While the craze for battle royale has faded a bit, the same cannot be said for Fortnite, which has more than 350 million registered players. Obviously, Fortnite is not alone, and faces tough competition from titles that have managed to withstand the test of time, or that exploded overnight. But all those games have something in common: they receive updates that make them heavier, and put additional pressure on more humble hardware configurations. If you want to know how to optimize your PC for Fortnite and other games (whether online or not), this guide may be useful.
Understanding the situation
Online games seek to attract as many users as possible, and one of the most effective ways to achieve that goal is by optimizing their hardware requirements. However, we have seen many projects start from the opposite position, prioritizing stability and gameplay first and then improving performance.
We've also noticed that many games originally known for being light now demand extra firepower. CS:GO is the first title that comes to mind: its current version is more demanding compared to the 2012-2013 builds. And the same happens with Fortnite. Its performance has been deteriorating with each new season and update, to the point that Epic had to enable Performance Mode to balance the scales.
Developers often talk about evolution, but in practice it all comes down to necessity. Games require new content constantly, but hardware doesn't respond at the same speed, and with the prices that some components have (I don't know when you'll read this, but in my space-time coordinates we are going through the Crypto Chaos Era, with GPUs worth thousands of dollars), upgrading computers isn't entirely possible.
If you belong to that group of users who want to enjoy online games but can't do upgrades in the short or medium term, you only have one option: squeeze what you have to the maximum, and learn to optimize your PC for Fortnite and other games.
How to optimize your PC: Less is more
As obvious as it may seem, our past experiences teach us that we need to repeat this recommendation every time: a less loaded computer works better. A lower number of processes leads to lower RAM usage, fewer background operations, and fewer chances of lag, spikes, freezes, and memory leaks. Optimizing your PC for Fortnite and other games demands that your "software discipline" be excellent. Replace applications with lighter variants, and close both browsers and messengers when playing (if possible).
Video drivers... up to date?
There are different arguments against constantly updating drivers. One of the strongest suggests that the optimal driver is the one that allows us to get the most performance out of our GPU in our favorite games, and not necessarily the latest one. However, manufacturers' most recent optimizations almost always focus on new and/or popular games, so downloading and installing the latest video drivers for your GPU remains a correct initial strategy. If you detect a very deep regression in FPS, it's enough to run a DDU sweep and go back to previous versions.
Hardware acceleration in Discord
Discord has become the de facto standard for the vast majority of gamers, and chances are you have a copy running in the background. At the same time... Discord is not the most efficient piece of software in the world, and many users point to its hardware acceleration as a point of conflict. In fact, Discord itself recommends disabling its acceleration if you notice a drop in frame rate.
To do this, go to User Settings, and visit the Advanced section under App Settings. Disable acceleration, and restart Discord. The suggestion makes a lot of sense: Some hardware configurations aren't fully balanced, and if the CPU has a bit more headroom, so to speak, it's not a bad idea to let it handle Discord to free up GPU resources. If you notice the opposite effect or Discord's performance deteriorates too much, turn acceleration back on.
Standby List
There are quite a few users who swear they suffer an increase in stuttering within their favorite games on Windows 10. Memory management in the operating system would be responsible, due to the behavior of the cache known as the standby list. Now, supposedly the most recent Windows 10 builds don't have that problem, but if you don't think Microsoft deserves the benefit of the doubt, you can always use Intelligent Standby List Cleaner to automate purging the standby list
Spectre/Meltdown mitigations
The specialized press wrote ad nauseam about the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities discovered in early 2018. However, what matters most to gamers is the impact of their mitigations on game performance. Some platforms (notably older-generation Intel chips) took a pretty hard hit, but there is the possibility of disabling those changes, giving up a little security to regain performance.
The process offers no guarantee, but I think it's worth a try anyway. The easiest way is to download a copy of InSpectre and disable the options that the program enables, followed by a computer restart. The advanced way requires editing the registry:
- Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
- Create a DWORD value named FeatureSettingsOverride, and set a value of 3.
- Create another DWORD value named FeatureSettingsOverrideMask, and repeat the value of 3.
- Restart your computer.
Virtual memory
Some users insist that this parameter should remain automatic so Windows 10 handles it. But by setting manual values, we free the operating system from that responsibility, and save some operations along the way. If your computer has 8 GB of RAM or less, you'll need a generous amount of virtual memory to avoid potential conflicts. Start with a 1:1 or 1:2 configuration, and try to store virtual memory on your fastest drive.
Modified Windows 10
To finish... there is a more extreme option which is to adopt a modified version of Windows 10. We recently talked about Ghost Spectre, one of the most popular Windows 10 optimization projects on the Web, which offers builds with multiple tweaks integrated, and several Microsoft programs/services eliminated from the root. Another route is Windows 10 LTSC, which is based on build 1809. LTSC comes gutted from the factory, but it's not available to end users, so it requires a bit of creativity on our part.
How to optimize your PC: Conclusions
A constant struggle, a work that never ends. If you truly want to optimize your PC for Fortnite and similar games, you'll have to get your hands dirty. As if that weren't enough, we also can't lose sight of the possibility that our final FPS gains might be very modest, or outright null. But we can't give up: Good software management, proper drivers, and a reduction of operations are steps in the right direction. Remember: Less is more. Good luck!
