Fortnite Performance Mode drops tomorrow for PCs
Epic Games has announced that they will drop a new Fortnite Performance Mode tomorrow, December 15, on all PCs that meet the game’s minimum specs. PC gamers can select Performance Mode through the game’s Settings menu. The mode, even though it’s still in alpha, promises to improve game performance by lowering the visual quality in order to lower memory usage. For those who already use the low scalability settings, the Performance Mode will maintain a smoother framerate, therefore improving overall performance.
All PC players who currently use older hardware will automatically receive a prompt encouraging them to try out the mode. For now, Performance Mode will only support the Battle Royale and Creative modes. If Performance Mode doesn’t improve your game, you can disable it (or enable it) at any time.
How Performance Mode works
What Performance Mode basically does is remove the high-resolution texture packs from the installation. By enabling it, 14.48GB of high-resolution texture data will be removed from your hard drive. This eases hard drive stress, CPU stress, as well as GPU stress.
It doesn’t matter how much older your hardware is (within reason, let’s be real). You can still have a smooth framerate experience, even while using lower scalability or running at lower resolutions.
Recommended hardware to improve Performance Mode
It goes without saying that certain hardware will generate a better performance, even on older machines. As such, Epic Games recommends the following hardware to make Performance Mode run even better:
- SSD (solid-state drive)
- at least 6GB of RAM
- a dedicated GPU
Here are two older hardware examples that Epic Games provided to show how greatly the FPS improved after enabling Performance Mode:
If you’re worried about how much visual quality you’ll sacrifice with Fortnite Performance Mode, the following screenshot, courtesy of Epic Games, was taken in Performance Mode at 720p resolution in Chapter 2 – Season 5.
