Fortnite can be seen almost everywhere. The Fortnite item shop brings tons of money to Epic Games because of its vast community. Thanks to its widespread accessibility, the Battle Royale giant is available to play on almost every platform possible—including your potato PC. Epic Games has always made the effort to make Fortnite run as fast as possible on computers. It is, after all, where most players play the game. Unfortunately, not everyone has the privilege of owning high-speed GPUs and the latest CPU. To remedy that, Epic has done something incredible that can turn the tides of what people think PC gaming usually is. One might think that you can’t run the best games on your PC if you don’t have the cash to invest in your hardware, but Fortnite’s all-new performance mode opens a door of possibilities for other companies that want to gain a larger player base.
So just what does this mean for Fortnite and the gaming community as a whole? Why does this new, fangled performance mode have the power to impact other developers and gaming companies? If you’re itching to find out the answer, then read on down below!
A Rundown of Performance Mode
Performance Mode first came to be when it was first discussed by Epic Games back in December 2020. According to The Fortnite Team, they wanted to get all of the PCs to meet Fortnite’s minimum specifications; it doesn’t take a lot to run Fortnite on PC, but say you haven’t upgraded your PC that still runs on hardware back from the early 2010s? While it may not struggle to play low-res games such as Old School RuneScape, it could easily overheat when playing Fortnite or even just by loading the Fortnite item shop despite already the low specs needed to play the game. By enabling Performance Mode, you can play the game at a solid 30-60 FPS. However, it comes at a cost. The visual quality of the game will take a toll, as it should since you’re trading it for a smoother framerate.
How Do I Turn On Performance Mode?
Turning Performance Mode On is pretty simple. First things first, you have to log into your Epic Games client and launch Fortnite before we get started. In the main menu, you have to click the top right corner then the Settings category. Scroll down the Settings menu and you’ll find the “Rendering Mode” option. Click it then set it to “Performance Mode”. Once that’s set, you’re all done and ready to play Fortnite using its new mode!
Goodbye High Res Textures
Aside from Epic’s new Performance Mode, they also gave us the added option of not using high-resolution textures to get even better framerates. If you’re really into getting the greatest graphics possible in a game and just want smooth gameplay throughout, then you can simply opt out of downloading Fortnite’s hi-res textures. This will disable the texture options on the Settings page but also save you a lot of space—14GB of it. Not being able to download certain things in the game is a blessing to your hard drive and/or SSD if you’re the type of person that already has a lot of stuff crammed into your measly storage.
Should You Switch Performance Mode On?
If you have a PC that has lower-end specs, then we recommend switching Performance Mode to better your gameplay experience. But if you have access to the newest and most powerful hardware, then there’s no reason to do so since your PC can handle Fortnite just fine. Most games like to take the intensity up a notch in terms of really putting your PC to work such as Call of Duty: Cold War. If you thought Warzone was a big game, the Cold War is even bigger—eating more than 100GBs of storage space. Luckily, Fortnite decided to take the opposite route and made their game even smaller. Before the October 2020 update, Fortnite was about 30GB. But now, the game only amounts to 27GB without even removing the high-res textures.
Conclusion
Performance Mode may look like a bad downgrade, but in reality, you can still see your Fortnite weapons in the game just fine. Sure, the backgrounds may look a little gritty, but it’s a small price to pay for being able to play the game for long periods without suffocating your PC. Hopefully, this influences other developers and gaming companies to do the same and make their games more accessible to people. What do you think of Performance Mode? Do you think Epic made the right choice of implementing this? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment below!
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