Back 4 Blood Lag Fix – Stuttering, FPS Drops

Back 4 Blood Lag Fix – Back 4 Blood is out and can be downloaded via Steam, the download size is around 26.69 GB on Game Pass. As usual, the game has a few issues related to performance, which we are going to talk about in this article.

The game is getting a lot of hate on forums due to it being very similar to Left 4 Dead. Everything is similar, just the game is different. We don’t talk about this when we play Battle Royale games do we, many of them are also the same. Talking about the developers, the game is created by Turtle Rock Studious and is backed by Warner Bros Games. So the game has a strong developer and publisher behind them.

Note: The game is out now. The game is currently in closed-beta and will unlock in approximately 2 months from the date of writing this article. Many of the issues that you might be facing right now will be ironed out by then. You can also pre-order the game for rewards.

Official System Requirements: to be announced

Your PC configuration should fall in between the minimum or recommended requirements to run the game smoothly. If that is not the case, you will have to compromise with graphics and FPS.

The rule of thumb is toning down the game settings, whenever you face performance issues. This is why we will start with the best settings for Back 4 blood.

Back 4 Blood Best in-game Settings

These are the best settings for optimal performance, you can tweak it as per your rig configuration.

• Window Mode: Full Screen
• Screen Resolution: Depends on your screen, for me it’s 1920×1080
• Anti-Aliasing: TAA
• Motion Blur: Off
• Chromatic Abberation: Off
• FOV: 90-100
• Vsync: Off (You can turn this on if you want to!)
• FPS Limit: Display
• Post Processing Quality: High
• Texture Quality: Medium or High (This depends on your memory budget)
• Effects Quality: Medium
• Shadow Quality: Low
• Foliage Quality: High
• HDR: Off
• Graphics API: DirectX API 12/11 (Read the points mentioned below the settings)
• Sharpening: FidelityFX

Many of these settings can be adjusted up to your personal preference. For example, I have a two-monitor setup, so I switch from one to another very frequently, so I would run my game in borderless windowed mode.

Note: Some of you might face issues with DX12, these issues can be crashing stuttering in between zombie spawns etc. Switch to DX11 and this should be taken care of.

This is my FPS when I was using the default settings with the detected hardware (This is a PC running i7 8700 with RTX 3080):

After changing the settings to the one we’ve mentioned above:

Once you’re done with the settings let’s move on to the other part:

Change Graphic Card Settings

Below are the settings for AMD and Nvidia graphics card users, apply these settings for the best performance.

For Nvidia Users

• Open up Nvidia’s Control Panel. Right-click on desktop > click Nvidia control panel
• Click Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings
• Find “Back 4 Blood”, you can manually add the game if it’s not in the list
• Now, make the following changes:

Monitor Tech: G-Sync (If available)
Maximum Pre-rendered frames: 2
Threaded optimization: On
Power Management: Prefer Maximum Performance
Texture Filtering – Quality:  Performance

For AMD Users

• Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
• Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling
• Morphological Filtering: Off
• Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use application settings
• Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
• Surface Format Optimization: On
• Wait for V-sync: Off
• OpenGL Triple Buffering: Off
• Shader Cache: AMD optimized
• Tesselation Mode: Override application settings
• Maximum Tesselation Level: Off
• GPU Workload: Graphics
• Chill: Off
• Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled

These settings should be good enough for you. Try tweaking a bit with the priority of the application, this also tends to give a little FPS boost. 

Update Device Drivers

Whenever a new game makes its arrival, especially when it’s a AAA title, Nvidia is known for pushing their optimized updates for the best performance with their graphic cards. I am not sure about AMD because I’ve never used an AMD card. Below are the links for downloading the latest drivers.

• Nvidia Drivers Download
• AMD Drivers Download

Disable Discord in-game overlay

If you are using Discord like me, then I’d recommend you change a few things. One such thing is, discord overlay, it’s not really something you need at all times. I use a two-monitor setup, so the overlay is useless for me. It is known for causing FPS-related issues.

Disable Hardware Acceleration in Discord

• Open Discord
• Click on User Settings > Appearance
• Click on the Hardware Acceleration radio, this will turn it off.

Disable Discord in-game Overlay

• Open Discord
• Go to Overlay under App Settings
• Click on the “Enable in-game overlay”, this will turn it off.

Turn off Game Mode

Windows says that the Game mode helps in optimizing all-around windows processes, windows updates and other windows related stuff while running games if you have the game mode enabled. But this isn’t factually true, game bar has been known for causing issues related to FPS. So it’s better to turn it off if you are not using it, Nvidia’s Shadowplay is better for capturing game clips.

• Click Start > Settings > Gaming
• On the Game Bar, set “Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcast using Game bar” to off.
• Now head to the Captures tab set the “Record the background while I’m playing a game” to Off.
• Lastly, click on the Game Mode tab, and turn it off.

How To Fix Stuttering in Back 4 Blood

Now that we are done with the lagging-related fixes, let’s find out how to fix stuttering in Back 4 Blood.

Close any memory-hogging applications

Open up the task manager and check your memory and disk usage. Close all applications (non-windows) that are eating your memory and using a disk drive. If you are still stuttering with everything looking fine then you should probably wait for the hotfix update, which should be pushed out shortly.

I’d recommend you shut down all memory-hogging applications such as Chrome.

Use Process Lasso to limit CPU usage

Process Lasso is software that helps you in limiting the CPU usage of a particular app. Download the software and use it accordingly, I was able to drop my CPU usage by almost 20% after using the software. Also, try switching between hyperthreading on/off, this also has a considerable improvement.

Move the game to SSD or faster HDD

A Reddit user reported constant stuttering in Back 4 Blood, someone asked him for his specs, and turns out the guy had an SSD for C Driver but was running an old 5400RPM HDD. The game was installed on the 5400 RPM drive. The user moved his game to the SSD and the issue was fixed.

That’s all for fixing issues related to Back 4 Blood.