Best Fortnite Video Settings
Fortnite, like most new PC games, can look very nice if you use maximum settings across the board but that’s not something that we recommend if you want to be competitive. We have analyzed what the pros have been doing as well as doing some ingame testing for ourselves and we came up with what we think is the optimal balance between having great performance while still having a pretty game to look at.
As with any reasonably fast paced game, it’s incredibly important to get enough FPS in order to smoothly follow all of the onscreen action. We try our best to make sure everyone can take something away from our guides, but if your machine can’t get over 60 FPS during gameplay you’ll need to think about upgrading if you want to be competitive.
The advantages of running a higher framerate can’t be denied. You’ll get a much smoother image if you couple high framerates with a high refresh rate monitor, and you’ll have less input lag (regardless of what monitor you’re using) so it’s definitely worth it to get a good PC with a decent graphics card if you want to be competitive in the game, as that will definitely give you an edge when competing.
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency Technology
Prioritizing frame rates over visual fidelity is something that almost every professional player does because it reduces the overall system latency. To help gamers play at their best, NVIDIA introduced their Reflex Low Latency Technology. Considering the fact that Fortnite is one of the supported games and NVIDIA is by far the most used GPU in the pro scene we though it would be handy to add as small section on Reflex.
Reflex works in two ways: there’s the Low Latency Mode, which reduces the render queue by keeping the GPU in sync with the CPU, resulting in reduced (you can go under 25ms, depending on your setup) system latency, and there’s also the Reflex Latency Analyzer, which allows you to measure your system’s overall latency as long as you have compatible gear.
This is some really interesting tech because it not only allows you to measure your overall system latency (which can help you identify bottlenecks) but it also reduces it, making for a more responsive game overall. If you want to play at the/your highest levels then small differences like these can really add up, so it pays off to know about this technology. You can read more about it in our article here.
Best Resolution and Refresh Rate in Fortnite
Almost all Fortnite pros are on 1920×1080. There’s a few playing at 1440p resolution, but that is in no way necessary and you’ll need a pretty beastly rig to run the game properly at that resolution. There are some pros who are playing with custom resolutions, but those are more the exception than the norm as you can see in the statistics.
If your PC can run the game (and at least reach your monitor’s native FPS) well enough, feel free to turn the resolution up, but since frames are way more important for performance than pretty effects we do encourage everyone to stay at resolution that their PC can handle. Nowadays, there are top tier 1440p 360Hz gaming monitors, but as we said before you will need a beastly rig if you want to handle that. If your PC can handle it, though, feel free to go for a higher resolution monitor. The tech is there.
Fun Facts
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73
%
of Fortnite pros use a 240Hz monitor
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80
%
of Fortnite pros play using a 1920×1080 resolution
Best Fortnite Video Settings
What kind of settings menu you get will depend on the rendering mode that you use. If you use performance mode, you will not get as many options as when you use the other rendering modes. We would recommend trying out performance mode first, and if you find that it runs fine on your system (some users have reported issues with performance mode) we would recommend you to stick to that, as it’s designed by Epic to be the ‘competitive setting’ to play the game. If you find that you have issues running the game in performance mode or you want to have a bit more graphical fidelity then it’s a good idea to use either Directx11 or Directx12.
- Window Mode: Set this to Fullscreen. Using anything else can cause input lag.
- Display Resolution: Set this to your monitor’s native resolution.
- Frame Rate Limit: Go with unlimited, or match this to your monitor’s refresh rate. If you’re having trouble with choppiness and a big difference between your minimum and maximum framerates, you can set this to a lower value
- 3D Resolution: Set this to 100%.
- View Distance: Set this to near. This setting only affects the terrain (and not the players) so players still stand out even if you set this to the lowest setting. You can increase this if you’ve got some frames to spare since the pop-in effect of buildings and objects suddenly appearing on the horizon can get annoying and distracing.
- Shadows: Turning this off will increase your PC’s performance while leaving it on gives you no real advantages.
- Anti-Aliasing: Turn this off for maximum performance. If you have a very powerful PC and high framerates you can consider turning this up in order to make the game look prettier.
- Textures: This is an eyecandy setting, so if you need the performance boost you can set this as low as you need it to be.
- Effects: Set this to low. The more detailed the effects are, the higher the risk you run of getting unstable framerates during fights.
- Post Processing: Set this to low. This actually makes the game less blurry, since turning this up too high causes a blur when looking at long ranges, putting you at an obvious disadvantage.
- Vsync: This causes input lag so you should leave it off.
- Motion Blur: Turn this off. This effect is used to make games look more ‘cinematic’ by blurring the screen during fast movements. This hinders visibility and performance. You probably shouldn’t ever turn this on in any competitive game.
- Show FPS: Turn this on. Why wouldn’t you want to know how your PC is performing?
- Rendering Mode: If you’re really suffering for frames you can try performance mode, but that makes the game look really low quality and can be, at times, unreliable. We recommend trying DirectX 12 or DirectX 11 if you’re not too low on frames.
- Allow Multithreaded Rendering: This option can improve performance but the implementation of it is currently a bit hit or miss. Turn it on to see if it improves your performance, but otherwise it’s best to leave it off.
- NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: We recommend setting this to On + Boost as it’ll lower your overall system latency.
- DLSS: DLSS can be quite unreliable performance-wise in this game, so we prefer to leave it off.
Best Fortnite Keybinds
Building is a very important part of Fortnite, so it’s no real surprise that being able to build quickly and efficiently can give you a massive advantage over your opponents. The default keys for building in Fortnite can be quite awkward to reach, especially when you’re in the heat of battle, so most professionals use custom keybinds for building. We recommend that you do the same, unless you’re super comfortable with the default keys already.
Which keys you use is obviously personal preference, but generally you’ll want to make sure that you’re able to reach the most important ‘building elements’ comfortable each time. E, Q, and the mouse side buttons are often used for buy binds in the pro scene, and don’t forget that you can also bind your scroll wheel to ingame actions.
Best Fortnite Settings and Options – Conclusion
Fortnite isn’t the craziest game when it comes to customization options. People generally don’t spend days talking about what resolution is the perfect one or anything like that like they do in games like CS:GO. That’s partially because the game is optimized pretty nicely and partially because you can’t really customize your radar, HUD, … as you can in certain other games, so there’s just less to discuss.
A few settings are ‘mandatory’ for optimal performance (as highlighted above) so if you just follow these guidelines, make sure you’re getting enough FPS, and that your sens isn’t something outlandish you’ll be jumping out of that Battle Bus prepared like a pro. Remember that some settings (such as sensitivity) are highly personal, so what works for a certain pro might not work for you. It’s important to develop your own habits and settings in order to make sure you’re as comfortable as possible when playing.
Hopefully this guide has helped you a bit, but please do let us know if you have any questions or remarks.
Former semi-pro gamer turned writer, product reviewer, and community manager.