The graphics options that PUBG's official support pages tie directly to frame rate are anti-aliasing, shadows and Vertical Synchronization: if you need more FPS, lower anti-aliasing and shadows, and on a low-performance PC test with Vertical Synchronization off.
As of September 30, 2026, the official article lists 10 quality options, and update 43.1 (September 9) added DLSS and FSR resolution upscaling for PC. If your frame rate also dips while you record, fixing frame drops while recording games covers the capture side of the problem.
Where to look first, by situation: if the frame rate itself is too low, use the six steps and the option table below; for the popular competitive preset, a stretched resolution such as 1728×1080, or Screen scale (render scale), see the sections after that; if your graphics values reverted after a patch or reinstall, see “When PUBG graphics settings reset or don't save”; and if the FPS counter is high but the game still hitches, go to “PUBG stutter and FPS drops by symptom”.
Turning off Replay and Death Cam, an often-quoted stutter fix, also gives up the in-game record of that match. If you want to keep the match anyway, record it outside the game.
DOR records a full PUBG match automatically, from the moment you join the match until it ends, saves it as mp4, and turns kills, knocks and deaths into clips once the match is over.
Bottom line: what to change first and what to leave alone
This guide covers the PC version only; console-only graphics modes are not included. Four conclusions have official backing. First, the support article recommends keeping anti-aliasing on, but a separate page says it can affect frame rate, so it should match your PC.
Second, the official page on lowering game settings says that if you need more performance, you should lower advanced graphics settings such as anti-aliasing, shadows and FOV. Third, the option list warns that Vertical Synchronization may cause frame drops on low-performance machines.
Fourth, the Resolution Upscaling option from update 43.1 (Disable, NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR) only appears when Anti-Aliasing is Medium, High or Ultra, and what you can choose depends on your graphics card and system.
What is not official: per-option FPS gains, an option ranking, or any pro settings preset, so this guide gives directions and a test method instead of numbers. If you also record, reducing GPU load while recording explains how to budget the extra load.
Six steps, changing one thing at a time
- 1Open the menu and record your starting valuesStart the game and open Settings > Graphics > Quality, the path given in the support articles. According to the official page, the game adjusts itself to recommended settings for your PC when it first starts, so the current values are your starting point. Note down or screenshot all 10 options before touching anything. Per the 42.2 patch notes, the lobby always renders at high quality regardless of your in-game settings, so judge frame rate in a real match, not in the lobby.
- 2Measure a baseline in the same spotStand in, or run the same route through, the same place on the same map each time, and read your frame rate with whatever overlay you already use. This guide does not prescribe a tool. Keep background programs the same between tests; the official lag article also lists closing programs that use the network. If the conditions change every time, you cannot tell which option actually helped.
- 3Start with the performance optionsLook first at the three options the official pages tie to frame rate. Lower anti-aliasing one step, lower shadows, and on a low-performance PC turn Vertical Synchronization off. After each single change, repeat the baseline from step 2. Because anti-aliasing is an option the support page recommends keeping on, also check whether outlines look rougher after you lower it. If an option gives no visible gain, put it back.
- 4Check Resolution UpscalingOpen Settings > Graphics > Advanced and look for Resolution Upscaling. Its choices are Disable, NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, and the 43.1 notes mention DLSS 4.5 and FSR 4.1. If it is missing, check that Anti-Aliasing is Medium, High or Ultra, since the option only shows at those levels. That clashes with step 3: lowering anti-aliasing below Medium hides it, so compare both combinations. You can set the quality yourself or let the game pick one to match your screen resolution, and the available options vary with your graphics card and system. If the image looks soft or smeared, set it back to Disable.
- 5Check the visibility optionsView distance controls how far you see, and higher makes distant objects clearer. Screen scale that is too low makes objects look blurry; the official Korean and Chinese pages recommend 90 or higher, while the English page gives no number. If the picture is too dark, the official page says to open Settings > Graphics from the lobby and use the brightness slider, and to check your monitor brightness as well. Some language versions of that page warn against adjusting brightness with unofficial third-party tools, so avoid them. There is no official statement that lowering foliage, shadows or effects makes enemies easier to see, so judge that on your own monitor.
