Image: Colossal Order

Best settings for low-end PCs in Cities Skylines 2

Enjoy smoother gameplay!

Leo Gillick

Published: Nov 3, 2023 03:21 pm

Cities Skylines 2 is finally here, yet again pushing the frontiers of what city builders can do. However, despite not being massively demanding for PCs, you should probably check for the best settings in Cities Skylines 2 if you’re running a low-end PC.

Minimum Requirements for Cities Skylines 2

Before you even purchase the game, I would highly recommend checking that your PC has the hardware to actually run the game. If you are not sure what you have on board, you can use System Requirements Lab. This website will download a tiny program that will check your PC and let you know how it compares and what it can run.

These are the minimum requirements for a low-end PC running Cities Skylines 2.

OS: Windows 10
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i7-6700K
GPU: Nvidia AMD Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 970
RAM: 8 GB
Storage: 60 GB available space

However, if you want to run the game as the team intended, you should aim for the recommended requirements.

OS: Windows 10 / 11
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X or Intel Core i5-12600K
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT or Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: 60 GB available space

In-Game Settings

This is where you will find all the settings that make the most difference to your gaming experience. Although it may be a little daunting to look at initially, once you understand where each one should be, you’ll have the game running like a dream in no time.

Cities Skyline 2 Best Graphics Settings — Image: PC Invasion

Graphics settings for Cities Skylines 2

If you want a gaming experience that doesn’t look like a PowerPoint presentation, try these settings on for size.

Display mode: Fullscreen
Depth of field mode: Disabled
Global graphics quality: Custom
Dynamic resolution scale: Disabled
Anti-aliasing quality: High SMAA
Cloud quality: Low
Fog quality: Low
Volumetrics quality: Low
Ambient Occlusion quality: Low
Global illumination quality: Low

Reflection quality: Low
Depth of field quality: Low
Motion blur: Disabled
Shadow quality: Low
Terrain quality: Low
Water quality: Low
Level of detail: High
Animation quality: Medium
Texture quality: High

Now, with these settings, your game should be running just fine, even with a low-end PC. If you’re hitting above your target FPS, you can start tweaking certain settings to make it look a little more pretty.

Getting into the advanced settings

Advanced Graphics Settings In Cities Skyline 2 — Image: PC Invasion

You should be able to get your Cities Skylines game running just fine with the basic graphics settings. However, if you want to get deeper into the guts of the game, you can start messing with the advanced settings. To get even more from Cities Skylines 2 on your low-end PC, try tweaking some of these.