Total War Three Kingdoms Performance Guide – Fix Lag, FPS Drops, Crashing And Freezing

Total War: Three Kingdoms is a turn-based strategy real-time tactics video game by Sega. It is the 12th mainline entry in the Total War series, the game is set in the Three Kingdoms period where players get to control one of the twelve factions included in the game. The main objective is to become the ultimate ruler of China by defeating all other factions.

Total War Three Kingdoms is a demanding title and most of the demanding titles suffer from various performance issues like lag, low fps or crashes nowadays. Though the game is well optimized for the most part, but players are still facing problems while playing this game. And the problems are mainly fps drops, lag, stuttering, etc. Fortunately, all these performance issues are nothing serious and can be easily fixed with a few tweaks here and there. We decided to put up a basic Total War : Three Kingdoms performance guide, consisting of basic methods that players can try all by themselves to solve some of the problems they are having. Here is how to fix lag, fps drops, crashes and freezing in Total War Three Kingdoms: 

How to fix Lag, FPS Drops, Crashing And Freezing issues in Total War Three Kingdoms

Method #1 – Check minimum system requirements of Total War Three Kingdom

Make sure that your PC at least meets the minimum system requirements of the game. You wouldn’t want to purchase a game just to find out that your system or PC is not capable of running that game at playable frame rates. So check the system requirements thoroughly and if your graphics card and processor is different from the ones mentioned on the system requirements, then just go and watch few comparison videos to find out how much difference there is between the performance of your graphics card and processor and the ones mentioned under minimum system requirements.

Total War Three Kingdoms minimum System Requirements:

    • OS: Windows 7 64 Bit
    • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.00Ghz
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: GTX 650 Ti 1GB|HD 7850 1GB|Intel UHD Graphics 620
    • DirectX: Version 11
    • Storage: 60 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: 6GB Memory if using integrated GPU

Total War Three Kingdoms recommended System Requirements:

    • OS: Windows 10 64 Bit
    • Processor: Intel i5-6600 | Ryzen 5 2600X
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: GTX 970 | R9 Fury X 4GB VRAM
    • DirectX: Version 11
    • Storage: 60 GB available space

So as you can see, Total War : Three Kingdoms is quite a CPU heavy game. So, even if you do not have a powerful GPU, make sure you have a processor that is good enough.

Method #2 – Update your graphics drivers

The AMD and Nvidia graphics or video drivers have gone through various performance improvements in the last 2 months. So make sure that your graphics drivers are updated. An outdated driver can lead to a lot of performance issues in games.

Here are the links to the latest drivers for AMD and Nvidia graphics cards:

  1. Nvidia Drivers
  2. AMD Drivers

Method #3 – Make sure that you are running an updated version of Windows

Certain Windows 10 updates have been causing a lot of problems in various games lately. A lot of games have already taken some massive performance hits due to these Windows 10 updates in the past. So make sure that your Windows is fully updated in order to avoid such problems because just as bugs and glitches arrive with updates, their fixes arrive with updates as well. We are not sure whether Total War Three Kingdoms has been affected in any way by these updates or not, but it is better to be on the safe side. So check whether you have Windows updates available or not. Here is how you can update your Windows:

  • Go to Settings
  • Go to Update & Security
  • Click on Check for updates
  • Wait for the updates to get installed
  • Restart your PC

Method #4 – Best Graphics or Video settings for Total War Three Kingdoms

Go to Options > Graphics > Advanced

  • Texture quality : Medium
  • Shadow detail : Low
  • VFX detail : Medium
  • Tree detail : Medium
  • Unit detail : Medium
  • Screen space reflections : Off
  • Anti-aliasing : TAA
  • Texture filtering : Anisotropic 8x
  • Grass detail : Low
  • Terrain detail : Medium
  • Building detail : High
  • Unit size : Large
  • Depth of field : High
  • Post Effects : Romance
  • SSAO : Off
  • Unlimited video memory : Off
  • Screen space shadows : Off
  • Vignette : On
  • Proximity fading : On
  • V-sync : Off
  • Sharpening : On

Method #5 – Tweak settings for Total War Three Kingdoms from the Nvidia Control Panel

[Note: This is for Nvidia users only]

  • Open Nvidia Control Panel
  • Click on Manage 3D settings on the left bar
  • Click on the Program Settings tab
  • Locate Total War : Three Kingdoms from the drop-down menu under “Select a program to customize”
  • If you cannot find it on the list, then you need to add the .exe file manually
  • Click on Add
  • Locate the folder where you have installed the game
  • Select the executable file or the .exe file, which in this case should be TWTK.exe
  • Once added, the program settings will now be available for the game
  • Now make the following changes:
    Monitor Technology : G-Snyc (if available)
    Maximum pre-rendered frames : 2
    Threaded Optimization : On
    Power Management : Prefer Maximum Performance
    Texture filtering – Quality : Performance

Method #7 – Increase the Priority of Total War Three Kingdoms from the Task Manager

  • Launch TWTK via Steam
  • Press Alt+Tab to minimize the game
  • Open Task Manager
  • Click on Details tab
  • Search for the process of Total War : Three Kingdoms from the list
  • Right-click on the process and Set Priority to High
  • Click on the View tab on your Task Manager
  • Change Update Speed to High

[Note: These are all basic guides, and we have not included any advanced method because we do not want people to mess with the in-game files because it might cause the game to break down completely]

We have hopefully covered all the basic tips, tricks and methods that will help players towards their battle against lag and low fps. You are good to go!


That’s all, folks!

Last Updated on March 17, 2024

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *