Dirt 5 Performance Guide – Fix Stuttering, Freezing, Low FPS and Lag

Dirt 5 stuttering freezing low fps lag fix – Dirt 5 is an off-road racing video game by Codemasters. It is the eighth game that comes “Dirt title” and the first Dirt title to receive next-gen treatment. Modes within the game include rallycross, ice racing, Stadium Super Trucks and off-road buggies. Players can take part in events in a wide range of locations including Arizona, Brazil, Morocco, China, Italy, New York City and Norway. The game includes a dynamic weather system and seasons, which affect the racing; for example, the player can only compete in ice racing events in New York during winter months. A four-player splitscreen system is also introduced into the game and it also supports online PvP.

Dirt 5 also features a narrative-focused career mode that pits the player character against a rival driver called Bruno Durand in a series of championships. The player also has a mentor called Alex “AJ” Janiček who acts as a career advisor.

Dirt 5 Performance Guide – Fix Stuttering, Freezing, Low FPS and Lag

Now that basic info about the game has been covered, let’s talk about the performance of the game on PC. Dirt 5 is a really demanding title and you can easily tell that by looking at the system requirements. Players have already started complaining about various performance related issues overs the forums. Now that main question is, are there fixes to these issues? Let’s find out

How to fix Stuttering, Freezing, Low FPS and Lag in Dirt 5

Before you further into this guide, make sure that your system can handle Dirt 5. For that you need to check out the official system requirements of the game

Dirt 5 – PC Requirements

• MINIMUM:
  • • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: 64-Bit Windows 10 (18362)
    • Processor: AMD FX 4300 / Intel Core i3 2130
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: AMD RX 480 (DirectX12 Graphics Card) / NVIDIA GTX 970
    • DirectX: Version 12
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 60 GB available space
    • Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
    • Additional Notes: PC audio solution containing Dolby Atmos® required for Dolby Atmos playback.
• RECOMMENDED:
  • • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: 64-Bit Windows 10 (18362)
    • Processor: AMD Ryzen 3600 / Intel Core i5 9600K
    • Memory: 16 GB RAM
    • Graphics: AMD Radeon 5700XT / NVIDIA GTX 1070 Ti
    • DirectX: Version 12
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 60 GB available space
    • Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
    • Additional Notes: PC audio solution containing Dolby Atmos® required for Dolby Atmos playback.

There you go, you need a GTX 970 or a graphics cards that has similar performance to play the game at 30fps at the lowest possible settings. That should give you an idea about how demanding Dirt 5 is.

Make sure that your Nvidia/AMD graphics drivers are updated to the latest ones, because both the companies have already shipped drivers that are specifically optimized for Dirt 5. After this, check your DirectX version and see if it is DirectX 12 or not. If you have anything other than DX 12, then you are out of luck here. Dirt 5 only runs on DirectX 12. And finally, make sure that you are using Windows 10 64-bit and it is at least updated to build 18362. If you don’t know how to check the stuff mentioned above then check out this guide. Now lets move forward with the guide

Follow my graphics settings guide for Dirt 5

I have already put out a graphics settings guide for Dirt 5 on Frondtech. You can check it out here. It is a detailed guide that will show you the best combination of video settings for medium-end gaming PCs.

Steam Overlay can be a reason

Steam users, what you should do is turn off the Steam Overlay. A lot of user are reporting lately that the Steam Overlay is giving them a hard time these days in multiple games. Therefore it is better to turn it off. The process pretty simple, launch Steam and go the Settings menu. Click on the In-game tab from the left and uncheck the box next to “Enable the Steam Overlay” while in-game.

If you have other overlays, like from Nvidia GeForce Experience or AMD Adrenaline, try turning them off as well.

Run the game as administrator

Instead of launching the game via Steam, try running the executable file or .exe file of Dirt 5 as admin. Just head over to the folder where you have installed Dirt 5. Right click on Dirt5.exe and select Properties. Now click on the Compatibility and check the box beside “Run this program as an administrator”. Start the game directly by double-clicking on the exe file.

Temporary junk files might be making your system sluggish

1. Go to the Start menu on your Desktop.
2. Press the Windows key+R at the same time.
3. Type in %TEMP% and press Enter.
4. Select All (Edit > Select All or Ctrl+A).
5. Click the Delete key.

Try Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling

If you have the latest build of Windows 10 (2004) then you should make use of the brand new feature called hardware-accelerated gpu scheduling. If you have a decent graphics card then you might actually benefit from this. Here is how to turn it on:

1. Go to Windows 10 settings
2. Click on System
3. Select the Display tab on the left
4. Scroll down and you will notice an option called Graphics Settings at the bottom
5. Click on it
6. Turn on Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling
7. Restart your PC

Tweak the Nvidia/AMD Control Panel Settings

AMD

If you are an AMD user then you can do a lot of tweaking in the AMD Control Panel to make Dirt 5 run better. Disable Radeon Anti-Lag, Boost, Anisotropic Filtering and Frame Rate Target Control. Turn off Image Sharpening, Morphological Filtering, V-sync, Maximum Tesselation Level, OpenGL Triple Buffering and Radeon Chill. Set Tesselation Mode and Shader Cache to “AMD Optimized” and Anti-Aliasing Mode and Anti-aliasing Method to “Use Application settings” and “Multi-sampling” respectively. Set Texture Filtering Quality to “Performance” and GPU Workload “Graphics”. Finally, just enable Surface Format Optimization.

Nvidia

Nvidia users, you can also do something similar. Open Nvidia Control Panel > click on ‘Adjust image settings with preview‘ located on the left side under 3D settings and make sure that ‘Use the advanced 3D image settings‘ is selected. Now select “Manage 3D settings” from the left bar and click on the Program Settings tab. Locate Dirt 5 from the drop down menu under “Select a program to customize”.

For some reason if you don’t see the game on the list then click on the Add button and another list will appear, showing all the “Recently Used” applications. Pick Dirt 5.

If you are still unable spot the game then you need to add the .exe file manually. In order to do that just click on Browse and head over to the folder where you have installed Legion. Select the executable file or the .exe file which in this case should be Dirt5.exe. Once you have successfully added the game, you will then see the program settings become available for the game. Now tweak the following settings:
Image Sharpening : Off
Threaded Optimization : On
Power Management : Prefer Maximum Performance
Low Latency Mode : Off
Vertical sync : Off
Texture filtering – Quality : Performance

These are all the fixes that I have for the time being. Try these, come back here and give a feedback. If you could provide more details regarding the issue you are having in the comment box below. Then that would make it easier for me to find a specific fix for you. You can also try filling up this Dirt 5 Technical Issue Form and give details about your issue directly to the developers or you can check out the Steam Discussions page of Dirt 5 to see what is going on in the community.

If you think that this guide has helped you then let us know in the comment section below. Also, try checking out our other guides on Dirt 5. Who knows, you might end up finding a something you have been looking for.

That’s all folks!

Last Updated on November 5, 2020

Shoaib

Shoaib, 30, is a simple guy who loves to play video games, and enjoys new cuisines sporadically. He has been gaming since he was 7 years old, and with an experience of 22 years, under his belt, there is not a single AAA game in this world, that he hasn’t played. Despite being a MBA Graduate he decided to follow his passion. And because of his love for gaming, Frondtech came into existence.