Need for Speed (NFS) Heat – Fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering

One of the most highly anticipated games of 2019, Need for Speed Heat has finally made its way to the release date. It is, as we all know, a racing video game by Electronic Arts. It is the twenty-fourth installment in the Need for Speed series.

The game is set in an open world environment inside a fictionalized version of the city of Miami, Florida and its surrounding area, known as the Palm City. The in-game map features diverse geography, including mountainous areas and open fields.

Now a lot of you might think what is so different about this NFS title. Well, In Heat players can switch between day and night, which is unlike Need for Speed Payback, that features a 24-hour day-night cycle. During the day, players can earn cash to spend on new cars and upgrades by taking part in sanctioned race events. But during night, things change a bit. At night, players can take part in illegal street races in order to earn rep. The aggressiveness of the cops during night will depend on your rep. Players must escape the cops and get back to their safe house before getting arrested or before their car is destroyed. If you get caught then you lose everything that you have earned during that session.

Apart from this, the game comes with a storyline in which the players interact with the city’s police force, led by authority figure Lt. Mercer.

In NFS Heat, players will get to choose and unlock around 127 cars from 33 different brands with Ferrari returning to the game after being absent from Payback due to licensing issues. Unlike Payback, performance upgrades no longer come in random Speedcards and are unlocked by rep and winning races.

Are there loot boxes in NFS Heat?

No, the game will not feature loot boxes, which is a very good news for the Need for Speed fans; however, time savers, which will reveal collectables on the map and paid downloadable content will be included.

Now that we are done covering the basic information about Need for Speed Heat, lets talk about the performance of the game. We all know that the Need for Speed games have always been AAA titles and it is safe to say that it is the same case for Heat as well. Majority of the AAA titles this year have not been free from problems. Titles like Borderlands 3 had horrible performance issues during launch. The new Call of Duty Modern Warfare is still suffering from horrendous bugs, glitches and performance issues. And unfortunately, Heat is no different.

People have already started complaining about lag, low frame rates, sudden fps drops, random crashes, freezes, stuttering, etc. While players who are using high-end gaming rigs are not facing as many issues, low-medium end users are experiencing some good amount of problems. That is why we decided to come up with a basic lag fix guide that will show you some simple tweaks that you can try in order to fix the performance issues that you are having. Here is how to fix lag, fps drops, crashes and stuttering in Need for Speed Heat.

Need for Speed (NFS) Heat – Fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 1

Check the hardware specifications of your PC

Need for Speed Heat is a fairly demanding title so check the system requirements for the game and compare them with the specifications of your PC. Here are the system requirements of NFS Heat:

Need For Speed Heat™ PC minimum system requirements

• OS: Windows 10
• Processor (AMD): FX-6350 or equivalent
• Processor (Intel): Core i5-3570 or equivalent
• Memory: 8 GB
• Graphics Card (AMD): Radeon 7970/Radeon R9 280x or equivalent
• Graphics Card (Nvidia): GeForce GTX 760 or equivalent
• Direct X: 11
• Online Connection Requirements: 320 KBPS
• Hard Drive Space: 50 GB

Need For Speed Heat™ PC recommended system requirements

• OS: Windows 10
• Processor (AMD): Ryzen 3 1300X or equivalent
• Processor (Intel): Core i7-4790 or equivalent
• Memory: 16 GB
• Graphics Card (AMD): Radeon RX 480 or equivalent
• Graphics Card (Nvidia): GeForce GTX 1060 or equivalent
• Direct X: 11
• Online Connection Requirements: 512 kbps
• Hard Drive Space: 50 GB

So as you can see you need to have a GTX 1060 and 16 GB or RAM in order to play this game at 1080p 60 fps. And I won’t recommend playing this game below 60 fps because racing games are kind of like fps games where a single frame skip could result in you losing the round. Heavy fluctuations in frame rates could cause your car to crash multiple times.

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 2

Download the latest graphics drivers

People often tend to ignore driver updates and sit with buggy or un-optimized drivers. Outdated drivers could be the reason behind many performance issues on your system. Therefore it is always recommended that you keep your drivers up-to-date.

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

1. Nvidia Drivers
2. AMD Drivers

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 3

Best or Optimal Graphics Settings for Need for Speed Heat

We are still playing with graphics settings of the game to find out the best combination of settings that will not only provide you smooth gameplay but also stable 60+ frame rates. So give us some time and we will update this section as soon as possible.

Update : Check out our Best Graphics Settings for NFS Heat guide

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 4

For Nvidia Graphics card users

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:

• Open Nvidia Control Panel
• Click on Manage 3D settings on the left bar
• Click on the Program Settings tab
• Locate Need for Speed : Heat from the drop down menu under “Select a program to customize”
  
• If you don’t see the game on the list then click on the Add button and another list will appear
• If you still cannot spot the game then you need to add the .exe file manually.
• Click on Browse
• Locate the folder where you have installed the game
  
• Select the executable file or the .exe file which in this case should be NeedForSpeedHeat.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:
  Threaded Optimization : On
  Power Management : Prefer Maximum Performance
  Low Latency Mode : Off
  Texture filtering – Quality : Performance

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 5

For AMD Graphics card users

Go to AMD Control Center or control panel.

• Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
• Anti-aliasing Method: Multi-sampling
• Morphological Filtering: Off
• Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use application settings
• Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
• Surface Format Optimization: On
• Wait for V-sync: Off
• OpenGL Triple Buffering: Off
• Shader Cache: AMD optimized
• Tesselation Mode: Override application settings
• Maximum Tesselation Level: Off
• GPU Workload: Graphics
• Chill: Off
• Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 6

Update your OS if you are using Windows 10

If you are a Windows 10 user then you should definitely consider updating your OS. The recent Windows 10 updates have already caused loads of problems for a lot of AAA titles. The Windows 10 KB4512941 update that was released few days ago gave some serious trouble to gamers all over the world. From high CPU usage to constant stuttering while playing games or running heavy applications, people had to face everything. Well, we are not sure whether NFS Heat has a chance to get affected by these updates or not. But it is better to stay on the safe side.

Thankfully, Microsoft has already released an update that fixed the problem mentioned about. But who knows, there might still be some users who have not updated their Windows since then out of fear and are still facing performance issues. So check whether you have pending Windows updates or not and then update your OS. Here is how to do it:

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

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 7

Try to repair the game

Origin users have the feature repair a game available on the app or launcher. Which also applies to NFS heat. This feature will verify the in-game files of the game and download the missing ones. Here is how to do it:

• Launch the Origin app
• Go to My Game Library
• Click on Need of Speed Heat in you library
• Click on the Settings icon
• Select Repair

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 8

Discord Hardware Acceleration

Disable the Hardware Acceleration feature in Discord if you are using it as it uses the power of your GPU. Here is how to do it:

• Launch Discord
• Go to User settings
• Click on Appearance
• Under Advanced you will notice Hardware Acceleration
• Turn it off if it is turned on

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering in NFS Heat – Step 9

Use the Game Mode feature in Windows 10

Last Updated on November 5, 2019

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.