At first sight, Minecraft looks like a simple, lightweight video game, but those who played it know this isn’t quite right.
This common misconception about Minecraft being easy to run on any type of system spec is, well, a misconception. The reality is that some players experience low FPS, even on high-end computers.
Fortunately, there are ways to optimize the game to run much better.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know and do when experiencing low FPS in Minecraft caused both due to poorly optimized settings and actual performance issues.
Without further ado, let’s dive into it.
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Minecraft’s Minimal System Requirements
Before looking further into possible performance issues you might be experiencing with Minecraft, it’s important to get familiar with this game’s minimal system requirements.
This will ensure you understand whether the poor performance is caused by your system’s inability to put out optimal frames per second or if it’s a different issue in question.
Minimum Minecraft System Requirements
- CPU: Intel Core i3-3210 3.2 GHz, or the AMD equivalent, AMD A8-7600 APU 3.1 GHz
- RAM: 2GB
- Operating System: Windows 7 and above
- Graphics Card: Integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000, Nvidia GeForce 400 Series, or Radeon HD 7000 Series with OpenGL 4.4
- Pixel Shader: 5.0
- Vertex Shader: 5.0
- Free Disk Space: At least 5GB (or more if you plan to mod the game)
These are the minimum requirements regarding your system’s hardware that should ensure mediocre performance on mediocre visual settings in Minecraft.
Note: Even if you meet these but only by a bare minimum, your game could still run poorly if you try to improve the visuals even by a bit.
However, if your hardware is way above this level (which should be the case with most modern computers), and you’re still struggling to make the game run normally, further optimization might be required.
Refer to the following section for additional details on that.
Optimizing Minecraft To Run Better On Your PC
We all know how satisfying it is to start a game and crank the settings up to the maximum, then start playing and realize you have more than enough fps to enjoy the experience fully.
However, that’s not always the case, not even with Minecraft, which can be quite “heavy” to run when it’s modded and on the highest visual settings.
Fortunately, you’re not the solitary one who wants their gameplay to be seamless and without any lags.
Watch the video below to learn easy ways to improve your performance in the game and make it playable on less powerful computers.
This might sacrifice a bit of visual quality, but the pros (in this case, the performance gains) greatly outweigh the cons. The difference can be between being and not being able to play the game at all, so it’s worth doing it, in our opinion.
These modifications can provide results even on high-spec systems.
Note: About ninety percent of the time, reducing the render distance is what’s going to have the most impact on your in-game performance.
Dealing With Minecraft Performance Issues
Having a high-tier gaming PC and experiencing drastic performance issues in Minecraft is something that should raise a concern.
Usually, when something like this happens, the culprit is either a faulty mod, shader, or resource pack, a memory leak, or a bug.
Here’s what you can do right off the bat before diving deep into specific problems and troubleshooting (besides tweaking the settings as shown in the video above):
- Reduce your allocated RAM for the game to at least 4GB (or even less)
Reason: It’s common knowledge that more RAM is always better, so it only makes sense to allow Minecraft to use 16 or 32GB if you have that much, of course. But that’s not the case with a game that has been built in Java.
Apparently, when Java has more RAM than it really requires, it starts “memory dumping,” which causes framerate drops. This is well-known amongst the Minecraft community and has been proven to help many users. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s worth trying.
- Play the game in fullscreen display mode
Running the game in borderless windowed or windowed mode may be better if you find yourself alt-tabbing constantly, but performance-wise, it’s not the best decision. Playing in strict fullscreen mode will result in having the most optimal performance.
- Disable mods and resource packs one by one until you find the problem
Many Minecraft mods and resource packs are known to cause performance drops upon installing them, but for some people, playing the game without these is unimaginable.
Luckily, you don’t have to permanently get rid of all mods and resource packs, just the ones that may be causing the problem. The best way to find out which ones you don’t need is by disabling them one by one until you notice a significant performance improvement.
- Ensure your computer is not using the integrated graphics card
When setting up a new computer, it is common to accidentally use the integrated GPU instead of the dedicated one. This mistake can lead to low performance in video games and everyday computer tasks.
Other than the things mentioned above, you can also do the following things:
- Ensure your graphics cards driver is up to date
- Reinstall Minecraft
- Ensure you don’t run other CPU-heavy programs in the background simultaneously
If your performance problems occur only while doing something specific in-game (such as blowing hundreds of TNTs at the same time), then it’s not a general problem, and the best way to find the solution is by Googling that specific scenario.
Ultimately, you can revert to previous Minecraft versions and see if the problem persists. Some users reported experiencing low fps only in a specific, usually newer version of the game.
Conclusion
Minecraft is a intricate game, and because of that, encountering issues, glitches, and inadequate optimization is not that uncommon. However, most of the time, all of these things can easily be resolved without too much effort.
If your computer has lower specifications than the minimum requirements, then your only option is to improve the hardware.
