How to Increase Your FPS in Fortnite (Updated May 2020)

Do you want more FPS in Fortnite?

Of course you do.

Look, more FPS can actually make you a better player.

But so many players are experiencing FPS drops and lower FPS than they should be getting in Fortnite Chapter 2, and this is not good.

In this detailed guide, you will find easy to follow step-by-step instructions to help you get more FPS in Fortnite.

And don’t worry if you aren’t the most technical person because I’m going to talk you through each step of the way.

You’re also going to learn the secrets that certain people in the community such as Dety0 have been using to boost the FPS of Fortnite pro players to over 600.

Of course, I can’t promise you that you’ll get 600 FPS in Fortnite. Because you’ll need a particularly powerful graphics card and high-end CPU to reach those numbers.

And those kinds of FPS are only possible in certain kinds of conditions. For example, while standing still and looking at the sky in a blank Fortnite creative map.

When you follow and apply each step in this guide you could dramatically increase your Fortnite FPS in real in-game situations.

Listen, even a small increase to your FPS, particularly in end game scenarios, can be the difference between a Victory Royale and losing.

So make sure you read this whole post to get the most benefit.

Now, let’s get started.

Adjust your Fortnite video settings

Before we get into the real good stuff, it’s important that you get the basics right first.

Because if you fail to follow these initial steps, you will not reach your maximum FPS.

So here we’re going to be going through the simple settings that you can change within Fortnite to make sure everything is set up properly.

Now, go into your Fortnite video settings. The first thing you’re looking for is your display settings and you want your settings to look like this:

• Window Mode: Fullscreen — You always want to make sure your window mode is set to fullscreen because any of the other settings can hurt your FPS and cause problems with your mouse alignment.
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (16:9) — Most monitors are 1920 x 1080 and this is the resolution that Fortnite looks best on. You can use a lower resolution such as 1600 x 900 to get more FPS but bear in mind that your game will look worse. You can follow this guide to create a custom stretched resolution in Fortnite that can increase your FPS.
• Frame Rate Limit: 240 FPS — I have this set to 240 FPS because I use a 240 Hz monitor. Set it to 144 FPS if you use a 144 Hz monitor, 60 FPS if you use a 60 Hz monitor, and so on. I don’t recommend using unlimited because it can cause stutters and FPS drops.

Now, let’s move onto your graphics settings.

Contrary to what you may think, your graphics settings don’t actually have any impact on your FPS, so you can set these how you wish.

I recommend you set your brightness high enough so you can see clearly, even in dark areas. And set a user interface contrast that looks good to you.

And if you are color blind then you should use the appropriate color blind mode and strength for you.

Again, these do not matter for FPS, so don’t worry about them too much.

What does matter for FPS, however, are your graphics quality settings.

Do not use the auto-set quality option because it will automatically configure your graphics quality options in Fortnite based on a benchmark of your computer’s hardware.

In other words, the auto-set quality option will use graphics quality settings where Fortnite looks the best, but it will negatively impact your performance and FPS.

Instead, I recommend that you use the following graphics quality settings:

• 3D Resolution: 100% — This determines the resolution objects are shown in-game. Things look best at 100%, but you could lower this if you fail to reach your desired FPS
• View Distance: Epic — Closer view distances can improve performance on a slower device, but further view distance can be an advantage. The FPS difference between Epic and Near is minimal
• Shadows: Off — Shadows are a major GPU resource and turning this setting off results in the largest FPS increase, so turn it off. This will also have a major impact on how the game looks and can help you see enemies more clear in otherwise shadowy areas.
• Anti-Aliasing: Off — Anti-Aliasing smooths edges on 3D objects, so they look more smooth and less pixelated. It’s really hard to tell the difference between Off and Epic, so just turn it off for the extra FPS boost
• Textures: Low — Higher texture settings give flat objects a more detailed appearance, but because of the cartoon-style graphics in Fortnite it’s hard to tell the difference between Low and Epic. Again, set it to the lowest for the extra FPS
• Effects: Low — Higher effects settings add details to certain objects and interactions in Fortnite, but we don’t care about pretty things so turn it off for the best performance
• Post Processing: Low — This is a setting that you won’t notice when playing at 1080p, and setting it to low can raise your frame rate with only a minor impact on quality. And as you’ve already set everything to the lowest, it makes sense to set this to low, as well

Now that you have your graphics quality configured to the optimal settings that the best and most competitive Fortnite players use, it’s time to move on to the advanced graphics settings.

