Since being upgraded to Unreal Engine 5, Fortnite has had the honor of being among the most technologically advanced PC games. With its cutting-edge “Lumen” lighting engine, and highly detailed (yet efficient) Nanite geometry, the game has achieved staggering levels of visual fidelity. This post details the performance and visual impact of Fortnite’s various graphics options, followed by the optimized settings for a range of PC setups.
Windows/System Settings to Optimize
Enable Resizable BAR.
Turn on Game Mode.
Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
Disable Memory Integrity. Windows Menu->VBS->Device Security.
Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
Memory: 16 GB RAM or higher Hard Drive: NVMe Solid State Drive
OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit
Epic Quality Specs
Video Card: Nvidia RTX 3070, AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT, or equivalent GPU Video Memory: 8 GB VRAM or higher
Processor: Intel Core i7-8700, AMD Ryzen 7 3700x or equivalent
Memory: 16 GB RAM or higher Hard Drive: NVMe Solid State Drive
OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit
Testing Methodology
Hardware setup used:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090 FE.
Motherboard: MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi.
Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.
Fortnite: DirectX 11 vs 12
Fortnite retains the DirectX 11 graphics API to extend support to older systems. It lacks the advanced features of DirectX 12, most notably Nanite geometry and Lumen-based global illumination and reflections. The “Low Fidelity” renderer completely disables lighting and high-poly meshes, skyrocketing performance by over 3x. We recorded an average framerate of 529 FPS using this rendering mode, up from 157 FPS using standard DirectX 11.
DX11 vs Performance vs DX12
If you’re playing on integrated graphics, then the “Lower Graphics Fidelity” mode is for you. Otherwise, stick to DirectX 12. DirectX 11 only makes sense when your GPU doesn’t support it or isn’t fast enough for Nanite or Lumen-based lighting even with upscaling.
Fortnite Graphics Quality Presets & Resolution
Fortnite features four graphics quality presets that show incredible performance scaling. From an average of 70 FPS at “Epic” and 118 FPS at “High,” the game produced 207 FPS at “Medium,” and 385 FPS at the “Low” quality graphics preset at 4K UHD.
Graphics Preset Comparisons
The resolution scaling is as impressive, averaging 100 FPS at 1440p and 129 FPS at 1080p at the “Epic” quality graphics preset. That’s close to the doubling of framerates from 4K to 1080p, indicating a GPU-bound workload.
Nanite can have a drastic impact on image quality, especially in highly detailed maps. This does, however, come with a considerable performance hit and increased VRAM usage (as much as +50% at 4K). Excluding the impact of Virtual Shadows and Lumen, Nanite can reduce average framerate by over 20%.
With Virtual Shadows, Nanite can cut performance by 30-40% in an average map at 4K. Therefore, it’s not an option, if you’ve got an older GPU or a slim VRAM buffer (<6 GB).
The Nanite geometry engine is among the core highlights of Unreal Engine 5. It has allowed for an unprecedented increase in geometric detail without unrealistic polygon counts or memory budgets. This is achieved by adopting cluster-based LOD scaling. Different cluster groups of varying detail are generated for a given mesh. The different parts of the mesh are rendered at different LODs.
The viewing angle or viewport determines the LOD to ensure that the highest perceptible detail is rendered for each part of the mesh. This involves using high-resolution cluster groups for some (in-focus) and simpler, low-resolution groups for the rest (distant or partially visible).
As the viewport changes, so does the LOD. The updated cluster groups are streamed in and out of storage in real time. The screen resolution is also used to determine the LOD as the subtlest details are often lost on small or low-resolution displays. These minute triangles are culled to save resources without a (noticeable) loss in detail.
Nanite pre-calculates all the cluster LOD hierarchies beforehand, storing them in the memory. The GPU accesses this data using DMA (Direct Memory Access) to avoid pipeline stalls or pop-ups.
Lumen: Global Illumination & Reflections
Fortnite uses Lumen to implement global illumination and dynamic reflections. It can be enabled using software ray-tracing (the default) or hardware ray-tracing which is more accurate (and expensive). The former is 6-8% faster than the latter on NVIDIA’s RTX 40 GPUs.
Lumen High vs Epic + Hardware RT
Hardware ray tracing produces more defined shadows and higher-quality global illumination. “Epic” quality Lumen GI is 16% slower than ambient occlusion, while hardware ray-tracing increases that delta to 22%.
Lumen High vs Epic (Hardware RT Off)
Lumen reflections are more forgiving, reducing performance by ~13% using hardware and 6% using the software approach. The FPS hit incurred by ambient occlusion (SSAO) and screen space reflections (SSR) is trivial in comparison.
Lumen, by default, uses software ray tracing. This implementation includes Screen Tracing, Mesh Distance Fields (MDFs), and Global Distance Fields (GDFs) which are used on different sections of the scene depending on the object type, distance from the screen, and lighting complexity.
Screen Tracing is the first step in the Lumen pipeline. It is conducted against objects in the depth buffer or screen space. It is primarily used for object intersections and thin crevices as a higher quality SSAO replacement. Misses are serviced by the SDFs.
Mesh Distance Fields are traced for the objects up to 2 meters away from the camera, and hold sparse details near the objects’ surface. Mipmaps are used to accelerate the ray marching process, employing higher-quality maps for closer objects and vise versa. MDFs are updated with each frame.
Once the rays hit an SDF, the lighting for that hit cache is obtained using the surface cache
Global Distance Fields are the fastest but also the least accurate. This works to their advantage as they are traced against coarse clipmaps obtained by merging all the MDFs. These clipmaps are cached and only the bricks with non-static objects are updated. GDFs are mainly used for flat geometry.
