimization —> off
Power management mode —> Prefer maximum performance (Only apply this for ASA specifically via 3D settings/program settings/add/search for X:\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK Survival Ascended\ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64\ArkAscended.exe)
Monitor Technology —> G-Sync, G-Sync Compatible
VSync —> off

If not already selected, choose your current resolution, select your maximum refresh rate and turn on “Use NVIDIA Color settings”.

—> Scaling
– Select Full Screen
– Perform scaling on —> Select Display —> hit “Override the scaling mode set by programs and features”
– Resolution —> Select Current Resolution
– Refresh Rate —> Select highest possible

NOTE: When using G-Sync make sure your Display driver is up to date.

Enable “G-Sync, G-Sync Compatible” and select “Enable for windowed and full screen mode”.

Bottom right corner —> Select Apply to save settings

—> Restart your PC

For my setup the main two settings causing flickering/shadow problems were “dynamic illumination quality (Low to epic)” and “low light enhancement on/off”.
Do not turn off global illumination method via console or startup/engine.ini (r.DynamicGlobalIlluminationMethod=0). In my case it was related to that flickering.
Other graphics settings like “Enable/Disable fluid and foliage interaction” or other settings didn’t make a difference in case of graphical “misbehaving” or crashes.

NOTE: If these settings don’t appear to you go to the RTX tab and change them from there.

– Select Max Frame Rate and set the value to 60 (also tried 141 etc. but it makes no difference in case of stability or fps)
– Select Super Resolution like shown in the image and turn it off.
– Change Resolution Scale to 100% (set it to 67 if any lags appear)
– Select Super Resolution and turn on DLAA
– Turn on frame generation (it automatically turns off low latency and vice versa)
Low Latency droped frames from ~40 to ~23 so I selected frame generation.

– Select Graphics Presets —> Epic
– Turn down settings like shown in image below
Foliage and Fluid Interaction —>ON

Foliage interaction caused a hard drop around 40-50fps for me so I did turn it off but since it got fixed theres no reason not to. (No more pesky flying rocks xD)
Some people also got crashes regarding this setting – select what works better for you.

Disable Menu Transitions —> ON

Fixes lag drops when opening containers etc.

—> Restart ASA

As mentioned before, ASA is badly balanced and needs a lot of user-sided optimization in some cases to work properly. Other games may work as intended, ASA does not.

MSI Pro B650-P WIFI
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Be quiet Dark Rock Pro 4
RTX 4070 Windforce OC 12G
2 x 16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5 7800 RGB
Be quiet Straight Power 12 850W
Samsung SSD 980 Pro M.2 2TB
Asus ROG Strix XG32UQ
Programs running: ISLC (use at own risk)

Greetings Kiana