Here are my recommendations:

• Vsync: Off — Vsync eliminates screen tearing by always rendering and presenting a full frame. But turning off Vsync can give you higher frames and better input response, so turn it off
• Motion Blur: Off — Motion blur has no impact on your FPS, but some people are very sensitive to motion blur and it can cause nausea. So you should also turn this off
• Show FPS: On — You should already have this enabled to show your frames per second, and this will help you measure the effect of the changes you make
• DirectX Version: DirectX 11 — DirectX 11 is the default setting and has been more extensively tested and generally it performs better. But you may need to do some of your own tests to figure out which DirectX version works best for your system
• Allow Multithreaded Rendering: On — Multithreaded rendering splits work across multiple threads and can dramatically improve performance on multi-core processors. But it can cause hitches and lower FPS on weaker and older hardware
• Use GPU Crash Debugging: Off — If you experience crashes when playing Fortnite, then you may consider enabling this to help developers track down the root cause of your problem. But enabling it does come at a performance cost, so we’ll have it off

So now you’ve completed optimizing your video settings in Fortnite. If you were previously using Epic preset graphics quality settings then these changes could have boosted your FPS by over 200%.

As you know, there are many more settings you can change in Fortnite than just your video settings. Check out this post to find out the best settings to use in Fortnite.

And you may think that we’ve covered all the settings you can tweak within Fortnite itself to optimize for FPS, but that’s not true.

You see, there’s actually one final setting you can change that can impact your FPS, and even console players can make this change.

Turn record replays off

One of the most simple things you can do to improve your FPS is to turn record replays off in your Fortnite settings.

Look, recording replays can reduce performance and take up hard drive space. So turning them off can help you maintain steady FPS, particularly in the late game when there is a lot of building.

For console players that want to do well competitively in hectic endgame scenarios, turning off replays is a must.

Here’s how to turn your replays off in Fortnite Chapter 2:

1. Click the cog icon to go into your Fortnite settings
2. Select the cog icon at the top again to go to the Game settings
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom to find the Replays section
4. Turn all replays off

Of course, you can still record your gameplay through OBS, Nvidia highlights or the built-in software for your Xbox or PS4.

If you’re a content creator, you may want to leave certain replays on. For example, you could record Creative mode replays to get a thumbnail for a video.

Update to the latest version of Fortnite

You could be playing on an older version of Fortnite.

You see, Epic Games regularly release updates to resolve hitching and stuttering issues in Fortnite.

But you may need to manually update your game for the changes to take effect.

So do this now:

1. Open the Epic Games Launcher
2. Select Library from the list of options on the left
3. Find Fortnite and click the 3 dots to the left
4. Select Verify from the list of options

When you have done this, you will update your game to the latest version.

Reduce your resolution to increase FPS

When you optimized your video settings in Fortnite, you should have received a significant FPS boost.

But if you’re not reaching your desired frames, then you can consider reducing your resolution.

Listen, many of the best Fortnite players use a custom stretched resolution to increase their FPS and get an advantage.

As you know, the default (or native) resolution is 1920 x 1080, and this refers to the number of pixels displayed. 1920 along the horizontal (X) axis and 1080 along the vertical (Y) axis.

When you reduce your resolution you reduce the number of pixels and this decreases the workload of your hardware, so you can gain more FPS.

The amount of FPS you gain is roughly linear to the number of pixels you display.

In other words, the more you lower your resolution the more FPS you can expect to gain.

For example, changing your resolution from 1920 × 1080 to 1440 × 1080 reduces the number of pixels by 25%. So you can expect your FPS to improve by about 20%.

Here are some resolutions you could try:

• 1656×1080
• 1440×1080
• 1280×960
• 1024×768
• 800×600

Of course, reducing your resolution will make Fortnite look more pixelated and objectively worse. But it could be worth it if you value the extra FPS and smoothness more.

Now this concludes all of the changes and optimizations we can make within Fortnite.