- 6If it still stutters, check the systemWhen settings alone do not fix the stutter, the official lag article lists the rest: reduce overheating by improving cooling and cleaning dust from the vents, update to the manufacturer's official graphics driver rather than a generic one, and close programs that use the network. If the problem continues, it says to contact support with your Match ID and replay attached.
Option by option: what it does and which way to lean (support-page names)
| Option (official name) | What it does | Direction in this guide |
|---|---|---|
| Screen scale | Adjusts how sharp the game graphics look; set too low, objects can look blurry. | Keep it rather than trading it for FPS. The official Korean and Chinese pages recommend 90 or higher; the English page gives no number. |
| Anti-aliasing | Smooths the edges of objects. | Official advice is to keep it on, but it can affect frame rate. If you are short on FPS, lower it a step and compare. |
| Post-Processing | Adjusts the amount of shadow (shading) effects. | No official figures. If frames are short, lower it and compare directly. |
| Shadows | Quality of character and object shadows. | Named by the official page as something to lower when you need more performance. |
| Texture | Overall graphics quality of the game. | No official figures. Compare sharpness against frame rate. |
| Effects | Quality of various effects. | No official figures. Check whether fights look cluttered, then compare. |
| Foliage | Quality of the vegetation on the map. | Official text says nothing about visibility. Check for yourself whether enemies are easier to see. |
| View distance | Sets how far you can see; higher makes distant objects clearer. | Higher matches the official description for visibility. If frames are short, lower it last and compare. |
| Motion blur | Leaves an afterimage depending on movement speed. | Official text mentions no FPS impact. It is a preference option: turn it off if the picture looks smeared. |
| Vertical Synchronization | Forces frame synchronization; may cause frame drops on low-performance machines. | On a low-performance PC, test with it off. |
| Resolution Upscaling | Choose Disable, NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR where supported (update 43.1). | If it appears, compare on and off. The official notes give no FPS percentage. |
PUBG settings for low-end PCs and the popular competitive preset, checked against 2026
The combo that gets passed around as the standard competitive preset is not an official PUBG preset; it is a community habit.
It usually looks like this: anti-aliasing, texture and view distance high; shadows, post-processing, effects and foliage at the lowest level; motion blur and Vertical Synchronization off; Screen scale at 100. The table below checks that combo against the official pages and the 2026 patches. Treat it as a starting point for the six-step comparison above rather than as the right answer.
| Option | Common preset value | What to check in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Screen scale | 100 | Not the first thing to lower for FPS, since a low value blurs the image. Values above 100, such as the often-searched 120, are covered in the resolution section below. |
| Anti-aliasing | Ultra | Since 43.1, the DLSS and FSR choices only appear at Medium, High or Ultra. On a low-end PC, dropping to Low or below also takes upscaling away, so compare both cases. |
| Texture and view distance | Ultra | High view distance matches the official description that distant objects look clearer. Texture has no official numbers, but the support pages say map loading speed depends on graphics memory and system memory, so if terrain draws in late on a PC with little memory, lower texture first. |
| Shadows, post-processing, effects, foliage | Very Low | These buy frame-rate headroom. Of these four, the official pages name only shadows as something to lower for performance, so raise the others one at a time and keep the ones that cost no FPS. |
| Motion blur and Vertical Synchronization | Off | Turning Vertical Synchronization off matches the official warning that it may cause frame drops on low-performance machines. Motion blur is a matter of taste: turn it off if the trail effect bothers you. |
On a low-end PC where options alone are not enough, look at the other support guidance too. For maps that draw in late or look smeared, the official page says that if you play near the minimum requirements you should close all other processes, set up virtual memory and free up storage space.
Many players also try to copy a preset by code: the PC Settings Sharing feature added in update 42.3 (August) carries Audio, Controls, Key Bindings and Gameplay, but hardware-dependent settings such as Graphics cannot be shared. You have to type graphics values in yourself; moving key bindings by code is covered in best PUBG keybinds.
PUBG 1728×1080 stretched resolution and Screen scale (render scale)
1728×1080 is a 16:10 resolution. Stretched to fill a 16:9 monitor, the picture looks about 1.11 times wider (16:9 ÷ 16:10), and the game draws about 10% fewer pixels than at 1920×1080.
