Best Mafia The Old Country settings for PC and Steam Deck

If you want to find the best Mafia The Old Country settings for either PC or Steam Deck, you'll have to push through a frustrating cutscene issue that will hopefully be fixed in future game updates. Thankfully, while this issue is persistent, it doesn't hugely impact the general gameplay experience, and when Mafia The Old Country is ramped up to its highest graphical settings, the game looks truly stunning.

You can check out the Mafia The Old Country system requirements to make sure your gaming PC is up to the task of running this action-adventure prequel. You won't need the best graphics card from our buying guide to run the game, but if you're aiming for a high frame rate at 4K, you won't get far in Mafia The Old Country without some serious horsepower.

Best Mafia The Old Country settings for PC

• VSync: On
• Anti-Aliasing & Upscaling: Nvidia DLSS (if available, otherwise use FSR)
• Upscaling Mode: Quality
• Frame Generation: Off
• Sharpness: 0.15
• Motion Blur: Off
• Global Illumination: High
• Shadows: Medium
• Reflections: Medium
• View Distance: Far
• Textures: High
• Foliage: Medium
• Effects: Medium
• Post Processing: High

Performance in Mafia The Old Country is a tale of two halves, one with frame generation, and one without. Using the above settings, we achieved an average frame rate of 78fps with 1% lows of 59fps at 1,920 x 1,080. At 2,560 x 1,440, this dropped to an average of 60fps with 1% lows of 50fps, and finally at 4K, this resulted in an average of 33fps with 1% lows of 26fps.

When keeping DLSS on quality but turning frame generation off entirely, the average frame rates increased to 122fps, 101fps, and 34fps, respectively, while the 1% lows dropped to 42fps, 29fps, and 26fps.

Gameplay is more consistent with our chosen settings when frame generation is disabled. Most important is that our performance in Mafia The Old Country was pretty good at 1080p and 1440p before we enabled frame generation, but upon enabling it, the frame rate boost wasn't as impactful as it is in some other titles.

We've seen similar performance trends in other Unreal Engine 5 games, where it isn't a foregone conclusion to have 80fps+ with a solid 1% low of 60fps when running higher graphical settings on our hardware.

If you have a similar rig to ours, however, you're going to want to drop some of the in-game settings or opt for a more aggressive upscaling mode before you try and run the game at 4K, as this is where our rig struggled unless upscaling was increased to at least the performance setting.

One performance issue of note comes during the transitions into cutscenes. While you can set the cutscene frame rate to either 30fps, 60fps, or have it as unlimited. There is a considerable amount of stutter when a cutscene is triggered and ends, regardless of which option is selected. We tested this across multiple graphics settings, both with and without DLSS and frame generation, and the issue was always present.

It's far from game-breaking, but it is quite frustrating and can also knock out the audio synchronization for a few seconds while everything corrects itself.

Best Mafia The Old Country settings for Steam Deck

• VSync: On
• Resolution: 1,280 x 800
• Anti-Aliasing & Upscaling: AMD FSR
• Upscaling Mode: Performance
• Frame Generation: Off
• Sharpness: 0.15
• Motion Blur: Off
• Global Illumination: High
• Shadows: Medium
• Reflections: Low
• View Distance: Near
• Textures: Low
• Foliage: Low
• Effects: Low
• Post Processing: Low

Mafia The Old Country runs okay on the Steam Deck, but only with the lowest possible settings and some fairly aggressive upscaling. That being said, the image quality doesn't suffer hugely as a result, and the game is playable with the average frame rate floating around the 30fps mark.

With potential Proton optimizations still to come, there is the possibility that performance improves somewhere down the line. However, if you'd rather not wait, you can instead turn to Nvidia GeForce Now, as Mafia The Old Country is on the service and your performance will be much improved by comparison, provided you have a strong broadband connection.

The game has been given an Unsupported Steam Deck rating for now, but it's worth noting that the reason for this rating isn't directly given, as it is for some other titles. Instead, it states, "Valve is still working on adding support for this game on Steam Deck."

Mafia The Old Country graphics presets

There are four graphics presets available in Mafia The Old Country: low, medium, high, and epic. Thanks to a VRAM calculator in the graphics menu, we're able to see how much VRAM the game predicts each preset will use across the three resolutions we tested. As you can see, 8GB of VRAM will be fine for this game.

There is also quite a big difference in the image quality between the Epic and Low presets, although this is mostly a case of details being lost when an object is further away. You can right-click the image below and open it in a new tab to see it in greater detail.

Character details are quite strong across all presets, but you'll be sacrificing quality in shadows, reflections, foliage, and lighting.

How we tested Mafia The Old Country

At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Mafia The Old Country includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in dual-channel configuration, and an MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 and 4K using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Mafia The Old Country need an SSD?

Mafia The Old Country requires the use of an SSD, according to the system requirements. The game can still be downloaded and booted from a traditional hard drive, but doing so is likely to lead to performance issues. The game itself will load quicker from an SSD, and you'll minimize the chance of stutter or long load times in-game due to data being loaded from the drive.

If you're looking for some recommendations, our best gaming SSD guide includes loads of options, from budget to high-end drives, all of which we've tested to ensure they work as well as the manufacturers claim.

How to monitor performance in Mafia The Old Country

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Mafia The Old Country, we have an easy method that works whether you're using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.

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