So we’re going to move onto the more interesting and exciting things to take your performance and FPS to the next level.

But before we do that, you should follow this important step.

Create a restore point

It’s always a good idea to create a restore point before making any major changes to your computer, so you can easily revert any changes in case anything goes wrong.

Here’s how to create a restore point:

1. Go to your control panel
2. Click system
3. From the left-hand menu click advanced system settings
4. Go to the system protection tab
5. Select your drive that Windows is installed on
6. Click configure

Once you’re here you’ll see the restore settings. You want to turn on system protection, set your disk space usage to 5%, and then click OK.

Now you just need to hit create and type a description to help you identify the restore point. The current date and time are added automatically.

Onward.

Update to the latest version of Windows 10

Now is a great time to get yourself onto the latest version of Windows, so you don’t get stuck when Windows needs to install itself later.

You see, the latest version of Windows has brought in gaming optimizations that can help improve your FPS.

To check for Windows updates here’s what you need to do:

1. Click the Start  button
2. Go to Settings by clicking the cog icon
3. Scroll down to Update & Security
4. Then go to Windows Update

From here you can check for updates and see if you’re using the latest version of Windows.

And if you’re not, then you can download the latest update.

You will need to reset your PC for the Windows update to take effect. Your PC will reset several times during the update and it’s important you don’t turn off your PC during this time.

Update your graphics card drivers

If you’re using old graphics card drivers it can hurt your FPS.

Most people fail to update their drivers when they first install their graphics card, or forget to update them as time passes.

To upgrade your graphics card drivers, you first need to know what kind of graphics card you have.

And don’t worry if you don’t know what graphics card you have (if you bought a pre-built PC, for example) because I’m about to show you two easy methods to find out.

The first method involves opening Device Manager via Control Panel or by searching for Device Manager in your Windows search bar.

You will see your graphics card listed under the display adaptors.

Another way to find out what graphics card you’re using is to use the DirectX Diagnostic Tool.

You can access the DirectX Diagnostic Tool by opening the Run application and typing dxdiag and then click ok. Or you can search DirectX Diagnostic Tool in the Windows search bar.

Once you’ve opened the DirectX Diagnostic Tool you can navigate to the Display tab to see your graphics card information.

Now that you know the type of graphics card you have, you can download the latest drivers from the appropriate website.

Here are the links to download the latest graphics card drivers from each graphics card manufacturer:

• NVIDIA
• AMD
• Intel

By the way, your graphics card may have a third manufacturer such as EVGA, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Sapphire, and so on.

But you don’t want to download the drivers from those. You want to use the original card manufacturer (AMD, NVIDIA, or Intel) via the links above.

Adjust your NVIDIA control panel settings

If you have an NVIDIA graphics card like most Fortnite players, then there are a bunch of optimizations you can make to improve the performance and get more FPS in Fortnite.

You can make these changes through the NVIDIA Control Panel.
NVIDIA is the most popular graphics card (GPU) for Fortnite.

1. Go to the NVIDIA Control Panel by right-clicking on your desktop and selecting it
2. Under the 3D Settings tab select Adjust image settings with preview
3. Click Use my preference emphasising: Performance
4. Slide the bar all the way to the left toward Performance

On the left hand side go to the next section, Manage 3D settings, and use the following settings:

• Ambient Occlusion: Off
• Anisotropic Filtering: Off
• Antialiasing – FXAA: Off
• Antialiasing – Gamma Correction: Off
• Antialiasing – Mode: Off
• Antialiasing – Setting: None
• Antialiasing – Transparency: Off
• CUDA – GPUs: All
• DSR – Factors: Off
• DSR – Smoothness: Off
• Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames: 1
• Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA): Off
• OpenGL Rendering GPU: Set as your graphics card
• Power Management Mode: Prefer maximum performance
• Preferred refresh rate: Highest available
• Shader Cache: On
• Texture Filtering – Anisotropic Sample Optimisation: On
• Threaded Optimisation: Auto
• Triple Buffering: Off
• Vertical Sync: Off
• Virtual Reality Pre-Rendered Frames: 1

Next, under the display tab select Adjust desktop size and position and use these settings:

• Select a scaling mode: No scaling
• Perform scaling on: Display
• Override the scaling mode set by games and programs: Off
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (or whatever resolution you use in Fortnite)
• Refresh rate: Highest possible

Finally, select the last option under the Video tab, Adjust video image settings, and use these settings:

• Edge enhancement: Use the NVIDIA setting 0
• Noise reduction: Use the NVIDIA setting 0

Congratulations, you have just optimized your NVIDIA card for the best performance and should experience an FPS boost when you play Fortnite.

