Below we’ve put together a number of steps you can take to improve your framerate in No Man’s Sky.
(Please note, mods may impact performance. If you have any mods installed and you’re having issues, we’d recommend removing them to see if there’s any improvement).
1: Please ensure that you have the latest drivers installed for your Graphics Card, this also goes for those that use onboard Graphics such as Intel HD.
For Nvidia cards, you will find drivers http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-uk
For Radeon cards, you will find drivers http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
For Intel on board graphics, you will find drivers http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support.html
If you are unsure what drivers to download we recommend you use the “Automatically Find Drivers” option where possible.
2: Ensure that no resource-intensive programs* are running in the background when playing No Man’s Sky. This involves anything that may be media or processor intensive.
If you’re running Windows 10, it may be worth looking into the Windows 10 Creators Update. This brings with it a new “Game Mode” that focuses on improving performance for game applications.
You can find more information on “Game Mode” here:
https://www.howtogeek.com/302717/what-is-game-mode-in-the-windows-10-creators-update/
*Note that it is the responsibility of each individual user to know and understand what programs they are closing on their PC. Hello Games are not responsible for users that close programs and inadvertently negatively impact their PC.
3: Below we have included a list of some of the Graphics settings that have the largest impact on No Man’s Sky performance, we encourage users to tweak these settings as suggested below, but to their personal preferences.
Try alternative resolutions.
If you are running No Man’s Sky at 4k (3840 x 2160) try reducing your resolution to 2k (2560x1440)
If you are running No Man’s Sky at 2k (2560x1440) try reducing your resolution to 1080p (1920x1080)
If you are running No Man’s Sky at 1080p (1920x1080) try reducing your resolution to 900p (1600x900) or alternatively 720p (1280x720)
Disabling V-sync.
To prevent “screen tearing” V-sync forces a constant frame rate. If you are expecting a consistent 60fps frame rate, but you frequently drop just below 60fps, V-sync is likely to force your frame rate to remain at 30fps.
If you alter your V-sync settings we also encourage you to check that your V-sync settings are also the same in your PC’s Nvidia/Radeon dashboard.
Changing Anti-Aliasing
If Anti-Aliasing is set to Ultra setting or TAAxFXAA, try lowering your Anti-Aliasing by 1 or 2 settings, to see if this positively affects your frame rate.
In particular, SSAA (Ultra) is very resource intensive and will affect your frame rate.
Disabling HBAO
As HBAO can have an impact on performance, it’s worth disabling this to see how it affects performance.
Anisotropic Filtering
Anisotropic Filtering can also have an impact on performance. Try lowering your setting from 16x to 8x or 4x can have a noticeable impact on your run speeds.
Change Shadow Detail
Shadow detail can also have a noticeable performance impact, if you are running shadow detail at Ultra, or even High depending on your hardware, try lowering this setting to Medium.
Disable Light Shafts
Disabling light shafts will provide a marginal improvement in frame rate.
Terrain Tessellation Settings
Changing Terrain Tessellation settings to Low will provide a marginal improvement in frame rate.