Fortnite: Battle Royale is a fun game with a somewhat cartoonish look, but it can be surprisingly taxing on gaming PCs, depending on what kind of build you have. If you’re having issues running the game, you might have to upgrade your PC, or tweak the settings.
These are the minimum and recommended specs, according to Epic Games:
Recommended System Requirements:
- Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870 equivalent DX11 GPU
- 2 GB VRAM
- Core i5 2.8 Ghz
- 8 GB RAM
- Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
Minimum System Requirements:
- Intel HD 4000
- Core i3 2.4 Ghz
- 4 GB RAM
- Windows 7/8/10 64-bit + Mac OSX Sierra
You can use the game’s graphical presets, or fine-tune them yourself. Fine-tuning each individual setting can often help find the perfect sweet spot of what’s best for you and your computer.
View Distance
This setting controls how far out you can see rendered objects, and in a game like Fortnite, this is incredibly important. The farther you can see, the better. This setting should be as high as you can get it, as performance is not greatly impacted.
Shadows
Surprisingly, this setting has the biggest effect on performance when compared with highest and lowest possible settings. We suggest using the Medium option to start.
Anti-Aliasing
Most graphics cards shouldn’t feel too big of a hit when changing this setting from low to high, and the higher it goes, the better and cleaner everything will look for you.
Textures
This setting controls the look of everything including player models, weapons, trees, and landscapes. You’ll want to run this as high as you can, because dropping it to low doesn’t have a huge impact on how smoothly things will run.
Effects
This setting affects things like water, cloud shadows, and explosions. If you drop this to the lowest possible setting, you will see a decent improvement in performance. Keep this in mind if your PC is struggling to run the game smoothly.
Post Processing
Like most settings, you’ll want to run this as high as possible. Setting this on the lowest setting will make things incredibly dark, so Medium or higher is suggested if at all possible.
Vsync
This setting will lock the game’s framerate to your PC’s highest possible output.
Motion Blur
Off. Always off. Nobody likes you, Motion Blur.
In the end, experimenting with settings on your specific gaming rig is important. It’s good to get a grasp of what can help or hinder performance, but a lot of it is dependent on what kind of PC you have.
Start up the game and try messing around with your settings to see what works best for you, but keep these tips in mind while doing so.