Download and run Malwarebytes Adwcleaner

Malwarebytes Adwcleaner is one of the programs that FPS boosters will get you to download and run.

Some people will actually charge you for this information, but here I am giving it to you for free because I want to help you optimize your game so you can have the best possible experience when you play Fortnite.

Anyway, Malwarebytes Adwcleaner is a free program that gets rid of adware on your computer and restores performance.

Now I’m sure you browse the internet safely and take excellent care of your computer. But you could still have some PUPs.

PUPs are potentially unwanted programs and could include spyware and adware. PUPs can suck up some of the resources from your computer (namely your CPU and GPU) and negatively impact your FPS when you play Fortnite.

PUPs can also negatively impact your network connection and cause high ping, which is why I mention you use Malwarebytes Adwcleaner in my guide for how to lower your ping in Fortnite.

Listen, PUPs could be running in the background of your computer right now and by removing them you could get more FPS and lower ping when you play Fortnite.

I know people that have literally halved their ping and had a considerable increase in FPS from using Malwarebytes Adwcleaner, so don’t skip this step.

The program is free and all you have to do is go to the Malwarebytes website and click the free download button.

Once you’ve downloaded Malwarebytes Adwcleaner you can open it and click the scan now button.

Now it will do its thing and scan for any unwanted programs on your computer.

In my case, it actually found 2 PUPs. I take good care of my computer so I was surprised.

Once the scan has finished, you want to select the items you want to quarantine and disable. Then click the Quarantine button to move the items to Quarantine so you can permanently delete them.

Set Fortnite to high priority

In Task Manager you have the option to set the priority of certain applications and games.

By default, applications will be set to normal priority.

But when you set Fortnite to be a high priority you will allow your computer to dedicate more resources to it so you can get more FPS.

Here’s how to set Fortnite to high priority:

1. Open task manager by using the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Esc or by searching for it in the Windows search bar
2. Select the Details tab
3. Look for FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping.exe in the name column
4. Right-click it and then click Set priority and set it to High

Change your power options to high performance

Right now, your power options are probably set to balanced or power saver.

But setting your power options to high performance can improve your FPS.

Here’s how to change your power options to high performance:

1. Go to your power and sleep settings by using the Windows search bar or by going to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options
2. Select additional power settings from the related settings in the top right
3. If you don’t see the high performance option you may need to click to show additional plans
4. Check the box for high performance

Set your maximum processor state to 100%

Recently, I saw a post from someone that had built their PC over 3 years ago.

And for the first year, it was going great and they were getting over 150 FPS when gaming.

But then something happened and they started to only get 30 FPS so games felt sluggish.

What happened?

Well, somehow their maximum processor state had been set to 5%. So because there wasn’t enough power to allocate to the games they were suffering from low FPS.

Now I don’t want you to have this same problem. If your maximum processor state is set to something low then setting it to 100% could increase your FPS by 500%.

Here’s how to set your maximum processor state to 100%:

1. Go to your Power Options by using the Windows search bar or by going to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Edit Plan Settings
2. Select Change advanced power settings
3. Scroll down to find Processor power management and click the plus (+) to expand the list
4. Now click the plus (+) next to Maximum processor state
5. Set the Setting to 100%

Install Fortnite on an SSD

SSDs (Solid State Drives) are one of the greatest advancements in PC technology.

The main advantage of an SSD over an HDD (Hard Disk Drive) is that they provide much faster load times.

You see, an SSD is up to 20 times faster than a typical HDD. So you want to have all your games, including Fortnite, installed on an SSD so your games load really fast. Also, you should install your Operating System (Windows) on your SSD so that boots up lightning-fast, too.