Some players like it because characters look wider, but there is no official evidence that it makes aiming easier, so choose it by whether the stretched view feels right and what it does to your frame rate.
Most monitors do not list 1728×1080, so create the resolution in your graphics driver, set how it stretches, then select it in game.
- 1Create 1728×1080 in your graphics driverIn NVIDIA Control Panel, open Display > Change resolution, click Customize, then Create Custom Resolution, and enter 1728×1080 with the refresh rate you use now. Click Test, and save it if the test passes. On an AMD card, create a custom resolution in the display settings of AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition.
- 2Make it fill the screenIn NVIDIA Control Panel, open Adjust desktop size and position > Scaling, choose Full-screen and set Perform scaling on to GPU. Aspect ratio keeps the proportions and leaves black bars at the sides. On AMD, turn on GPU Scaling in the display settings and set Scaling Mode to Full panel.
- 3Select it in PUBGIn PUBG's Settings > Graphics, use fullscreen rather than a windowed mode and pick 1728×1080 from the resolution list. If it is not listed, check that the resolution from step 1 was saved. If black bars remain at the sides instead of a stretched picture, go back to the scaling setting in step 2.
- 4Going backIf the stretched view does not suit you, set PUBG back to your monitor's native resolution. The driver's scaling setting does not affect games running at native resolution, but other games you run at a lower resolution will be stretched too, so switch it back to Aspect ratio if needed.
Screen scale (render scale) moves separately from resolution
What players call render scale is Screen scale in PUBG's graphics quality options.
The official description is that it controls the sharpness of the graphics and that items can look blurry when it is too low, and the Korean and Chinese pages recommend 90 or higher, but there is no official word on what a value above 100, such as 120, does to sharpness or FPS.
If you lower the resolution to 1728×1080 and change Screen scale at the same time, you cannot tell which one softened the image or changed your frame rate, so settle the resolution first, then move Screen scale one notch at a time from 100 and compare in the same spot.
Resolution Upscaling, which sounds similar, is the DLSS/FSR option from 43.1; it does not change the aspect ratio, such as 16:9 or 16:10.
When PUBG graphics settings reset or don't save
If your graphics values look like defaults again, start with what changed on that PC. Per the official page, the game adjusts itself to recommended settings for your PC, so a setup with no previous settings, such as a new PC or a reinstall, starts from the recommended values rather than yours.
The clean-installation step in the official General Crashing and Performance Guide also deletes the TslGame folder in %localappdata%, so if you went through it, assume you are setting graphics up from scratch.
Internet cafes that restore their PCs to a clean state on every reboot can reset settings every time. As noted above, Graphics cannot be moved by sharing code, so the values you wrote down in step 1 are the fastest way back.
- Update 42.3 added a reset button for individual options, but it restores the default value, not the value you had set.
- If only the resolution jumped from 1728×1080 back to native, look at the graphics driver rather than the game. A full driver uninstall and reinstall may have removed the custom resolution you created.
- At an internet cafe, import your key bindings, audio and gameplay settings with a sharing code and type in only the graphics values. Unused codes expire after 90 days.
- If a home PC resets every time you start it, check that a disk-restore or PC-cleanup program is not deleting the game's settings folder.
Checklist after changing settings
- Did you note or screenshot the values of all 10 options before changing anything?
- Did you compare in the same spot on the same map, changing only one option at a time?
- Did you check anti-aliasing, shadows and Vertical Synchronization for both frame rate and picture quality?
- If Resolution Upscaling is missing, did you confirm Anti-Aliasing is Medium or higher?
- Is Screen scale low enough to make the picture blurry? (The official Korean and Chinese pages recommend 90 or higher.)
- Did you set brightness with the in-game slider rather than a third-party brightness tool?
PUBG stutter and FPS drops by symptom: high FPS but hitching, opening the inventory, right after a patch
PUBG's support page lists heavy system load, intermittent network drops and high server load together as causes of FPS drops and lag. So first check whether the FPS counter drops at the moment of the hitch.
