Fortnite Season 5 Slow Computer Fix – How To Fix Fortnite Lagging on Your PC

2021-02-272022-11-23 WebEditor

PC Games, whilst being the most up-to-date, customizable and easiest-to-play, are often causing issues with speed and errors etc.

Fortnite – the super smash hit across all sorts of devices – is such a game. Many people have reported it running slowly on their PC, as opposed to the likes of XBox or the other consoles.

The core reason for this issue lies in the way in which PC’s are able to run with a multitude of hardware, when the many consoles out there have been tailored specifically to work in a certain way.

Due to the nature through which the likes of Windows has to be versatile enough to work with all hardware types, it’s vital that if you plan on running a game such as Fortnite, you are sure you have the right setup for the software.

This tutorial looks to allay any of the qualms you may have about this.

Fortnite Running on Windows

As with any Windows application, certain system requirements have to be met in order for the game to run:

Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870 equivalent DX11 GPU
2 GB VRAM
25GB+ HDD Space
Intel Core i5 2.8 Ghz
8 GB RAM
Windows 7/8/10 64-bit

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

If you have the above, or preferably better, you’ll be in a position to actually run the game.

The speed of the game is then determined by how effective Windows is at optimizing for use with your various hardware components.

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

If you have appropriate hardware, you should then look to optimize any of the software-level issues which may be preventing the system from running properly.

Software Issues Preventing Fortnite From Running Smoothly

The main issue with Windows / Mac is that each system is designed to work across a massive spectrum of hardware + software, making it quite difficult to optimize.

Microsoft has often been criticized for this setup, but in regards to the whole PC industry – was unavoidable.

The point is that if you have adequate 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 running in the background of the system.

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

Antivirus

If you have a third-party antivirus tool running, chances are that it has a “gaming mode”
To enable it, you should click onto the “bottom right” portion of the Windows taskbar
Select the antivirus application’s icon, right-click and select “Gaming Mode” or similar
If you’re unable to identify how to enable it, you should Google “Gaming Mode + [[your antivirus]]”

Other Programs

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

2. Remove Third Party Graphics Drivers

If you have any third-party graphics drivers (which will typically be running constantly on the system), you’ll be best removing them.

The important thing to note here is that this does not remove the driver itself, rather the “application” / “control panel” which accompanies most of them.

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

In Windows 7, press “Start” > “Control Panel” > “Programs & Features”
In Windows, right-click on “Start” > select “Apps and Features”
From the list that appears, select any references to either NVidia or ATI/AMD Radeon and uninstall them
This will bring up the branded applications 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 faster.

3. Clean Out Hard Disk

Next, we should remove any of the temporary files that often clutter hard drives.

This is simply done with the “Disk Clean-Up” tool in Windows:

Press “Windows” + “S” keys on your keyboard
Type “Disk Clean-Up”
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 which says “Clean up system files”
Select it and let the scan proceed again
From the list that appears, check every option available
Click “OK”
Restart your system after it completes

4. Edit Graphics Driver Settings

After doing the above, you need to consider any specific fixes you can perform.

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

I know it was recommended to remove the third party application managing the graphics driver (which is correct) – if it automatically installed itself again, or you just didn’t want to remove it, you’ll be able to use the steps below to enhance its performance (specifically for Fortnite):

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

Having done the above, exit the control panel and restart the system again.

5. Optimize the Fortnite Executable

The next step is to ensure the Fortnite Executable is working as properly as possible.

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

Browse to the Fortnite executable file
This is typically 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 it and select “Properties”
Select the “Compatibility” tab
Check the “Override high DPI scaling behavior” box
Click OK and try loading the game

6. Optimize Game Settings

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

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

Once in this menu, you should use the following options:

Set the “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 “Anti-Aliasing” 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 restart, you’ll be in a better position to tell whether your system has sped up or not.

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

The gist of the article is that you basically have to ensure that the game has enough system resource to keep it running at an adequate level, which is further extended with the way in which you can curb some of the more graphically-intense elements of the game.

If you’re still experiencing issues, after doing the above, you may benefit from talking to a specialist with direct knowledge of your system and/or the game.

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