How to Optimize Fortnite for Performance (2026) Optimization Guides

Quick Answers

Common questions answered at a glance

How much FPS will I gain?

The average player sees a 30–80% FPS increase from pairing the right in-game settings with a few Windows tweaks, with budget PCs showing the best gains. A GTX 1060 sitting around the 45 FPS mark has the potential to realistically hit around 80–100+ FPS with the right tweaks.

What is the single biggest thing I can change?

Will I break something?!

Why isn’t Fortnite running as fast as it could be?

Fortnite isn’t poorly optimized. The thing that’s going on is that your PC is trying to do a hundred different things in the background that you haven’t asked it to do. Windows telemetry. Xbox Game Bar recording. Copilot hijacking a bunch of your RAM. Widgets phoning home. And Fortnite is installed with all its settings cranked way up higher than most PCs ever need.The end result is that your Video Card is rendering super pretty shadows that no one is looking at, and your Processor is babysitting the world’s 40 background things. It’s like trying to sprint whilst carrying a backpack filled full of rocks.

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So this guide is about removing the rocks. Let’s start with the heaviest!

Step 1: Pick the right Rendering Mode

This is the biggest choice you will make. Fortnite has four rendering modes, and perform pretty differently in each. Most pros are using Performance Mode. It resembles a mobile game, but can deliver up to 3x the FPS of standard DirectX 11. If you care more winning than looks, this is the one.DirectX 11 — The safe, sound choice. It locks into one Processor core and plays well on older Video Cards like GTX 1060 or 1070 that don’t do DX12 justice.DirectX 12 — The gold standard! Great, if you’re packing a RTX series (or RX 6000+). It distributes work across all Processor cores for less random drops and better frametimes. The downside…it’ll stutter the first few games while Fortnite’s shader load cache is built. It smooths out after, don’t worry.Unsure? If you have a budget PC/laptop, use Performance Mode. If you game on a desktop where you have an RTX card, try DX12. If it stutters, revert back to DX11.

Step 2: Graphics Settings (From Best to Worst for FPS)

Not every setting eats FPS equally. Some are gigantic FPS changes. And some don’t touch them at all. Here’s what you can and can’t change from best to worst in terms of FPS boost, based on verified testing by FRAMESYNC LABS.Shadows — Off. Up to 53% more FPS. The single biggest boost from any other setting in-game. Shadows also make enemies harder to spot in dark spots. Even the pros have them off.Lumen Global Illumination — Off. Up to 50% more FPS. Again, Lumen is Unreal Engine 5’s main lighting system! Looks awesome in the trailer and in-game it’s just munching or digesting your frames. Turn this off, even for competitive. They don’t reward pretty.Nanite — Off. This is a huge FPS eater from 20–40% more. Nanite renders film-like 3D models. As you can imagine, that’s Processor heavy. Unless you want a timeless portfolio shot, then turn it off.Effects — Low. About 15% more FPS. Lower effects also help with fight clutter, you can actually see enemies through explosions.Post Processing — Low. About 15% more FPS. Motion blur and other screen distractions are off, and the image is cleaner making your aim sharper.View Distance — Near or Medium. About 7% more FPS. Pros use Near because at the render distance edges you can see through some builds, to get the jump on people. Medium is fine with being aware of zones.Textures — Low. Small FPS gain (~2%) but keeps stutters off your Video Card with <4GB memory. Medium is fine with 6GB+.Motion Blur — Off. Always. Makes it impossible to track enemies.Hardware Ray Tracing — Off. 30%+ of FPS cost. Beautiful reflections, absolutely not worth it competitively.

