Fortnite Promises Higher Frame Rates for Low-End PCs With New Performance Mode

Fortnite will now be able to run at higher frame rates on more PCs with less-capable hardware. This has been made possible with the new Performance Mode that is currently in its Alpha stage and it reduces visual quality for better frames per second (fps). While Fortnite is not a very demanding game to begin with, this new Performance Mode will allow a larger number of PC users to experience the game at higher frame rates than they're used to on their configuration. The new mode will be available starting today, December 15.

The new Performance Mode, as per anofficial blog post, meets the minimum specifications for Fortnite. It can be enabled from the settings menu in-game and offers “significant performance gains by trading out visual quality to lower memory usage and lighten the load on CPU and GPU.” Players who are already playing Fortnite at low settings or on less powerful hardware will be able to run the game at a consistent frame rate for a smoother experience.

Performance Mode will be available for both battle royale and creative modes. Players with less-capable hardware will be prompted to enable this mode but it can be enabled or disabled anytime. This mode also allows players to opt out of high-resolution textures through the Epic Games Launcher that will free up more disk space. To do so, head to the Epic Games Launcher, click on Library, find Fortnite and click on the three-dot menu, go to Options, check or uncheck the High Resolution Textures option. This should save you about 14GB of disk space.

Epic also shared a comparison showing fps results with Performance Mode enabled and disabled on low-end hardware. At 720p resolution, Performance Mode gave about a 37fps increase on a base Intel configuration and about 27fps increase on a base AMD system. This marks quite a significant improvement in frame rates, to say the least.

It should be noted that this new mode for Fortnite is currently in Alpha stage and Epic still recommends running the game on an SSD or with 6GB of RAM for users with older machines.

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