Fortnite PC performance: best settings, fps boost, and more

Chapter 2 Remix of Fortnite is in full swing, and as you’re exploring everything that’s new, there’s no better time to refresh yourself on the best settings to use for your PC. After all, with higher frame rates come better reaction times for you, giving you a chance of getting that shot off before your opponent, which can sometimes make all the difference.

Fortnite is a slightly more demanding esport than some of its older rivals, but that just means there’s more scope for performance improvements if you select the right settings. Here are the most important performance-enhancing tweaks you can make to Fortnite.

The best settings for Fortnite

We tested out the entire suite of Fortnite’s video menu to find the most optimized settings for the best performance and clarity. As this is a competitive game, the focus of tweaking settings is mostly designed to make the game run as fast as possible without making it look so terrible that it’s a distraction. We also considered turning down any settings that might make it harder to spot your opponents. Immersion isn’t as important when you’re trying your best to win.

Since there’s some element of personal preference with in-game settings, I’ll also include a few nods to settings that I just can’t do with, or without, but you can do with those what you will.

Display

• Window mode: Fullscreen
• Resolution: Set to your monitor’s native resolution, probably 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1440
• VSync: Off
• Frame rate limit: Unlimited, or match it to your monitor’s refresh rate
• Rendering mode: DirectX 12 or Performance

Graphics Quality

• Anti-aliasing and super resolution: FXAA or off, depending on your preferences
• Temporal Super Resolution: N/A
• 3D resolution: 100%
• Dynamic 3D Resolution: Off
• Nanite Virtualized Geometry: Off
• Shadows: Off
• Global Illumination: Off
• Reflections: Off
• View distance: Medium
• Textures: Low
• Effects: Low
• Post processing: Low
• Hardware ray tracing: Off
• Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: On + Boost if you have an Nvidia GPU
• DLSS: On if you have an Nvidia GPU

Running the game at your monitor’s native resolution is the best way to ensure the game performs well and looks good. If you have a 4K monitor, you could play at these lower resolutions for better performance, but the blurriness you’d get from playing outside of native isn’t worth it.

You want VSync off because of its tendency to add input lag, although if you have Freesync or G-Sync on your monitor, using that is a better alternative anyway. Switch the frame rate to unlimited or the same as your monitor’s refresh rate, unless you want to reduce how hard your graphics chip is working. In that case, lower it down to whatever is appropriate.

Set Rendering Mode to DX12 if your graphics card supports it, as if offers the best performance and stability. Most player reports the most consistent frame rate with DX12, even if it is slightly more demanding on their components. Only use Performance mode if your PC is particularly old, as it will make the game playable, at an extreme cost to visuals. You may also get wilder swings in terms of frames per second (fps).

You can turn anti-aliasing off for maximum performance, but I really don’t like jaggies, so I prefer it on in some capacity in everything I play; Fortnite included. TAA is an option too, but it’s more demanding.

There’s also the option of XeSS upscaling, which can improve frame rates, though most competitive players don’t like the artifacts it introduces, reducing visual accuracy, especially at range. You’ll need to judge for yourself whether the slight FPS bump is worth the trade off for you.

These settings won’t make the game look amazing, but it still looks good enough to not be a distraction. Jon Martindale / DigitalTrends

I set View distance to Medium because I was tired of spotting the pop-in, but you can switch it to near without much of an effect and it does give a light performance improvement.

As pretty as hardware ray tracing, reflections, and nanite geometry are, they don’t help improve your competitive edge and have a sizable impact on performance, so leave them off.

Set everything else to off, or low, unless you have an Nvidia graphics card, in which case you definitely want Reflex set to On + Boost, and DLSS set to On if you have it and want additional performance for free.

Fortnite system requirements

Fortnite’s system requirements are quite a bit more demanding than older esports games like League of Legends, or Rocket League, but they’re still shallow enough that most PC gamers will have enough performance to at least get the game running.

Minimum system requirements

• CPU: Intel Core i3-3225 or newer
• Memory: 8GB
• Graphics: Intel HD 4000, AMD Radeon Vega 8 or better
• Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit

The minimum system requirements are super lightweight and don’t even demand a dedicated graphics card. As long as your CPU is young enough to compete with the 11-year-old Intel Core i3, your onboard graphics should be enough to carry an entry-level Fortnite experience.

Recommended system requirements

• CPU: Intel Core i5 7500U
• Memory: 8GB
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 960, AMD R9 280, or better
• Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit

The recommended system requirements are a higher bar to reach, but nothing most gaming PCs can’t handle. The graphics card recommendations are close to 10 years old, and the CPU was a midrange laptop chip when it debuted in 2017. Any recent-generation gaming PC can match these kinds of specifications.

Epic Quality system requirements

• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, or better
• Memory: 16GB of RAM or more
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1080, AMD RX 5700 XT, or better
• VRAM: 4GB
• Storage: NVMe SSD
• Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit

Like most games, playing Fortnite at Epic Quality settings does mean having a relatively up-to-date system. You still don’t need one of the best graphics cards to match these system requirements, though. Any midrange gaming PC from the past two to three years will easily outpace this.

Fortnite can look very pretty with ray tracing and all the other settings at their maximums. Jon Martindale / DigitalTrends

Fortnite benchmarks

Most modern gaming PCs shouldn’t have too much trouble playing Fortnite at even high settings if they want to. Still, to show what kind of difference you can expect on a modern high-end gaming PC from adjusting settings, we recorded a number of benchmarks to see how Fortnite performs at several different settings.

We used the following test system to check frame rates and settings in Fortnite:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7950X3D
• Motherboard: Asus Crosshair X670E Hero
• Graphics card: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
• Memory: 32GB Kingston Fury Renegade 5200MHz

We recorded average frame rates and 99th percentile frame rates at our above recommended settings at both 1080p and 1440p, and with the game completely maxed out at 1440p for those with high-end PCs who want a game that performs well and looks great at the same time.

Note: Since this is a PC with an AMD graphics card, we can’t enable DLSS and FSR is not available.

With a system like this, settings tweaks in an esports game aren’t typically too dramatic, but we can see here that there’s quite a big difference between even 1440p and 1080p — although near 400 fps average is overkill for all but the most competitive of players. I’d be tempted to play at 1440p with some of the settings turned higher to make the game look prettier, with less jagged edges and richer colors.

As you can see, though, ray tracing along with all the other settings can cause even powerful PCs like this to slow down. It looks great — much more like a AAA game than it has any right to — but it makes the game look much busier, too, with a lot more visual information, which is likely to distract from your ability to see and target your enemies.

Want more tips for improving performance in Fortnite? Check out our guide to PC performance tweaking for a more in-depth discussion of various in-game settings.

Keep your PC up to date

Once you’ve adjusted your Fortnite settings for maximum performance and visuals, the only other way to improve your frame rate or how good the game looks is by updating or upgrading your PC. You can install a new graphics card or processor for a big boost in performance, but if you want to help boost your fps without spending anything, you should make sure your drivers are all up to date.

Updating your graphics drivers is a great way to make the most of the hardware you have. Want to really min/max your PC’s Fortnite playing powers? Why not try your hand at overclocking? You’ll be on your way to higher frame rates, and hopefully, more wins.