Diablo 4 PC: How to Fix Lag & FPS Drops

Diablo 4 Lag: After over a decade of anticipation, the latest installment in the legendary action role-playing series Diablo 4 is finally here. The game has familiar elements like replayability, procedurally generated dungeons, and loot-centric character development return in full force, while fresh features like an open-world setting and player versus-player interactions add exciting new layers to the game.

The game is scheduled for a full release on June 6, 2023, with early access beginning on June 2 for those owning the Digital Deluxe and Ultimate Editions. The players who get early access will encounter issues such as Lag and FPS Drops, the “early access” is essentially the “beta game” for which you will be testing and gathering data.

The lag was pretty bad when I started the game for the first time. However, with a few tweaks, the game turned bearable; below are the tweaks that will help you.

How to Fix Lag in Diablo 4

First things first, let’s check the system requirements of the game:

System Requirements of Diablo 4

The minimum requirements are:

• Operating system: 64-bit Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD FX-8350
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon R9 280

Recommended Requirements are:

• Operating system: 64-bit Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K or AMD R3-1300X
• Memory: 16GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 470

Now that we are done with the system requirements let’s move on to the tweaks that will help you run your game better.

Update Your Drivers

There are numerous benefits to keeping your GPU Drivers updated all the time. Here are a few benefits:

Updated drivers provide the latest performance improvements from the manufacturer. Most of the time, Nvidia and AMD push updates for AAA titles just before their release.

Nvidia has already released Game Ready Driver 535.98 for Diablo 4. You can find it here. AMD users: Go here.

Tone Down Game Settings

This is probably the most underrated thing to do before launching a game. The first thing you should do as soon as you launch the game is head to the game settings page and make a few adjustments. I always disable motion blur and tone down shadow settings and bloom.

I am working on a detailed settings guide for Diablo 4 that will be added to this section shortly.

Change Nvidia and AMD Control Panel Settings

For Nvidia Users:

• Open up Nvidia’s Control Panel. Right-click on desktop > click Nvidia control panel
• Click Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings
• Find “Diablo 4” You can manually add the game if it’s not on 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
Low Lateny Mode: Ultra (High or Ultra makes sense only for PvP Games)*

Nvidia Low Latency Mode is a feature found in Nvidia’s Control Panel. It is designed to help reduce input latency on Nvidia graphics card systems. Low Latency Mode can be used in games or any other application where you need to reduce the time it takes for your inputs to be registered.

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

Disable any overlays

Third-party applications tinker with the game and can make it unresponsive. If you’re facing problems, disable Discord, and Windows Game Bar, to name a few.

Discord

If you use Discord like me, I recommend changing a few things. One such thing is discord overlay; it’s not something you always need. 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 in-game Discord Overlay

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

Windows Game Bar

• 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 and set the “Record the background while I’m playing a game” to Off.
• You can also test turning Game Mode on or off, one by one.

Once you finish all the above, shut down memory-hogging applications such as Chrome. Also, make sure to disable any overclocking that can mess up the game’s performance.

These few things helped me sort out the Diablo 4 Lag problem. Do comment below if this short guide helped you out.