Step 3: Display and Framerate Settings

Window Mode — Fullscreen. Not “Windowed Fullscreen.” Fullscreen mode grants your game exclusive control of the display reducing input lag as much as possible.Frame Rate Limit — Match your monitor’s refresh rate, or set a few frames below (237 for 240Hz monitor) to avoid frametime spikes. Some players prefer uncapped frame rates, test both.VSync — Off. VSync adds 15–30ms of input delay, like worse connection quality. Turn it off.NVIDIA Reflex — On + Boost. If you have an NVIDIA Video Card, this is free performance. NVIDIA’s own testing shows Reflex reduces latency by up to 54% in Fortnite, and the “Boost” setting keeps your Video Card’s clocks high even when it’s not fully loaded. Every pro uses this.

Step 4: Upscaling — Get Free FPS Without the Blur

Upscaling is where the game is rendered at a lower resolution and an AI “sharpens it back up”. Nowadays the upscaling is actually pretty good (DLSS/TSR), and definitely worth a try.RTX Video Card? Part of the RTX Video Card club? Try using DLSS on Quality or Balanced, if you haven’t already. You should see about 40–60% more FPS with little loss in visual quality.AMD, Intel or an ancient NVIDIA video card? Try using TSR (Temporal Super Resolution). This is Epic’s built-in upscaler and it’s actually surprisingly good. It comes as a medium or high setting, but Low TSR surprisingly seems to be a hidden max-FPS mode a lot of people are sleeping on.Avoid Frame Generation (DLSS 3/FSR 3). Never seen a pro use this, and a lot of pros generally don’t. Instead of helping, it adds frames that make your FPS counter happy, but feel laggy to your hands.

Step 5: Windows Settings Stealing Your FPS

This is where most guides stop. But Windows itself is often one of the biggest criminals stealing your FPS. Not because it’s broken or anything, but because it’s doing stuff you don’t need it to while you are busy popping people.Disable Memory Integrity (Virtualization Based Security). Memory Integrity is a security feature that runs a mini virtual machine alongside your Windows installation to verify code. It costs you about 5–10% of your FPS in games, and independent testing has shown losses of up to 33% on some configurations. Go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Windows Security → Device Security → Core Isolation and Turn off Memory Integrity. Restart is required.Turn off Xbox Game Bar and Game DVR. Game Bar is always running in the background and leeching an extra 200–400MB of RAM and adding about 18–23ms of input latency to your system (that’s from the DirectX team at Microsoft). Settings → Gaming → Game Bar → Off. Use software like ShadowPlay or OBS if you need recording.Enable Game Mode. This is not the same as Game Bar. Game Mode notifies Windows that your game has preference and stops any background maintenance. Settings → Gaming → Game Mode → On.Switch to Ultimate Performance power plan. Windows’ out-of-the-box “Balanced” plan will throttle your Processor for energy savings. Open Command prompt as admin and run the command line powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61. Then select “Ultimate Performance” plan in your power settings. Desktop PCs—laptops should always use “High Performance”.Clean up what loads at startup. Task Manager → Startup tab. All these items must load at boot and stay in RAM. Turn off anything not essential—Spotify, Discord, RGB software, cloud sync. This alone often frees 1–4GB.Enable HAGS. Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling allows your Video Card to schedule its own tasks rather than waiting on your Processor. Frees up 5–10% of its power. Settings → System → Display → Graphics → Change Default Graphics Settings → On. Restart required.

Step 6: Windows Defender Exclusions for Fortnite

Defender scans the Fortnite files for malware tests in real time, sometimes causing micro-stutters. Add a Windows Defender exclusion for your Fortnite install folder as well as for your Epic Games Launcher folder and EasyAntiCheat files. Windows Security → Virus & Threat Protection → Manage Settings → Exclusions.