Other than load times, the other advantage that SSDs over is that they can help Fortnite to run smoother. So you experience fewer stutters and FPS drops when you’re gaming.

You may have both an HDD and SSD installed in your computer, or you may not know which type of drive you have.

To find out, you want to navigate to the Defragment and Optimize Drives application on your computer.

You can get here by pressing your Windows key and typing “optimize” and then selecting Defragment and Optimize Drives.

When it opens, it will tell you which drive is your HDD and which is the SSD. Then you want to make sure that Fortnite is installed on whichever drive is your SSD.

I only have an SSD on my computer, and that’s why it tells me I have just the one drive.

Defragment your drives

If your PC is slowing down, defragmenting your files can help to maximize the performance of your drives so your games can run smoother.

Windows has a built-in tool to defragment files, the Defragment and Optimize Drives application that we just used.

In the olden days, you would have to download a third-party program to handle this. But Windows has made significant improvements to its tool, so now there’s no need to use any others.

Anyway, go back to the Defragment and Optimize Drives application and you want to click Analyze on the drive you want to optimize to find out if it actually needs optimization.

If the results show that your drives are less than 10% fragmented, you probably don’t need to optimize it.

Otherwise, you can click the Optimize button and once the process completes the stats should say 0% fragmented.

Plug your monitor into your graphics card

Do you want to know one of the most common mistakes people make when it comes to their PC?

It’s plugging their monitor into the motherboard and not the graphics card.

When you plug your monitor into your motherboard, you will only be able to use the integrated graphics of your CPU. The integrated graphics of your CPU is a lot weaker than your graphics card, so it can cause low FPS.

So when you plug your monitor into your graphics card, you’ll be able to make use of the extra power from your graphics card and enjoy higher FPS.

Set the refresh rate of your monitor

I have lost count of the number of threads I’ve seen where people complain that they can’t see or feel their high FPS, even when they have a monitor with a high refresh rate and a powerful graphics card.

The problem? They still have their high refresh monitor set to display 60 Hz, so they can’t see the additional FPS.

Here’s how to set the refresh rate of your monitor to make sure this doesn’t happen to you:

1. Go to Display settings
2. Scroll down and select Advanced display settings
3. Find your monitor and set the Screen refresh rate to the highest possible

Close background programs

From the task manager, you can see what applications you have running in the background.

You can also see if there are any applications or programs that are particularly large and taking up a lot of your resources.

When you close these, your computer can focus more of its resources on running Fortnite so you can experience higher FPS.

Turn off hardware acceleration in Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser.

But, unfortunately, using multiple Google Chrome tabs can use up a ton of your system’s memory. And if you don’t have enough to allocate to Fortnite then your game won’t run as well and you can experience low FPS.

Obviously, the simple solution to this is to just close down Google Chrome whenever you’re playing Fortnite.

But if you want to keep some Google Chrome tabs open for whatever reason, then you can stop Google Chrome from using too many resources by turning hardware acceleration off.

Here’s how to turn hardware acceleration off in Google Chrome:

1. Open Google Chrome
2. Go to Settings by clicking the 3 dots in the top right corner
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Advanced to show more settings
4. Keep scrolling down until you find the System section
5. Turn off Use hardware acceleration when available

Turn off hardware acceleration in Discord

Like Google Chrome, Discord can take up some of your computers resources and impact your performance and FPS when you play Fortnite.

Discord is a popular application, and you’re likely going to want to keep it open as you play Fortnite.

So you can turn off hardware acceleration to stop using Discord using so many of your resources, and allow your computer to allocate more resources to Fortnite.

Here’s how to turn off hardware acceleration in Discord:

1. Open Discord
2. Go to User Settings
3. Click the Appearance tab
4. Turn off Hardware Acceleration

Turn off Game Bar

Some gaming settings were added in the latest version of Windows.

And one of those settings is Game Bar.

Game Bar records clips and screenshots as you play, but it can negatively impact your performance and FPS.

So if you don’t want any of the features of Game Bar, you should turn it off.

Here’s how to turn off Game Bar:

1. Click the Windows Start button in the bottom left of your screen (or press the Windows key on your keyboard)
2. Select the cog icon to go to your settings
3. Click gaming
4. Turn Game bar off

Check your RAM speed

I built my PC using DDR4 3000 MHz RAM.

