With the ever-growing and advancing PC hardware, the chances of game developers taking their sweet time to understand the change properly and adapting to it get a lot of flak from the players that have moved to the most modern iteration of the technology.
Games that are not massively multiplayer and generally rely on story progression aim for the 60 FPS mark in most cases. And with consoles reaching this FPS mark in the latest generation, the developers will finally try to develop higher hardware capabilities.
Due to all of these intricacies, Dark Souls 3 is fixed to just 60 FPS. However, you could get a higher frame rate with mods.
As for Dark Souls 3, which was part of the previous generation, the sweet spot for it is 60 FPS at most. Along with this system consideration, this game has a unique feature where every move and tactic one could apply has been perfected to the frames it takes to execute.
Dark Souls 3 At 144hz
The engine on which Dark Souls 3 is designed isn’t compatible with running anything above 60 fps, and each animation is designed using these limitations in place.
Though you can not officially play Dark Souls 3 above 60 fps, you can use mods created by the community if you don’t mind meddling with the game. The mod had some issues in the past, but now is a much more stable and safe experience and is accepted by the users.
You can download the mod using this link. After downloading the patch, you must extract the file D3DCompiler_43.dll AND FPSconfig.ini into “Steam\steamapps\common\DARK SOULS III\Game” directory.
Once you have done that, open up the FPSconfig.ini file and modify the values to your liking. You will likely have a good experience by staying around 100 to 140 fps. The lower the fps, the fewer bugs will be. Launch the game and set it to windowed mode; the patch will make it borderless.
If there are issues, set V-Sync off from NVIDIA or AMD control panel and disable fullscreen optimizations from DarkSoulsIII.exe (the file is located in the “Steam\steamapps\common\DARK SOULS III\Game” directory.)
Below are the exact instructions for installation from the modder himself:
Move D3DCompiler_43.dll and FPSconfig.ini into your game directory.
I’ve added an executable version that will only work when the game is open, using D3DCompiler_43.dll will be much better though.
Edit FPSconfig.ini to your liking.
FPSconfig.ini Preview:
; Config file for DS3DebugFPS
[Settings]
fps = 144.0 ; Fps Cap
UseCustomScreenDimensions = 0 ; Set to 1 to change how the game is stretched, by default it will stretch the game to fit screen (optimal)
; UseCustomScreenDimensions must be enabled for these
ScreenWidth = 1920
ScreenHeight = 1080
EnableCursorClip = 0 ; Set to 1 to enable the cursor clip hotkey, used to keep the mouse locked in the window
CursorClipHotkey = 0x7A ; default: f11 (0x7A). You can still alt tab out of the window. This value is in hex.
; Hotkey list can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/inputdev/virtual-key-codes
If using the executable, you must place FPSconfig.ini in the same directory as ds3DebugFps.exe.
default path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DARK SOULS III\Game