Fortnite Announces Performance Mode For PC
Epic Games has announced a new “performance mode” that will be added for the PC version of Fortnite with the v15.10 update.
On December 15, Fortnite will get a new performance mode option specifically aimed to give PC players playing on lower-end hardware, higher FPS. This feature will release in an alpha stage and will sacrifice visual quality to lower memory usage and CPU/GPU load, thus resulting in better stability and higher frame rates.
This new mode is huge for Epic Games and Fortnite players, as it makes the gaming experience on lower-end hardware better. It could bring many new players to the game who don’t have good gaming PC’s or laptops and reduce the entry-level to play Fortnite on PC.
Performance mode will be available under the Advanced Graphics option and is currently only available for the Battle Royale mode and Creative. If you are on low-end hardware, the game will issue a prompt recommending you try the new performance mode out.
Epic Games recommends having at least 6 GB of RAM available for the game to function well, and also states an SSD will reduce overall game hitches and stutters.
Save More Hard Drive/SSD Space
Also dropping with this update is the ability for players to uninstall high resolution textures from the Fortnite install. Since players who use the new performance mode won’t have use for these textures, they can benefit from having some extra hard drive space for other games.
Here’s how to uninstall the textures:
- 1. Open the Epic Games Launcher
- 2. Click on Library
- 3. Click on the 3 dots on the bottom right, under the Fortnite picture.
- 4. Click on options
- 5. Uncheck the box next to “high resolution textures”.
- 6. Hit apply.
Overall, this should reduce the game’s footprint by 14GB, making the game a very small 17GB (for today’s AAA standards) on your hard drive.
The FPS boosts have been massive for laptops especially. A test of a laptop running an Intel i5-8265U @ 1.6GHz, 8 GB of RAM and integrated graphics went from an unplayable 24 FPS at 720p to a smooth 61 FPS, nearly a three-fold increase.
Overall, the idea here seems to be targeted towards having Fortnite function well on laptops with integrated graphics. The results seem promising so far.