But, by default, my RAM was only running at 2133 MHz.

So I was missing out on some extra performance and FPS.

When I set my RAM to run at the proper speed of 3000 MHz, my FPS increased by about 10%.

To check your RAM speed you need to download and open CPU-Z. This is a free program and gives useful information on some of the main devices of your system. In particular your memory type, size, timings, and module specifications.

When you have opened CPU-Z, go to the Memory tab and take note of the DRAM frequency and timings. But you have to double the DRAM frequency to calculate your RAM speed.

So if your DRAM frequency is 1500 MHZ then your total RAM speed is 3000 MHz.

Now if your RAM speed is running slower than your advertised speed you need to go the BIOS.

I suggest you consult the manual that came with your motherboard for more information.

Need more help? Check out this RAM overclocking guide from TomsHardware.

Overclock your GPU and CPU

Overclocking is when you manually increase the clock speed of your hardware beyond what the manufacturer intends.

Overclocking isn’t something I recommend unless you know exactly what you’re doing because overclocking can be dangerous and you risk breaking your components.

But if you know what you’re doing then overclocking can help you squeeze more performance and FPS out of your hardware without spending any extra money.

You can get up to a 20% increase in your FPS when you overclock your hardware, but this depends on how heavily you overclock and the quality of your overall system.

The first thing to overclock is your video card because that’s where you’re going to see the biggest FPS increase.

You can also overclock your CPU. Overclocking your CPU is, in general, a lot easier and you can find overclocking settings in your BIOS and motherboards manual.

Overclocking is beyond the scope of this guide, so I recommend you check out these resources for how to overclock your graphics card and how to overclock your CPU.

Manually adjust the number of logical cores used

If you have a processor with at least 6 logical processors then you can try this method by Not Snuffy.

Fortnite doesn’t automatically take advantage of your extra CPU cores. So you can make some changes to help Fortnite utilize your cores better and increase your FPS.

Windows lets you choose which CPU threads are assigned to a process via Task Manager. But since Fortnite uses anti-cheat software it blocks any modifications to the process of running Fortnite.

So you have to set the cores/threads the game should run prior to its launch and create a shortcut.

Check out this Google Doc to learn more.

Do this to fix FPS drops and stuttering

Your FPS isn’t going to be consistent all game long. Because your Fortnite FPS depends on how much is going on in the game.

For example, your FPS when standing in an open area is likely going to be very high. But when there is a lot going on, like building and fighting in end game zones, then your FPS is doing to drop.

This is fine and expected.

However, if you’ve tried all the above steps and are still experiencing unusual FPS drops or stuttering then I have one more thing for you to try:

1. Open Command Prompt (cmd) as administrator
2. Type bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes
3. Press Enter to run the operation

Dynamic Ticks are a feature that lets windows stop the system timer when nothing is happening in order to conserve power.

It’s a good feature for portable systems but it can be a problem for desktops. Because the tickless mode is known to cause issues on some systems when gaming.

If you have tried this and found your performance has actually worsened then don’t panic. Follow the same steps but enter this to reverse the operation:

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick no

Upgrade your hardware

Have you followed all of the above tips?

And you’re still not getting your desired FPS?

Then it could be time for you to upgrade some of the components of your PC.

Usually, your graphics card (GPU) is the first thing to upgrade because it will have the biggest effect on your FPS when playing Fortnite.

Of course, Fortnite is a very CPU intensive game. So if you are using an old CPU then upgrading to a better one with a higher core and thread count will improve performance, too.

Also upgrading your RAM can help, but not as much as a new GPU or CPU.

Conclusion

As you know, a high FPS helps your game look more “smooth”.

Because more images are being displayed to your monitor each second.

Also, a high FPS could help improve your Fortnite aim. Particularly if you play with a controller and use aim assist. Because the strength of aim assist is dependent on the amount of FPS you have.

More FPS can help your building and editing feel more fluid as well. And lowering your ping in Fortnite can help with that, too.

Ultimately, improving your FPS should improve your overall experience when playing Fortnite.

I hope you found this guide useful and you have benefited from it.

How much FPS did you gain?

Let me know in the comments!