Surface Cache stores the material properties for each mesh from different angles, called Cards. It is used to accelerate the lighting calculations at ray hit points in the scene. Lumen then calculates the direct and indirect lighting for these points which is cached and gradually updated across frames.
The Final Gather leverages a screen-space radiance cache to downsample the global illumination calculation. The downsampled indirect lighting and full-resolution material maps are integrated to produce full-resolution lighting. The radiance cache reduces noise by filtering the newer lighting data and reusing traces between adjacent pixels.
Previous Frame data is used to optimize light tracing by prioritizing regions with bright lighting in the last frame. This improves quality while maintaining performance.
World Space Radiance Caching is yet another cache used to improve the lighting quality. It resolves distant lighting by tracing additional rays, reducing noise and producing more accurate sky lighting indoors.
Reflections on rough surfaces are calculated using the screen-space radiance cache. Specular reflections require additional rays which are shared between adjacent pixels and accumulated across frames to improve quality.
Shadows & Virtual Shadows
Virtual Shadows have a particularly prominent impact on performance, reducing the average framerates by 28% at the highest quality option, with “High” and “Medium” being 18% and 14% slower than “Off.”
Virtual Shadow Quality Comparisons
Nanite enables its corresponding high-resolution shadows, known as Virtual Shadows. These are high-resolution shadows with a “virtual resolution” of 16k x 16k pixels. Like Nanite, they’re split into tiles that are rendered only when visible onscreen. The tiles are cached across static frames, and recalculated by motion or lighting changes.
Disabling Nanite reverts to shadows to conventional shadow maps which are more performant, albeit less detailed. They reduce the average framerates by 23%, 12%, and 3% at the “Epic,” “High,” and “Medium” quality settings, respectively.
Shadow Quality Comparisons
Post Processing & Effects
Post-processing enables late pipeline shaders like motion blur, depth of field, and bloom. It has a mild to marginal impact on performance, with the highest setting reducing the average framerate by 2-3%.
Post-Process Quality Comparisons
Effects adjust the quality of various colorful effects found on chests, loot, and other interactable objects. While “High” and lower settings only marginally impact performance, the “Epic” quality option can reduce the average FPS by 10% or more.
Effects Quality Compared
Textures & View Distance
Thanks to the fine-grained streaming capability of Unreal Engine 5, even the highest quality textures have a subtle impact on the VRAM usage. The change in visual fidelity is nuanced as well.
Texture Quality Comparisons
View Distance sets the distance (from the player) at which various objects and shaders are culled or reduced in intensity. It can have a 6-7% impact on the average performance.
View Distance Comparisons
Anti-Aliasing & Upscaling
Fortnite features three upscalers: DLSS, XeSS, and TSR (very similar to FSR). DLSS produces the cleanest image, retaining even more than native + TAA. XeSS is a close second but performs worse on non-Intel hardware. TSR Low/Medium are faster but look slightly worse than DLSS. Most players won’t be able to tell them apart as the differences are mainly on a pixel level.
DLSS vs TSR Low vs TSR Medium vs TSR Epic
Fortnite VRAM Usage
Fortnite uses up to 9 GB graphics memory at 4K “Epic” which drops to just ~6 GB at “Medium.” FHD 1080p and 1440p use 6.4 GB and 7.1 GB of VRAM at the highest quality preset, respectively.
Fortnite CPU Bottlenecks
Fortnite, like most Unreal Engine 5 games is well-optimized for multi-core CPUs. The game was completely GPU-bound at 1440p and 4K, with a GPU-Busy deviation of 5% at 1080p.
1080p Epic
Fortnite Performance Summary
Nanite (+97%), Virtual Shadows (+39%), and Lumen GI (+31%) are the most taxing graphics settings in Fortnite. If you’re struggling to hit playable framerates, we recommend reducing shadow quality, followed by Lumen, and Nanite.
Best Settings for Fortnite on PC: 2024
Optimized Settings
High-end
High-end
Midrange
Low-end PC
Resolution
4K (3840×2160)
1440p (2560×1440)
1440p (2560×1440)
1080p (1920×1080)
Target FPS
144 FPS|120 FPS
240 FPS
144 FPS|120 FPS
120 FPS|60 FPS
Vsync
Off
Off
Off
Off
Frame Rate Limit
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Rendering Mode
DX12
DX12
DX12
DX12
Anti-Aliasing & Super Resolution
DLSS TSR Medium
DLSS TSR Medium
DLSS TSR High
DLSS TSR High
DLSS/TSR
Performance
Performance
Balanced
Balanced|Quality
Nanite
On
On
On
On
Virtual Shadows
High|Epic
High
High|Epic
High|Epic
Global Illumination
Lumen High|Epic
Lumen High
Lumen High|Epic
Lumen High|Epic
Reflections
Lumen High|Epic
Screen Space
SS|Lumen High
SS|Lumen High
View Distance
Epic
Epic
Epic
Epic
Textures
Epic
Epic
Epic
Epic
Effects
Epic
High
High|Epic
High
Post Processing
Epic
Epic
Epic
Epic
Hardware Ray Tracing
Off|On
Off
Off|On
Off|On
Hardware Ray Tracing should be disabled on AMD GPUs
Fortnite produces an average of 144 FPS on the RTX 3060 using our customized graphics settings at 1080p, including DLSS “Balanced” and “Nanite.” Unfortunately, all “Lumen” effects must be disabled in favor of traditional screen space reflections and ambient occlusion, and “Virtual Shadows” are reduced to the lowest value.
Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Find me at HardwareTimes and PC Opset.
