PC games, while the most up-to-date, customizable and easy to play, often cause speed issues and bugs etc.

Fortnite, the super hit on all kinds of devices, is one of those games. Many people have reported that it runs slowly on their PC, unlike XBox or other consoles.

The main reason for this problem lies in the way that PCs can work with a multitude of hardware, when the many consoles out there have been specifically designed to work in a certain way.

Due to the nature through which the likes of Windows need to be versatile enough to work with all types of hardware, it’s vital that if you’re planning on running a game like Fortnite, you make sure you have the right settings for the software.

This tutorial seeks to dispel any qualifications you may have about it.

Fortnite running on Windows

As with any Windows application, certain system requirements must be met for the game to work:

  • DX11 GPU equivalent to Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870
  • 2GB VRAM
  • More than 25 GB of hard disk space
  • Intel Core i5 2.8GHz
  • 8GB RAM
  • Windows 7/8/10 64-bit

By virtue of having different specs on different systems, the above is obviously meant as a set of “recommended” / “basic level” specs for the system.

If you have the above, or preferably better, you’ll be good to go with the game.

The speed of the game is determined by how well Windows is optimizing for use with the various hardware components.

To this end, if you don’t have the required hardware (at least comparable to above), that’s the first port of call.

If you have the right hardware, you should look to optimize any of the software level issues that may be preventing the system from working properly.

Software issues preventing Fortnite from running smoothly

The main problem with Windows/Mac is that each system is designed to work on a massive spectrum of hardware + software, which makes optimization quite difficult.

Microsoft has often been criticized for this setup, but as far as the entire PC industry was concerned, it was inevitable.

The point is that if you have the proper hardware support, you’ll need to ensure a number of software requirements are met:

1. Remove unwanted programs running in the background

The first step is to stop any applications that are running in the background on the system.

This includes the likes of Antivirus and any apps you might have running, but don’t actually need to open…

antivirus

  • If you have a third party antivirus tool running, you probably have a “game mode”
  • To enable it, you need to click on the “bottom right” part of the Windows taskbar
  • Select the antivirus app icon, right-click and select “Game Mode” or similar
  • If you can’t identify how to enable it, you need to google “Game Mode + [[your antivirus]]”

Other programs

  • If you have *any* other software running on your system (other than your game), you should close it
  • The best way to do this is to press CTRL+ALT+DEL on your keyboard and hit “Task Manager” (if you’re using Windows 10)
  • From the list of apps that appears, select any that shouldn’t be running and click “End Task”
  • After doing this for any of the apps you don’t want/need, you should try running the game again

2. Remove third-party graphics drivers

If you have third-party graphics drivers (which will normally be constantly running on your system), you’d better remove them.

The important thing to note here is that this doesn’t remove the controller itself, but the “app”/”control panel” that comes with most of them.

Some of the extended apps cannot be stopped/removed, but the premise remains, especially if using NVidia or ATI:

  • In Windows 7, press “Start” > “Control Panel” > “Programs and Features”
  • On Windows, right-click “Start” > select “Apps and Features”
  • In the list that appears, select the references to NVidia or ATI/AMD Radeon and uninstall them.
  • This will open the branded apps for the various systems, but should not remove the drivers (which is the most important thing)

Once this is complete, restart your PC and see if Fortnite will run any faster.

3. Wipe hard drive

Next, we need to remove any of the temporary files that often clutter up hard drives.

This is done simply with the “Disk Cleanup” tool in Windows:

  • Press “Windows” + “S” keys on your keyboard
  • Type “Disk Cleanup”
  • From the list that appears, select the one produced by Microsoft
  • It will perform a small scan and then load a simple interface
  • Look for the button that says “Clean system files”
  • Select it and let the scan continue
  • In the list that appears, check all available options
  • Click OK”
  • Reboot your system after it completes

4. Edit graphics driver settings

After doing the above, you should consider the specific solutions that you can perform.

One of these is to edit the “graphics driver” settings that you may still have installed.

I know it was recommended to remove the third party application that manages the graphics driver (which is correct); if it was automatically installed again, or you just don’t want to remove it, you will be able to follow the steps below to improve its performance (specifically for Fortnite):

  • Scroll to the “right” of the Windows taskbar (bottom of the screen)
  • In the “icon tray”, select the “NVidia” icon
  • Right click and select “NVidia Control Panel”
  • Select “Manage 3D Settings” from the menu on the left
  • Select the “Program Settings” tab
  • From “Select a program to customize”, choose “Fortnite” (if it’s not there, click “Add” and select the .exe file for the game from your hard drive)
  • Once the game is selected, change “Max Prerendered Frames” to 1
  • Set the monitor technology to “G-SYNC” (if you have a G-SYNC compatible monitor)
  • Then select “Mixed/Multi-Display GPU Acceleration” and set it to “Single Display Performance”
  • Disable “Vertical Sync”
  • Enable “Thread Optimization”
  • Set “Preferred Refresh Rate” to “Maximum”

Once the above is done, exit the control panel and reboot the system again.

5. Optimize the Fortnite executable

The next step is to make sure that the Fortnite Executable works as smoothly as possible.

To do this, you can follow the steps described here:

  • Find the Fortnite executable file
  • It is usually located here: C:/Program Files/Epic Games/Fortnite/FortniteGame/Binaries/Win64
  • The actual executable file is called “FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping.exe”
  • Once you’ve located it, right click and select “Properties”
  • Select the “Compatibility” tab
  • Check the box “Override high DPI scaling behavior”
  • Click OK and try to load the game.

6. Optimize game settings

Finally, there are a number of settings that can be optimized to ensure maximum game performance:

  • Click on Fortnite to load it
  • Select “Battle Royale” from the game menu.
  • Open the “Settings” menu by selecting the 3 lines in the upper right corner of the screen and then the “gear” icon

Once in this menu, you will need to use the following options:

  • Set “Window” mode to “Full Screen”
  • Change “Frame rate limit” to “Unlimited”
  • Set “3D Resolution” to 100.0%
  • Set “Vsync” to “Off”
  • Set “Effects” to “Low”
  • Set “Motion Blur” to “Off”
  • Set “Shadows” to “Off”
  • Set “Smoothing” to “Off”
  • Set “View Distance” to “Medium”
  • Set “Post Processing” to “Low”
  • Set “Show Grass” to “Off”

Once this is complete, exit Fortnite and restart your PC.

After the reboot, you will be in a better position to know if your system has been speeded up or not.

Obviously there could be other issues preventing the game from working optimally.

The gist of the article is that you basically need to make sure the game has enough system resources to keep it running at a proper level, which is further expanded by how you can slow down some of the game’s more intense graphical elements. play.

If you are still having problems after doing the above, you may benefit from speaking to a specialist with direct knowledge of your system and/or the game.