7 Days to Die is The Fun Pimps’ open-world survival horror game that was released back in December 2013. The game focuses on a post-apocalyptic Earth after the fall of civilization. Although the game was released almost 10 years ago, it’s never too late for FPS drops and lag spikes. If you own a potato PC or are suffering from FPS drops despite having a high-end GPU, don’t worry, as we’ve got you covered. In this article, we will show you how to fix the lag spikes and low FPS issues in 7 Days to Die.
Fixing low FPS is not only tied to in-game graphical attributes; you will also need to fiddle with various performance-related settings on your PC or laptop to ensure a smooth gaming experience. Additionally, if you have multiple GPUs loaded into your device, you need to make sure that 7 Days to Die is running on the superior discrete GPU rather than the iGPU that comes along with your processor. Keep reading this article for an in-depth guide on how to calibrate your graphics settings to fix low FPS and get maximum performance in 7 Days to Die.
7 Days to Die low FPS issue: How to fix it
First, make sure you launch the game and keep the graphics settings at default. Enter a game and see how it works for you. If you are facing serious FPS drops, keep reading the following sections to learn how to tweak various graphics settings to benefit your gameplay.
In-game Settings
To access the in-game settings in 7 Days to Die, head over to Settings in the main menu and click on Video. Now, match the following settings:
Display
- Resolution – Keep its default settings.
- Fullscreen – On
- Vsync – Off
Quality
- Quality Preset – Custom
- Anti-Aliasing – Temporal
- AA Sharpening – 0%
- Texture Quality – Half or Quarter to get max FPS. However, the game looks very bad in Half or Quarter. If you’re not satisfied with the texture quality, you should set it to Full (FPS is compromised).
- Texture Filter – Low
- UMA Texture Quality – Lowest
- Reflection Quality – Off
- Reflected Shadows – Off
- Shadow Distance – Off
- Water Quality – Low
- Particles – 100%
- View Distance – Medium
- LOD Distance – 50%
- Terrain Quality – Medium. You can set it low to get more FPS at the cost of bad visuals.
- Grass Distance – Lowest
- Object Quality – High. You can go lower for more FPS but the trees in the distance look jarred.
- Occlusion – Off
- Bloom – Off
- Depth of Field – Off
- Motion Blur – Off
- SSAO – Off
- Screen Space (SS) Reflection – Medium
- Sun Shafts – Off
Dynamic Mesh Options
- Dynamic Mesh Enabled – Set it to No if you are playing single-player. For multiplayer, you can set it to Yes but not at the cost of FPS.
- Mesh Distance – 100
- Mesh Quality – No
- Land Claim Only – No
- Land Claim buffer – 1
- Max Region Loads – 2
- Max Mesh Processing – 6
Device Settings for Max FPS
1) Game Mode
In the Settings section of your Windows OS, head to the Gaming tab on the left pane. Under Gaming, click on Game Mode and turn it on. Head back to the Gaming window. Next, click on Captures. Under Recording Preferences, make sure to turn off the Record What Happened option. After this, head back to the Gaming window once again. Finally, click on the Xbox Game Bar. Look for the option “Open Xbox Game Bar using this button on a controller” and turn it off.
2) Change your Power Plan and turn on Ultimate Performance
In the search bar of Windows, type “Edit Power Plan” and choose the option with the same name. By default, it should be set to Balanced. If you have a high-end PC, there will be a “High Performance” power plan. Some systems even have a “Power Saver” option available. Needless to say, “High Performance” gives you superior performance, and “Power Saver” saves energy by compromising your PC’s performance whenever possible. If you’re fine with that, then it’s alright. However, you can add an Ultimate Performance mode. Want to know how to get it working? Keep reading this section to learn how to do it.
To turn on Ultimate Performance, open Windows Terminal (admin). Copy and paste the following command and hit Enter: powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
Wait for the command to execute, and you should see Ultimate Performance on the console. Restart the Edit Power Plan Window and you should see the Ultimate Performance option. Turn it on and close the window. Note that when Ultimate Performance is turned on, your device (PC/ Laptop) will draw more power than usual. So keep it on if you’re fine with the trade-off.
3) Check if 7 Days to Die is running on the Discrete GPU
If the low FPS issue wasn’t solved using the above methods, we have one more workaround. This section involves selecting the appropriate GPU to run 7 Days to Die.
So, for this, type Settings in the Windows Search bar and hit Enter. In Settings, head over to Settings > System > Display. Under Related Settings, select Graphics. In the Graphics window, look for the 7 Days to Die application in the list of apps. If you can’t see the game in the list, click on Browse under Custom Options for Apps and add the .exe file of 7 Days to Die to the list. Choose the game in the list and click on Options. In the dialog box, choose the appropriate graphics preference option. Power saving means that the game will use your integrated GPU. High performance indicates that the game will run on the discrete GPU. We recommend you choose the High-Performance option and click on Save.
After these changes, launch the game, and the low FPS issues should be solved. On that note, if you found this guide informative, consider following Android Gram for such content in the future.
