Fortnite Chapter 7 Best Settings & FPS Guide (2026)

Fortnite Chapter 7 brought a massive overhaul to the game’s visuals and performance profile. The new Golden Coast map features dense tropical foliage, water reflections, and dynamic weather systems that push hardware harder than Chapter 6 ever did. On top of that, the new Wingsuit traversal mechanic introduces rapid camera movement across large open areas, making consistent frame rates more important than ever for competitive play.

This guide covers every graphics setting in Fortnite Chapter 7, explains what each one does, and provides optimized presets for low-end, mid-range, and high-end PCs. Whether you are chasing 240 FPS on a competitive monitor or just trying to hold 60 FPS on older hardware, these settings will get you there.

If you are on a genuinely low-end system and need more aggressive optimizations, check out our dedicated Fortnite settings guide for low-end PCs which goes deeper on minimum-spec hardware.

Performance Mode vs DirectX 12: Which Should You Use?

Fortnite offers two rendering modes, and your choice here matters more than every other setting combined:

Performance Mode (Recommended for Competitive)

• Uses DirectX 11 with heavily simplified rendering. Buildings, foliage, and effects are visually stripped down.
• Delivers 30-60% more FPS than DX12 mode on the same hardware.
• No DLSS/FSR support (not needed — the mode is already lightweight).
• Visuals are noticeably worse: flat textures, simplified shadows, reduced foliage density. The Golden Coast map looks significantly less impressive.
• Best for: Players who prioritize frame rate above all else, competitive players on 144Hz+ monitors, and anyone on a GPU older than GTX 1060 / RX 580.

DirectX 12 Mode

• Full visual fidelity with all settings available including ray tracing on supported hardware.
• Supports DLSS, FSR, and XeSS upscaling for a significant FPS boost without Performance Mode’s visual tradeoffs.
• Higher baseline GPU and CPU requirements. Stuttering can occur during shader compilation on first launch.
• Best for: Players who want the game to look good while maintaining 60+ FPS, content creators, and anyone on a mid-range or better GPU (RTX 3060+ / RX 6600 XT+).

Chapter 7 note: Epic updated the DX12 renderer in Chapter 7 with improved shader compilation caching. The first 5-10 minutes of your first match after updating may have hitches, but subsequent sessions should be smoother than Chapter 6 was.

Every Graphics Setting Explained

Here is what each setting does and its performance impact, ranked from heaviest to lightest:

3D Resolution (Impact: Extreme)

Controls the internal rendering resolution. At 100%, the game renders at your monitor’s native resolution. Lowering this to 80% can gain 20-30% FPS with a moderate quality loss. Below 70%, the image becomes noticeably blurry. If you use DLSS or FSR, leave this at 100% and let the upscaler handle resolution scaling instead.

View Distance (Impact: Moderate)

Determines how far you can see terrain, buildings, and objects. In competitive play, Far or Epic is recommended — you need to spot players and builds at distance. Lowering this does save FPS but puts you at a real tactical disadvantage, especially on the open Golden Coast map where sight lines are long.

Shadows (Impact: High)

Controls shadow quality and draw distance. Shadows are one of the heaviest settings in Fortnite. Setting this to Off can gain 15-25% FPS. However, player shadows are useful for spotting enemies around corners. Medium is a good compromise — you get player shadows without the expensive distant shadow rendering.

Anti-Aliasing (Impact: Low-Moderate)

Smooths jagged edges. Off produces a very noisy image that is hard on the eyes. Medium provides acceptable smoothing at minimal cost. Epic uses temporal anti-aliasing which is heavier but produces a cleaner image. If you use DLSS/FSR, their built-in AA replaces this setting.

Textures (Impact: Low — VRAM Dependent)

Controls texture resolution. This setting primarily uses VRAM, not GPU processing power. Set it as high as your GPU’s VRAM allows: Low for 2-3 GB, Medium for 4 GB, High for 6 GB, Epic for 8 GB+. Going too high causes stuttering from VRAM overflow, not just lower FPS.

Effects (Impact: Moderate)

Controls particle effects, explosions, and visual effects quality. Chapter 7 introduced new weapon effects (energy weapons, elemental effects) that are heavier than previous chapters. Low or Medium is recommended for competitive play — it also makes explosions less visually obscuring, which is a gameplay advantage.

