How to improve Dark Souls 3 performance
Hey folks! I’m playing Dark Souls 3 at the moment and I must say I’m having a blast.
There have been a few perfomance problems though and I want to share some tips in general how to resolve those problems.
Let me preface this by saying that there are a lot of guides like this outside, but many of those give you a few specific solutions which may or may not work. I’ll try to help you with a more general approach. So let’s get started. How to solve your Dark Souls 3 performance issues:
1. Maybe your PC simply isn’t good enough
This simply could be the reason right there. Take a look at the minimum hardware requirements of Dark Souls 3:
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64bit, Windows 8.1 64bit Windows 10 64bit
Processor: Intel Core i3-2100 / AMD® FX-6300
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 750 Ti / ATI Radeon HD 7950
DirectX: Version 11
Do you meet all those requirements? OK! Up to the next step!
2. Set the game graphics to low.
I know this is hard for you. Dark Souls 3 is gorgeous and you want to breath in every single pixel. But please try to play on lower settings and see if this helps (the game still looks fine on low!).
3. See if you somehow reach your hardware limits
Open your task manager (ctrl +alt + del) and look at the CPU and RAM. If you see that you’ve reached your limits, try closing a few of unnecessary programs which hog those resources. If Dark Souls 3 still lags or your framerate frequently drops – proceed to the next step.
4. Check your hardware temperature.
This is the reason why I had performance issues with Dark Souls 3. My PC was just too hot. I’ve downloaded a tool which tracks a lot of stuff on your PC (such as GPU and CPU temperatures) and this helped me identify my problems. This is the tool I’ve used: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
I’ve simply never played a game before which was as performance intensive as Dark Souls 3, so I’ve never had problems like this before.
My solution for this problem? Open the PC case.
Your solution may vary, maybe you need a better cooler, maybe something else is wrong with your hardware. But GPU-Z will help you find the problem. Google the optimal temperatures for your specific hardware to find if your PC is alright!
5. Move Dark Souls 3 to an SSD
I didn’t do this particular step (since I could resolve my problems with #4). But I could imagine that moving Dark Souls 3 to your SSD could really help with some perfomance issues.
6. Try changing drivers and video settings for Dark Souls 3
This one is tricky. I can’t give you any optimal drivers or settings for your system since there are just too many different PC systems out there. For some older drivers may work better than newer ones and for some others it’s maybe the other way around. The same goes for most of the video settings of your graphics card.
7. Go complain on the Steam forum like everyone else
But please have some manners while doing so. “GAME BROKEN PLZ FIX 0/10” won’t help anyone. Give some constructive feedback, describe your problems and when they occur and tell them what hardware you have.
I really hope I could help you. If you’ve done something different to improve your Dark Souls 3 performance, please let us know in the comments below!
Praise the sun!
