Symptom · performance

It runs, but the frame rate is poor or the picture stutters

Low frame rate and stutter are different faults that get the same name. A low but steady frame rate is a workload problem. A high average with regular hitches is almost never the graphics card, and turning settings down will not fix it.

Desktop and laptop computers. Assumes the game starts and plays.

Measure before you change anything

Turn on the in-game performance display if it has one, or use the frame-rate counter built into your graphics driver software. You need two numbers: the average frame rate, and how far the worst frames fall below it. Without them, every change is guesswork and you will not be able to tell whether it helped.

Then reproduce the problem the same way each time. The opening seconds of a match, an empty training area and a crowded objective place completely different loads on a computer. Comparing a change measured in one place against a baseline measured in another produces conclusions that are simply wrong.

What the two patterns mean

Low and steady — for example a consistent 35 frames per second

The machine is being asked for more work per frame than it can do. Graphics settings are the lever, and the fix is reliable.

High average, regular dips — 90 frames per second with drops to 20

Something is periodically interrupting the work: loading from disk, compiling shaders, a background process, or a thermal limit. Lowering graphics settings barely helps, which is why people who try it conclude their hardware is failing when it is not.

The settings that actually cost the most

Graphics menus are long, and most of the entries make little difference. These five account for most of the load in a typical shooter, listed with the most expensive first.

Texture quality deserves the note attached to it. On its own it costs little frame time, but textures occupy video memory, and a setting that exceeds the memory on your card forces constant swapping that shows up as stutter rather than as a lower average. If you have unsteady performance and textures are set to the maximum, that is the first thing to try lowering.

An efficient way to tune

1. Set everything to the lowest preset and measure. This is your ceiling — the most this machine can do with this game.
2. If the ceiling is not comfortably above your target, no amount of tuning will get you there, and the answer is a lower resolution or different hardware.
3. Raise texture quality first, as far as video memory allows. It is the cheapest visual gain available.
4. Raise the remaining settings one at a time, measuring after each. Stop when you reach your target frame rate.
5. Write down what you ended up with. Updates sometimes reset configuration files.

Stutter, hitching and freezes

Brief freezes early in a session that stop later

This is shader compilation: the first time your machine draws an effect it has not drawn before, it prepares the code for your specific graphics card, and that work has to happen somewhere. It is normal, it diminishes as you play, and it returns after a game update or a driver update because the prepared work is invalidated. If the game offers a pre-compilation step at startup, letting it finish is worth the wait.

Regular hitching while moving through the world

Commonly storage. A game installed on a mechanical hard drive has to load assets as you move, and a spinning disk cannot always keep up with a modern engine. If the machine has a solid-state drive with room on it, moving the game there addresses this more effectively than any graphics setting.

Performance that degrades after five or ten minutes

Heat. Processors and graphics cards reduce their own speed when they reach a temperature limit, which is protective and by design. It is most common in laptops, and most common in laptops used on a bed, a couch or a lap where the intake vents are blocked. Put the machine on a hard flat surface, make sure the vents are clear, and check whether the dust filters need cleaning. On a laptop, also check that the operating system’s power mode is not set to a battery-saving profile, and that the machine is on mains power — many laptops deliberately restrict performance on battery.

Stutter that coincides with something else on the network or the machine

Background applications matter more than their idle CPU usage suggests. Browsers with many tabs, cloud file synchronisation, an antivirus scheduled scan, a system update downloading in the background, and video capture software all compete for the same resources. Close what you can before a session, and check whether a scheduled scan runs at the time you usually play.

Laptops need their own paragraph

Three laptop-specific causes account for most of the complaints, and none of them is about the game.

• The wrong graphics processor. Machines with both integrated and discrete graphics choose per application, and they do not always choose well. Force the game to the discrete card in the graphics control panel or the operating system’s graphics settings.
• Power profile. A balanced or battery-saving profile can cost a large fraction of available performance. Set a performance profile while plugged in.
• Thermal headroom. A laptop cooling system is designed to sustain less than its peak. Steady performance at a lower setting is usually achievable where peak performance is not.

When it is not your computer

Not every performance complaint is local. If the world is visibly stuttering but your frame rate counter is steady and high, what you are seeing is a network symptom rather than a rendering one, and it belongs on the connection and ping page. The distinction is easy to test: a rendering problem persists in menus and single-player areas, a network problem does not.

Equally, performance that is bad for everyone immediately after a game update is usually the update, and the answer is to wait for the next one rather than to rebuild your settings around a temporary regression.

The game covered on this site

Enlisted, the product linked from Vanguard Hub, is an online multiplayer first-person shooter set in the Second World War, available through a desktop-only sign-up for Windows, macOS and Linux. Its published system requirements and recommended configurations live on the vendor’s own site, enlisted.net, and are the right place to check what hardware is expected before you spend an evening tuning.

Questions about performance