How to Increase Your FPS in Nier: Automata

Nier: Automata received great reviews when it released on PC, but over the past several months many players have found themselves struggling to run the game on their systems. Thankfully, there are things that you can do to increase your FPS in Nier: Automata, and today we’re going to go in-depth and help you get the game running better on your system.

Throughout this guide we’ll be changing settings in both the game and various parts of your computer system. If you are not comfortable changing settings in your computer, then please only change the settings that are actually available in-game.

How to Increase FPS

To start off with, there are a couple of settings you can change in the game that can help boost your FPS in Nier: Automata. First, head into settings and take a look at your resolution. There are three main resolutions you’ll want to use with Nier: Automata to make sure your image is crisp and isn’t missing any bits of information while playing. You should always stick with one of the following resolutions: 1366×768, 1600×900, or 1920×1080.

Next, go ahead and disable v-sync and turn anti-aliasing off. Once that’s done, change Texture Filter to 8X, and turn off Motion Blur. You’ll also want to turn your Shadows down. We’d suggest using Medium. While it will cost you a few FPS, the game doesn’t look nearly as good on Low shadows.

The next thing you should change is effects. Turn this to High (not Ultra), and then turn Ambient Occlusion on.

Now it’s time to change some settings outside of the game. If you have an Nvidia card, make sure you go into your Nvidia settings and set the graphics card to always use maximum performance when using the application. This will make sure your system is running at its highest capabilities in the game.

You can also change the PhysX settings in the Nvidia application. All of the Nvidia settings can be accessed by right-clicking on your desktop, selecting Nvidia Control Panel, and then waiting on the application to launch.

It should be noted that this guide is only for users who want to increase their FPS on lower-end computers. Most of your higher-end PCs should run the game just fine without any significant problems. Users can also check out the FAR mod, which comes highly recommended by the community, though the developers have not officially released any support for the mod, so we’d suggest steering clear of it for the moment, unless you absolutely feel like you need to install it to get better performance. You can also take a look at our guide on how to fast travel in Nier: Automata, as well as our guide on how to complete the Heritage of the Past quest.