How To Fix: The Outer Worlds Performance Issues – Lag, FPS Drops & Stuttering

The Outer Worlds Lag Fix – The Outer Worlds has been out for a few hours, I’ve been playing it. The world is beautiful, the RPG tone has been set correctly, there are a lot of things to do. Huge story mode and the best part, the stupid choices that we can make.

As expected the game is not perfect and has its flaws, for some, it’s lagging, some are encountering the game pass error and some are not even able to play. The game has only been announced so fixes might take a few more hours, the developers are looking into the problems. Expect a hotfix to be released soon, which should take care of all these issues.

Do read this if you are facing crashing issues in the Outer Worlds.

If you are facing lag related issues in The Outer Worlds, then worry no more, this article will surely help you out.

How To Fix Lag in The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds System Requirements

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 7 (SP1) 64bit
• CPU: Intel Core i3-3225 or AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
• RAM: 4GB
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 650 Ti or AMD HD 7850
• HDD Space: 40GB

Recommended:

• OS: Windows 10 64bit
• CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K  or Ryzen 5 1600
• RAM: 8GB
• GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 470
• HDD Space: 40GB

Don’t let the written system requirements fool you, I am not even sure why they’ve mentioned them to be so low. You need a good CPU and Graphics Card to run this game, the game has a huge open-world and if you are nowhere between the given specs then you’ll obviously have trouble playing it.

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 “The Outer Worlds”, 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. I was able to get a constant 70-80 FPS in the private beta access. You can expect things to be a little more furnished this time around as this is the full public release.

Update Device Drivers

Whenever a new game makes it’s 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

Update: Nvidia has already released a full-fledged optimization update for the Outer Worlds. You can fire up Geforce experience and get the update right away.

The Outer Worlds Stuttering Fix

In the private beta, I had stuttering issues, sometimes it got too bad that my game crashed on its own. I tried figuring it out and there were no solutions for this problem, there was a hotfix pushed by the devs that fixed it. However, if you face it, I’d recommend you to shut down all memory-hogging applications such as Chrome. Issues like these are fixed pretty fast if this happens on a scale, we hope there are no issues this time around.

Another thing to check is, open up the task manager and check your memory and disk usage. Close all applications (non-windows) that are eating your memory and using 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.

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, the 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.

Tone Down Game Settings

The general rule of thumb for every game is if you are lagging it is always recommended to tone down the settings. Play around a little bit with the settings, turn down shadows and textures, this should help.

I will be posting my exact settings once the game is unlocked on October 25, 2019.

Disable Discord in-game overlay

If you are using Discord like me, then I’d recommend you to 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.

Increase Game Priority

This is an old-school method of boosting FPS in certain games, this only affects the CPU relying Games.

• Press CTLR + Shift + ESC to open task manager
• Find The Outer Worlds and right-click > go to details
• Now right-click on the process’s .exe file and set priority to “high”.

This will prioritize your game over other windows applications and provide you with a little boost.

Update Windows

The recent couple updates were weird and broke a lot of games, to fix those issues, Windows has already pushed out hotfixes and you can download them right away. If you are running an older version of Windows, I’d recommend you to download the updated version.

There was also an update that caused windows to use up a lot of RAM for its search bar’s function called Cortana. This also has been fixed, you just have to update.

That is all for fixing the lag related issues in The Outer Worlds if these didn’t work for you. Then I’d recommend you wait for the hotfix update that should be pushed out by the developers soon.

Do comment below if you are enjoying this new Fallout style RPG.