Battlefield 2042's release build, according to developer DICE, won't perform significantly better than its beta version. This means you can expect Battlefield 2042, especially as compared to other popular shooters like Halo Infinite or Warzone, to run significantly worse on PC, but there are things you can do to maximize your FPS. In this article, we'll tell you what you need to know about Battlefield 2042's performance profile as well as explain steps you can take to increase FPS.
What You Need to Know About Battlefield 2042's Performance
The good news is that on PC, Battlefield 2042 does not have punishing minimum requirements, and on the high-end, Battlefield 2042 offers future-forward settings like ray-tracing and DLSS. However, this is much more of a mixed bag than it seems.
While many PCs can run Battlefield 2042, very few can run the game particularly well. At resolutions above 1080p, going far above 60FPS isn't possible, and while turning down graphics settings to the Low preset, for example, significantly changes how the game looks, the performances increase isn't as substantial.
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DLSS, thankfully, is a thing in Battlefield 2042, but its implementation here isn't great: Rather than a 50% or 100% increase in performance, you're looking at more like a 25% increase in FPS, if that. Though you will see bigger gains the higher the resolution is you're targeting, running the game at especially high resolutions, even with DLSS, is never overly smooth.
Regardless of your hardware, the 128v128 modes are going to be tough on both CPUs and GPUs, and you'll need the latest-gen stuff just to keep pace, most of the time. If all you're looking for is a mostly stable 60FPS at 1080p, this is a reasonable goal with Battlefield 2042, but don't expect hundreds of frames at high resolutions.
How to Fix Battlefield 2042's Performance Issues and Increase FPS
First off, turn your graphics settings down to as low a level you're comfortable with. It's not advised to just select 'Low' and move on because performance gains aren't as substantial as you'd think while the increase to performance isn't amazing. Shadows, effects, and ambient occlusion are good places to start. Ray-tracing, even with DLSS, is an absolute performance-killer, so in almost all cases you'll want this off.
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Second, if your GPU supports it, enable DLSS. You'll want to play with the DLSS presets depending on your target resolution, but all you have to do is select a preset that doesn't make the game too blurry and low-res feeling for you. Once again, this won't be a massive increase in performance, but it's better than nothing.
Third, you're going to want to do the usual optimization steps for PC games on Windows: Quit out of other applications when playing the game, especially any overlays; Run Battlefield as an Administrator; Set Battlefield's priority to High in the Task Manager; and make sure your NVIDIA or AMD settings for Battlefield are to your preferences.
Make sure you've updated your GPU drivers recently, too, because drivers are frequently released to coincide with the launch of big new games to provide support specifically for them. Plus, driver updates tend to slowly increase FPS across games over time. Sometimes, though, there are problems with a specific driver version, so it's generally advised to search for the driver version you intend to install online and see if others are having major issues with it first.
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If you have overclocked components, particularly CPU, GPU, and RAM, consider toning down these overclocks if they're particularly aggressive, too. Even if they're otherwise stable, the Frostbite engine can sometimes not play nicely with extremely high frequencies. These can cause crashing problems if you're not careful.
As games get larger and grander in scale, they take up more and more RAM and storage space. Make sure you have enough free space on your hard drive or SSD for it to run as efficiently as possible. As a rule of thumb, it's good to keep about 20% of your drive empty.
With RAM, on Windows you can set up a paging file, or virtual memory, to help keep crashing to a minimum. These settings allow you to dip into your storage space for use as temporary RAM when your system's RAM is maxing out. With a modern SSD, speeds are generally good, so this can be the difference between running normally or crashing to your desktop in certain situations.
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Also, on Windows, your power settings can be surprisingly influential, especially on a laptop. You'll want to make sure you're set to 'High Performance' or otherwise make sure you've set your CPU power to always be maxed out when playing so as to make sure your processor is using all the power it needs to run the game as fast as possible.
Quitting the game and restarting it, reinstalling it, and refreshing GPU drivers as well as simply rebooting your computer are good ways to try and fix temporary problems with Battlefield 2042, but they won't be long-term fixes. If you find yourself glitching constantly or crashing regularly, there might not be much you can do until an update.
Even with all the optimizations you can think of, Battlefield 2042 is an ambitious, graphically-demanding game. It requires a lot of power to run well, and even with a lot of power, it doesn't run that well, especially compared to shooters like Halo Infinite or Valorant or many other popular games on the market. So, keep your performance goals in check.
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Like Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 2042's console version hasn't had a lot of testing yet, and like Cyberpunk, the game is sure to launch in a worse technical state than is really acceptable for a huge AAA game. However, also like Cyberpunk, Battlefield 2042 is a hugely ambitious game, technically speaking, so performance improvements will take time and energy and likely won't be huge gamechangers update-to-update.
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