Fortnite Performance Mode Explained: Should You Use It?

Fortnite’s performance mode was introduced to all PC players in early 2021. The rendering setting is targeted at gaming PCs that are experiencing dropped frames or low FPS. In this Fortnite performance mode guide we provide a detailed rundown of how to use performance mode to get the most out of your gaming PC experience.

What is Fortnite performance mode?

First off, performance mode is an advanced graphics setting that improves FPS by lowering the rendered visual quality of the game through a preset combination of settings. This reduces the load on your CPU and GPU to help Fortnite run smoother with big increases in FPS.

Gamers enabling Fortnite’s performance mode settings on a gaming PC that meets Epic’s minimum requirements should be able to run the game at 150+ FPS. Fortnite performs well on console hardware already, which explains why this setting is just available to PC users.

Should you use performance mode?

If you’re getting 60 FPS or below in Fortnite then it’s a must to enable performance mode for competitive gameplay. While mid-range and higher gaming PCs are capable of running competitively-high FPS in Fortnite with detailed graphics, there’s still a strong case to be made for keeping performance mode on.

But consider that enabling performance mode will sacrifice visual quality and make the game look more like the mobile version. Goodbye grass detail (and much more), hello more pixelated scenery.

As you can see below, though, the detail and graphics quality of the scene don’t degrade to the point of being unbearable with performance mode on.

Many Fortnite players, including most professionals, rightly accept this tradeoff in visual detail for the competitive performance advantage that higher FPS grants. It’s better to click heads fast than to be enamored by how detailed the blades of grass are.

How performance mode affects FPS

We prefer not to take game developer statements about FPS improvements at face value. It’s best to test gaming settings in-house to understand the practical performance improvements and that’s exactly what we did. Here are the FPS results with performance mode turned off and with performance mode turned on.

At the highest end, our tests improved FPS by 78%. This is actually on the lower end of results that have been reported by others. It’s common for FPS to at least double on low-end gaming PCs.

Our results are based on battle royale gameplay using a desktop gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, NVIDIA RTX 4080 Super GPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. With performance mode off and DirectX 12 selected as the rendering mode, we ran Fortnite at our suggested low settings configuration detailed in our Fortnite settings guide.

Do Fortnite pros use performance mode?

Fortnite pros overwhelmingly enable performance mode to prioritize FPS performance over visuals for a competitive advantage, even when their gaming rigs are already capable of 200+ FPS with better visual detail and performance mode off. This trend is evident when reviewing the Rendering Mode settings pick rates for pro players we track.

Simply, there is a competitive edge to pushing the FPS envelope beyond 200 FPS, and performance mode helps achieve this outcome.

Over time, we anticipate Fortnite players will continue to use performance mode with generational advances for CPUs and GPUs, in addition to fewer players using DirectX 11, in favor of DirectX 12.

How to turn on performance mode

Fortnite’s performance mode is available to all PC users that meet the minimum requirements to run the game. Learning how to turn on performance mode in Fortnite is simple.

You can turn on and turn off Fortnite performance mode by navigating to the video settings menu and visiting the Advanced Graphics section.

Once there, you can adjust the Rendering Mode to Performance. You will then need to restart Fortnite for the setting to stick. Once re-booting Fortnite you’ll notice that some settings are no longer available to customize, such as raytracing and other graphics settings.