Mafia Definitive Edition | How to fix Stuttering and Freezing

Mafia Definitive Edition stuttering freezing fix – Mafia: Definitive Edition is an open world action-adventure video game by 2K Games. The game is a complete remake of the 2002 title Mafia. Just like the original one, this game is also set within a fictional city of Lost Heaven (based on Chicago) in the 1930s, but the city has been redesigned from scratch.

Mafia: Definitive Edition was built completely from the scratch, with new assets and an expanded story, although it borrows missions and arcs from the original Mafia. Players get to control Tommy Angelo throughout the game’s single-player campaign, and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. Something new that the Definitive Edition has brought, are motorcycles, which were not present in the original title. The gameplay mechanics are quiet similar to those of Mafia III.

With that being said, It looks like a lot of players are constantly facing issues while playing Mafia Definitive Edition on Windows. Here are some potential fixes.

Mafia Definitive Edition | How to fix Stuttering and Freezing

Mafia Definitive Edition – Official System Requirements

Just to let you know, you need a GTX 1080 or a Radeon RX 5700 paired with a whopping 16 GB of RAM, to play the game on Max settings at 1080p 60 FPS. This shouldn’t come out as a surprise honestly. Open World titles are known for eating up a lot of memory.

Tweak the in-game graphics options

We are still fiddling with the graphics settings of Mafia: Definitive Edition. We will update this article as soon as we find the find best combination that will make the game run without any stuttering or freezing on our mediocre gaming rig. Here are the specifications of our test rig:

• CPU : Intel i5 8400
• GPU : Zotac GTX 1660
• RAM : 16GB DDR4 3000mhz
• OS : Windows 10 64-bit (Version 2004)
• HDD : 1 TB 7200 rpm
• Monitor Resolution : 1920×1080
• Driver : GeForce Game Ready Driver v456.38

Update

Click here to check out our full Graphics Settings guide for Mafia: Definitive Edition.

Disable Overlays

Steam Overlay

The Steam Overlay is recently causing problems in a lot of games. Try turning it off.

If you want to turn off Steam Overlay for all your Steam games then:

1. Open the Steam client
2. Navigate to the Steam Settings
3. Select the In-game tab
4. Un-check the box next to Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game.

Nvidia GeForce Experience Overlay (For Nvidia users)

1. Launch Nvidia Geforce Experience
2. Click on the Settings icon on the top right corner
3. Select the General Tab
4. Turn of In-Game Overlay
5. Restart your system

Disable Steam Input

A lot of people have managed to fix the stuttering by just turning off the Steam Input Per-Game setting. Here is how to do it:

1. Launch Steam
2. Go to your Library
3. Right Click on Mafia: Definitive Edition
4. Select Properties
5. Set Steam Input Per-Game setting to Forced Off

Disable Game Mode

Game Mode is another feature that got introduced in Windows 10 but it is a complete hit or miss. In some games this features helps while it causes performance issues in some. So it is better to turn it off. Here is how to disable game mode:

1. Open Windows 10 Settings menu
2. Click on Gaming
3. Select Game Mode from the left sidebar
4. Turn it off
5. Restart your game launcher

Turn off Background Recording feature in Windows 10

If you have Background Recording on on your Windows then it can cause micro stutters and freezes. Basically the feature constantly records in the background when you are playing a game. Here is how to disable Windows Background Recording:

• Open Windows Settings
• Click on Gaming
• Select Captures
• Now turn off Background Recording

Install the latest Windows 10 version

Mafia Definitive Edition only runs on Windows 10, that too on 64 bit. So Windows 7 and 8.1 users are out of luck here. Now, Microsoft is known for pushing a ton of updates for Windows. Some end up being good while some end up causing a lot of performance issues. Fortunately, the latest build of Windows 10 is probably the most stable version of Windows we had in a while. So update your OS to the latest version. Here is the latest version:

Here is how to update:

1. Go to you Windows Settings
2. Click on Update & Security
3. Click on Check for updates
4. Wait until all the updates are installed
5. Restart your PC

Nvidia Control Panel Settings for Mafia

The first thing you should do is 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:

1. Open Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D settings > Program Settings tab
2. Locate Mafia Definitive Edition from the drop down menu under “Select a program to customize”
   
3. If you don’t see the game on the list then click on the Add button and another list will appear
4. If you still cannot spot the game then you need to add the .exe file manually.
5. Click on Browse
6. Locate the folder where you have installed the game
   
7. Select the executable file or the .exe file which in this case should be mafiade.exe
   
8. Once you have successfully added the game, you will then see the program settings become available for the game
   
9. Now tweak the following settings
   Image Sharpening : Off
   Threaded Optimization : On
   OpenGL rendering GPU : Your dedicated GPU
   Shader Cache : On
   Power Management : Prefer Maximum Performance
   Low Latency Mode : Off
   Texture filtering – Quality : Performance

AMD Adrenaline Settings for Mafia

Click on Global Graphics.

• Disable Radeon Anti-Lag
• Disable Radeon Boost
• Turn Off Image Sharpening
• Set Anti-Aliasing Mode to “Use Application settings“
• Set Anti-aliasing Method to “Multi-sampling“
• Turn Off Morphological Filtering
• Disable Anisotropic Filtering
• Set Texture Filtering Quality to “Performance“
• Enable Surface Format Optimization
• Set Tesselation Mode to “AMD Optimized“
• Turn Off Wait for V-sync
• Turn Off OpenGL Triple Buffering
• Set Shader Cache to “AMD optimized“
• Turn Off Maximum Tesselation Level
• Set GPU Workload to “Graphics“
• Turn Off Radeon Chill
• Disable Frame Rate Target Control

Preferred Graphics Processor (For Nvidia Laptop users)

If your laptop feature a Nvidia graphics card inside then you need to make sure your laptop is using that instead of the low powered integrated one.

1. Just open Nvidia Control Panel
2. Click on Manage 3D settings located on the left side
3. Select the Program Settings tab
4. Under “Select a program to customize” select Mafia Definitive Edition
5. If it is not there then click on Add and then select it
6. Now set “Select the preferred graphics processor for this program” to “High-performance NVIDIA processor”

These are all the fixes we have at the moment for people for whom Mafia Definitive Edition is crashing and won’t launch. We will be adding more soon.

• If Mafia Definitive Edition is crashing for you then check out this guide.
• Click here to check out the Official Steam Discussions page of Mafia Definitive Edition.
  

If you think this guide had helped you then let us know in the comment section below. Also, if you are facing other problems with the game then try checking out our other guides on Mafia Definitive Edition. Who knows, you might end up finding a fix.

That’s all folks!

Last Updated on October 26, 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.