Step 7: NVIDIA Control Panel Settings

Here’s where the real power happens. Based on the optimization settings used in source games, and locking down areas of the NVIDIA Control Panel specifically to each title, true power lives here. Right click desktop → NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings → Program Settings → Add Fortnite (FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping.exe).Low Latency Mode — On. If you’re using NVIDIA Reflex in-game, set this to “On”, not “Ultra”. Without Reflex activated, use “Ultra”.Power Management — Prefer Maximum Performance. Stops your Video Card from dropping clocks to save power.Shader Cache Size — 10 GB. Stores pre-compiled shaders, so Fortnite doesn’t need to rebuild them every time you see a new effect. Bigger cache = less stutter when landing somewhere new or hitting someone with a grenade for the first time.Texture Filtering Quality — High Performance. Tiny visual difference, measurable FPS gain.Vertical Sync — Off. Never have VSync on in two places at the same time!For AMD users: Anti-Lag → Enabled, Radeon Boost → Enabled, Surface Format Optimization → Enabled, Tessellation Mode → Override Off, Power Tuning → Max Frequency. If you’re AMD with Performance Mode enabled and getting black screens, turn off MPO (Multiplane Overlay) in the registry. This black screen issue is an AMD issue specifically.

Step 8: Config File Tweaks

Fortnite saves your settings in GameUserSettings.ini. Located in: %localappdata%\FortniteGame\Saved\Config\WindowsClient\GameUserSettings.iniOpen it in Notepad and search for these:CosmeticStreamingEnabled=CodeSet_Disabled — Stops Fortnite from trying to stream cosmetic textures in the background. Known stutter cause, and known extra Video Card memory user.bMotionBlur=False — Just to double check your config-level setting.bShowGrass=False — Turns off the grass in Performance Mode so that’s one less thing it has to render.When you’re finished editing, right-click the file and click Properties. Check “Read-only” to make sure Fortnite doesn’t overwrite your changes when it updates!Launch arguments (Epic Launcher → Settings → Fortnite → Additional Command Line Arguments):-USEALLAVAILABLECORES will force Fortnite to use all the Processor cores you have available. This is good if you have a 6 core or greater system.-NOSPLASH will skip the splash screen which will make your boot time a bit faster.-NOVERBOSELOGGING will reduce the writes to disk which is very useful if your Fortnite is installed on a hard drive.

Step 9: Network and Ping

Fortnite runs on a 30Hz tick rate. This means there’s a 33ms delay built-in between you and the server. You can’t get rid of the latency, but you can save a little on it.Use ethernet, not wireless networking. Picking up a $10 ethernet cable is the best you’re ever going to do for gaming.Switch your DNS. Your ISP’s default DNS is going to be slower than either Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8). Go to Settings → Network → Your Connection → Edit → DNS → Manual. Input Primary: 1.1.1.1 and Secondary: 1.0.0.1.Shut down any apps using large chunks of bandwidth. The more they’re using, the more latency they add to your connection. Things like streaming, cloud sync, downloads, etc. Push them all off for the time being.If you have to stick to WiFi: 5GHz band, closer to the proximity of your router. Removal of physical obstructions.

Step 10: Specific Tips By Hardware

Budget or older PC: Performance Mode is required. Bump down your resolution to 1600x900 or 1280x720. Set 3D Resolution to between 50 and 75% of Resolution. Cap at 60fps and you’ll have comparatively better frame pacing. A wild swing of 40 to 90fps feels worse than hammering away at a decent 60fps!Laptop: Always play plugged in. Set both Windows and your manufacturer’s software (Armoury Crate, Dragon Center, etc.) to High Performance. Prop up the rear of the laptop for better airflow. Throttling kicks in at 90–95°C and your FPS will nosedive when it does.RAM speed: Pop into your BIOS and enable XMP (Intel) or DOCP/EXPO (AMD). Your RAM probably shipped at 3200MHz or 3600MHz but is actually running at 2133MHz because nobody ever turned on the speed profile. Enabling it has been reported to boost FPS by 15–35%. This is one of those “why didn’t anyone tell me” things.Dual-channel RAM: Two sticks of 8GB is way faster than one stick of 16GB. If you’re on a single stick, adding a matching one is one of the cheapest and most impactful upgrades you can do.Virtual memory: If you’re on 8–16GB RAM, set your pagefile to System Managed on an SSD. This gives Windows overflow room and stops crashes during those memory-heavy endgame lobbies.