Post Processing (Impact: Low)

Adds bloom, color correction, and visual polish. The FPS difference between Low and Epic is typically under 5%. However, many competitive players set this to Low because it reduces visual clutter and makes the image cleaner and more readable.

DLSS, FSR, and NVIDIA Reflex

DLSS (NVIDIA RTX GPUs Only)

DLSS renders the game at a lower resolution and uses AI to upscale it. In Fortnite Chapter 7, DLSS in Quality mode provides a 30-40% FPS boost with minimal visual impact. Performance mode doubles your FPS but introduces noticeable blur on distant objects. For more on how DLSS compares to FSR and XeSS, see our DLSS vs FSR vs XeSS comparison.

FSR (Any GPU)

AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution works on any GPU, including NVIDIA and Intel. In Fortnite, FSR Quality is comparable to DLSS Quality on static scenes but slightly less sharp during fast movement. Use FSR if you have an AMD or Intel GPU, or a GTX card without DLSS support.

NVIDIA Reflex (NVIDIA GPUs Only)

Reflex reduces input latency by synchronizing your CPU and GPU render queues. Set this to On + Boost on any NVIDIA GPU. It has zero FPS cost and reduces input lag by 20-30ms in Fortnite. This is arguably more impactful than raw FPS — a 144 FPS experience with Reflex feels more responsive than 200 FPS without it.

Best Settings by GPU Tier

Low-End: GTX 1050 Ti / RX 570 / Intel Arc A380 (1080p 60 FPS)

Mid-Range: RTX 3060 / RX 6600 XT (1080p 144+ FPS)

High-End: RTX 4070+ / RX 7800 XT+ (1440p 144+ FPS)

Chapter 7-Specific Optimizations

Golden Coast Map Performance

The Golden Coast is the most GPU-demanding Fortnite map to date. Dense tropical vegetation, large bodies of water with reflections, and vertical structures at popular POIs (particularly Coastal Castle and Boardwalk Bay) can tank FPS on lower-end hardware. If you notice FPS drops in specific areas:

• Lower View Distance from Epic to Far — the dense foliage rendering at a distance is the primary culprit.
• Set Effects to Low — water splash effects and vegetation sway are heavier in Chapter 7.
• If using DX12, enable FSR Balanced as a quick recovery option when FPS dips in heavy areas.

Wingsuit Rendering Impact

The Wingsuit covers large distances quickly, forcing the engine to stream in new terrain, buildings, and LODs at high speed. This can cause frame drops and texture pop-in on systems with slower storage or limited VRAM. To minimize Wingsuit stuttering:

• Install Fortnite on an SSD (NVMe preferred). HDD installations will see noticeable pop-in during Wingsuit traversal.
• Keep Textures at Medium or lower if you have 4 GB VRAM or less — rapid terrain streaming fills VRAM fast.
• Close background applications to free up RAM. Fortnite Chapter 7 uses 8-10 GB of system RAM during peak streaming.

New Weapon Effects

Chapter 7 introduced elemental weapons with persistent visual effects (flame trails, electric arcs, frost particles). In large team fights, these effects stack and can cause 10-15% FPS drops. Lowering Effects to Low minimizes this without removing gameplay-relevant visual information.

Additional Performance Tips

• Cap your frame rate. Set the in-game frame rate cap to your monitor’s refresh rate (or one step below). Uncapped FPS causes unnecessary GPU heat, power draw, and frame pacing issues.
• Disable background recording. Turn off Windows Game DVR (Settings > Gaming > Captures > disable all). The background recording buffer uses CPU and GPU resources constantly.
• Update GPU drivers. Both NVIDIA and AMD release Fortnite-optimized drivers for major chapter launches. Check for a new driver within a week of Chapter 7’s launch.
• Check for input lag. If the game feels sluggish even at high FPS, see our complete guide to reducing input lag in PC gaming for system-wide tweaks.

If Fortnite is stuttering, freezing, or crashing entirely, check our Fortnite FPS and stuttering fix guide for targeted troubleshooting. For a full review of what Chapter 7 brings to the table, read our Fortnite Chapter 7 review.

More Fortnite and PC gaming guides:

• Best Fortnite Settings for Low-End PC (2026)
• Fix Fortnite Low FPS and Stuttering
• DLSS vs FSR vs XeSS: Which Upscaler Is Best?
• How to Reduce Input Lag in PC Gaming