Minecraft is a game that can run on anything from Raspberry Pi’s to Chromebooks. While it’s true that you don’t need a top-of-the-line gaming rig to play Minecraft at a good frame rate, the game can still be too much to handle for older hardware at times.
Just like every other game, Minecraft is best enjoyed with a high framerate. If your existing hardware is struggling to run Minecraft, this article discusses how to improve FPS in the game.
Also read: How to make a map in Minecraft?
Adjusting in-game settings
The first step in improving your in-game FPS is to check and optimise your in-game graphics settings. This applies to any game, but since different games have different settings, it becomes important to know which settings you need to control.
To open up Minecraft’s graphics settings, click on the Settings button in the main menu followed by Video in the settings menu. Once there, here are the settings you need to adjust.
- Render Distance: This is measured in Chunks in Minecraft and refers to the distance you can see when loaded into the game. The larger this value, the better your viewing distance will be, but at the cost of memory as the game has to load more of the map into memory. Dropping this setting will almost always result in a performance boost. However, remember not to make the render distance so small that you can’t watch out for any threats coming your way or miss out on any geographical features you might be searching.
- Anti-Aliasing: This setting works exactly how it does in other games. A lower value will make in-game edges more pronounced but will add performance. Play around with the slider until you’re happy with the results.
- FOV: FOV stands for field of view and is a setting mostly found in first-person shooter or racing games. The setting works similarly to render distances in that the higher your FOV value is, the more you’ll be able to see at once, but once again, at the cost of your PC’s resources. Narrowing your FOV (or lowering the setting value) can greatly help performance, especially if you’re on older hardware. An FOV value of 60 or below is recommended for best performance.
- Resolution: Another important setting to keep in mind is the game’s resolution. While you shouldn’t have to change your resolution for playing Minecraft, if you need absolutely every frame you can get, lowering the resolution to 720p can get you better performance. However, we don’t recommend going below 720p as 1080p itself strikes a good balance between graphics and performance.
- Other in-game settings: Other in-game settings that work as toggles and can affect your FPS include fancy leaves, fancy bubbles, render clouds, beautiful skies, smooth lighting, and fancy graphics. If you have a Ray Tracing capable GPU, turning the Ray Tracing setting off can often add a bunch of extra performance to the game.
- Disabling these settings will make the game look worse but it’ll improve performance as your PC won’t have to work as hard. It’s best to try disabling a few settings at once and do a few experiments so that you can find the balance between graphics and performance.
Update your GPU drivers
While your GPU drivers will mostly already be up to date, it’s not a bad idea to check for an update and make sure that you have the latest drivers installed.
Step 1: Press the Windows key + R to open the Run prompt. Type in devmgmt.msc and hit enter.
Step 2: Scroll down to find Display adaptors — double click it to expand and see all your graphics cards.
Step 3: Right-click on your graphics cards and select Update driver.
Step 4: Select Search automatically for updated driver software. Windows will automatically download and install any updates that are available.
Restart your PC and Minecraft should run better.
Update Minecraft
Another thing you can check for is whether Minecraft itself is updated or not. Minecraft is often updated and a lot of these updates more often than not provide performance improvements and bug fixes that make the game more stable, in addition to adding extra content.
Check the Minecraft Launcher to see if you’re on the latest update. If you’re not, update your game at once and check again to see if performance has improved or not.
Closing background apps
Last, but not least, it’s also a good idea to check whether any background apps are using too many system resources causing Minecraft to lag or stutter. There are a number of ways to do this, but using the Task Manager is one of the simplest options available.
Check out our guide on how to turn off background applications on Windows 11 here
Also read: Fix: Unable to update the Minecraft native launcher