If it drops too, the cause is more likely on the PC side; if the counter stays high while movement or shots jump, it is more likely the network or server. If you have already done the cooling and driver checks from the six steps above, find your symptom in the table below.
| Symptom | Suspect first | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| FPS counter is high but the picture hitches periodically | Windows and Steam settings, background programs | As the official General Crashing and Performance Guide describes, open the properties of TslGame.exe in Steam\steamapps\common\PUBG\TslGame\Binaries\Win64, tick Disable fullscreen optimizations on the Compatibility tab, and clear everything from PUBG's Steam launch options. Turn recording and overlay programs off one at a time and compare. |
| FPS is normal but movement hitches or players teleport | Network | Close programs that use a lot of bandwidth and check whether your firewall or antivirus interferes with the game's connection. If it does, add the game to its allow list rather than leaving protection off. |
| FPS drops only when you open the inventory (Tab) | Load at that moment | No official page explains this symptom for the current version. Check over two or three matches whether it happens every time you do the same thing, and if it repeats, contact support with that match's Match ID. A recording of the moment makes it easier to describe when and on which screen it happened. |
| Stutter started right after a patch | Game files, drivers, changed settings | Run Verify integrity of game files from PUBG's properties in your Steam library, and update Windows and your graphics driver. The official guide also describes fully uninstalling the driver and reinstalling it if the problem continues. Use the reset section above to check that the patch did not change your graphics values. |
| Hitching only right after a match ends or while waiting for the next one | Post-processing by a recording app | If you use DOR, see Highlight Auto Analysis in the recording section below. Comparing a match with recording off against one with it on separates the causes. |
Before you turn off Replay and Death Cam
PUBG's support account once suggested turning off the Replay and Death Cam features as a temporary workaround when PC players reported stutter, and that tip still gets repeated as a stutter fix.
It was a stopgap for that specific problem, though, and there is no official statement that it helps on the current version. Turning them off also means no replay of that match, while the official lag article asks you to send the Match ID and the replay of that match when you contact support.
If you keep replays on, PUBG replay controls explains how to move around in them; if you turn them off, a recording made outside the game becomes your record of the match. Menu names and locations can change with patches, so check them in your own settings.
When you turn recording on after lowering settings
Once your graphics options leave you some frame-rate headroom, remember that recording PUBG will spend part of it. DOR is a free Windows app that automatically records full PUBG matches and saves them as mp4, and it also cuts kills into automatic highlight clips.
It records with NVENC hardware encoding on supported NVIDIA graphics cards such as the RTX series, which moves the encoding work onto the card's dedicated encoder, and it captures game sound and your microphone at the same time so your own callouts end up in the same file.
Re-check your frame rate with recording running, because the comparisons above were made without it. After that, the next practical question is disk space, covered in how much space PUBG recordings take.
DOR recording aspect ratio when you play at a stretched resolution
DOR's recording resolution and frame rate are set separately from the game (1080p and 30fps by default).
If you play at 1728×1080 or a 4:3 stretch, set Settings > Video > Recording Screen Ratio in DOR to the same ratio as your game resolution: 16:10 for 1728×1080 and 4:3 for a 4:3 stretch such as 1440×1080. The choices are 16:9, 16:10, 21:9, 32:9 and 4:3.
With a 1080p recording resolution, 16:10 records at 1728×1080 and 4:3 at 1440×1080. You cannot change this while recording, so set it outside a match; the internet-cafe (PC bang) build of the app does not have this option.
To make a 16:9 video for YouTube or a 9:16 Short, pick the ratio afterwards when trimming a clip on the clips screen or in DOR Studio.
Hitching right after a match? Turn off only Highlight Auto Analysis
DOR does not create PUBG clips live during the match. After the match ends, it analyzes the full recording on your PC and turns kills, knocks, getting knocked and deaths into clips.
That analysis can overlap with waiting for the next match or its opening minutes, so a low-spec PC may lag at that point. If that happens, open Settings > Game in DOR, expand PUBG: Battlegrounds and turn off only Highlight Auto Analysis.
Full Game Recording stays on, so every match is still recorded (turning Full Game Recording off switches the analysis off with it).
When you are done playing, press Analyze Video on that match in the clips screen to create the kill and knock clips; the button is unavailable for a match that is still being recorded or while another match is being analyzed. For turning those clips into a video, see how to make a PUBG montage.
