This guide will show you how to fix lag and stuttering issues in Outriders PC.
Outriders is lagging and stuttering for many PC users
It is obvious that Outriders is an AAA title and that too completely online. Most of the AAA titles released in the last few years have not been free from performance issues. The majority had horrible performance issues during the first month of their release. Well, unfortunately, Outriders suffers the same fate. In the PC version of Outriders, players are facing issues like lag, fps drops, and stuttering. So I decided to make a list consisting of the errors and some solutions for them.
Is your system capable enough to run Outriders?
Before you move further into the guide, take a look at the different graphics presets in Outriders and what hardware do you need for them:
As you can see, you need an AMD Ryzen 5 2600x or something similar along with a GTX 1070 and 16 GB of RAM, if you want to achieve that sweet 60 fps in Outriders at 1080p resolution. This should give you an idea if your system is capable enough to run Outriders without lag or not.
Are you running the latest graphics drivers optimized specifically for Outriders?
Nvidia has already released a Game Ready Driver for Outriders. The version is 465.89, and it got released on 03/30/2021. This new Game Ready Driver provides support for the launch of Outriders, which features NVIDIA DLSS technology. You can download it either from here or via GeForce Experience.
AMD has also released an Adrenalin Driver for Outriders. It is called Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 21.3.2. You can download it from here.
Fix Outriders Lag
Tweak Graphics Settings
This is the first thing you should do as soon as to start the game and get access to the Settings menu. I know a lot of people still don’t pay attention to the graphics settings in games. But trust me, they should. This is the easiest method to squeeze out a few extra FPS and performance from any gaming title.
There is a huge chance that there isn’t any issue with your game at all. And the lag is being caused by the Graphics Settings of the game, being set too High. In that case, follow my guide to the graphics settings of Outriders. I have tested the game on a GTX 1050 ti.
Force the game to run with DX 12 (Helpful for RTX 30 series users)
This fix was originally suggested by Steam user /Prozender. Here is what he has to say:
In Steam : Outriders -> manage -> properties -> launch option -> write “-force -dx12″ in the textbox without the ” “
This fix has been already confirmed to be working by many Steam users. So you can try this without any hesitation.
Your GPU Control Panel could help
It is time to tweak the Control Panel settings of your graphics cards. Nvidia users, open Nvidia Control Pane > 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 Outriders 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 Outriders.
If you are still unable to 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 Outriders. Select the executable file or the .exe file which in this case should be Outriders-Win64-Shipping.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
AMD users can also do something similar on their control panels. 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.
For Nvdia Laptop Users
If you are using a laptop that has a dedicated Nvidia GPU then make sure that your laptop is using the dedicated GPU and not the integrated one.
To do that, just open Nvidia Control Panel, click on Manage 3D Settings and set ‘Preferred graphics processor’ to ‘High-performance Nvidia processor’. Restart your system.
I am guessing that you are using Discord
Now, judging from the fact that Outriders is a co-op always-online title, I am guessing that a lot of players are playing it with their friends. And I am pretty sure that they are using Discord as their mode of communication. So, it is recommended that you make a few tweaks in order to stop Discord from reducing the performance of your system.
This is something that I have experienced personally. On my previous gaming rig, that had a RTX 2060 Super, i5 8400, and 16 GB of RAM, Discord initially put me through a really tough time. When I was regularly playing games like Destiny 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019 and Apex Legends. Every time I used to start Discord, online games used to start lagging horribly.
In that case, Here is what you need to do:
- Launch Discord
- Go to User Setting
- Click on Voice & Video from the left sidebar
- Scroll down to Advanced section
- Disable “OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco System, Inc.”
- Disable “Enable Quality of Service High Packet Priority
- Click on Overlay from the sidebar
- Disable in-game overlay
- Click on Appearance from the left sidebar
- Scroll down all the way to the Advanced section
- Disable Hardware Acceleration
- Restart Discord
Fix Outriders Stuttering
Are there any CPU-hogging applications running in the background?
If you have heavy applications running in the background, then there is a chance that the lag is being caused due to some applications eating up a lot of resources. Just open your Task Manager, select the Processes tab and click on CPU. Make sure the arrow beside it is facing downwards.
Doing this will pull the resource-hungry applications on top. Look for the processes that you do not need, yet they are consuming a hefty chunk of the CPU. Right-click on them and click on “End Task”.
Windows Background Recording could be a reason
Turn it off by heading over to the “Gaming” settings located inside the Windows Settings menu. There you should find something called “Captures” on the left. Click on it and disable the Background Recording feature inside it.
Outriders doesn’t always work well with Overlays
Disable every single overlay that you have on right now. Overlays from applications like Discord, Nvidia GeForce Experience, Steam, etc, are known to cause issues in games. So disable all of them.
Try these for now and let me know in the comment section below whether your issues got fixed or not.
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 Outriders. Who knows, you might end up finding a fix.
That’s all folks!
Last Updated on January 8, 2024
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.