Step 11: What the Pros Use

Every competitive Fortnite player’s screen looks the same: Performance Mode, everything Low or Off, 1920x1080 or stretched to 1750x1080, NVIDIA Reflex on, brightness cranked to 120–150%.Peterbot (six-time FNCS champion) plays at 800 DPI, 6.4% sensitivity, Performance Mode, 1920x1080, 240 FPS cap, brightness 150%, Tritanopia colorblind strength 4, on a 360Hz monitor.Bugha (World Cup champion) plays at 800 DPI, 5% sensitivity, 1920x1080 Fullscreen, 360 FPS cap, brightness 150%. Running an i9-14900K + RTX 4090 + DDR5 8200MHz. Still uses Performance Mode with everything on Low.Stretched resolution: 1750x1080 is the most popular stretched res right now. It gives a wider FOV feel and slightly better FPS. Set it in GameUserSettings.ini (ResolutionSizeX=1750, ResolutionSizeY=1080), then configure your Video Card to scale it fullscreen. Not cheating. Most pros use it.Colorblind settings: A bunch of pros use Tritanopia at strength 5–10. This isn’t for colorblindness — it enhances visual contrast and makes the storm and loot way easier to tell apart.Input delay stacking: The pros combine NVIDIA Reflex On + Boost, Low Latency Mode On, Fullscreen (never borderless), G-Sync off, and cap their framerate 2–3 frames below monitor refresh using RTSS instead of the in-game limiter. RTSS gives smoother frame pacing.

Common Fortnite Issues and Fixes

Shader stutters in the first few games. Totally normal after switching to DX12 or after an update. Play 2–3 Team Rumble matches to build the cache. Clear old shaders at %localappdata%\NVIDIA\DXCache and set NVIDIA shader cache to 10GB. If you’re on Steam, Epic recommends enabling “Shader Pre-Caching” in Steam settings too.Play-Doh buildings that won’t load. Get Fortnite on an SSD. Verify game files. Bump your pagefile to 8–16GB. Set Textures to at least Medium with 4GB+ VRAM. Disable CosmeticStreamingEnabled in the config file.FPS drops in endgame / build fights. This is almost always a Processor bottleneck. Quick test: drop resolution to 720p. If FPS barely moves, it’s your Processor not your Video Card. Switch to Performance Mode, kill all background apps, set Fortnite to High priority in Task Manager, and make sure Memory Integrity (VBS) is off.High FPS but it feels stuttery. That’s frametime instability, not low FPS. Super common on Windows 11 24H2. Disable VBS, disable Widgets, run DISM /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth, and use RTSS to cap your framerate for smoother delivery.Windows 11 specific headaches: The KB5063060 Windows Update caused widespread Fortnite stuttering including 100% CPU usage and shader recompilation issues. Additionally, the November 2025 KB5066835 update triggered up to 50% gaming performance regression across multiple titles, confirmed by Digital Foundry and Guru3D. If you’re on Win11 and performance suddenly tanked, check your Windows Update history. Rolling back problematic updates or waiting for a Microsoft fix are your best bets.

The Short Version

Only got 5 minutes? Do these in order:1. Performance Mode (or DX12 on RTX cards)2. Shadows Off, Lumen Off, Nanite Off, Effects Low, Post Processing Low3. Fullscreen, VSync Off, NVIDIA Reflex On + Boost4. Disable Xbox Game Bar (Settings → Gaming → Game Bar → Off)5. Disable Memory Integrity (Settings → Device Security → Core Isolation → Off)6. Enable XMP/DOCP in BIOSThat’s 80% of the benefit in 5 minutes. Everything else in this guide is the remaining 20%.Good luck out there. Go get those Victory Royales.