Battlefield 2042 – How to Fix Low FPS, Lag, Stutters, Crashes, and other Performance Issues?

Battlefield is a franchise that has always had a strong footing within the first-person shooter genre. It is a series that has managed to stay relevant for over 2 decades, growing in size with each iteration. Most would argue though that the game has never managed to surpass its biggest rival, Call of Duty. However, while that may be true, the sheer popularity of the Battlefield series just cannot be undermined. With its formula of immersive battles within a massive sandbox, there’s nothing quite like it. With that said, the series has been on a decline since Battlefield 4 with Battlefield 1 and V both being a disappointment in many people’s eyes. So, is Battlefield 2042 finally the game that brings this revered franchise back to the forefront of FPS games?

Well, the answer is actually somewhat complicated. DICE started the development of Battlefield 2042 earlier than they had planned, due to a lackluster reception of Battlefield V. There was nothing inherently wrong with Battlefield V, but it was just missing that sweet spot of TTK and other smaller features. However, while these issues seemed like a simple fix at launch, the game quickly delved into even more mediocre waters as each update just kept making things worse somehow. This managed to reach a point where EA just decided to cut the planned content releases for Battlefield V and thus, made DICE regroup and focus its development prowess on a new Battlefield game entirely.

Battlefield 2042 though, felt like a complete departure from the formula that had previously failed. It seemed like EA and DICE were finally listening to the fans and wanted to bring the magic of Battlefield 4 back into the mix. However, while the gameplay trailers for the game were incredibly promising, the game itself turned out to be a massive disappointment. At launch, Battlefield 2042 just felt like a game that should have stayed in the oven for perhaps another year, if not longer. The game was missing basic features like a match leaderboard and was ridden with glitches.

Not only that but the massive maps housing 128 players just felt empty and uninspired. All of these issues combined with the fact that Battlefield 2042 was a full-priced $70 USD game going against a very successful Halo Infinite meant that it just couldn’t get a launch footing that DICE and EA would have wanted. And as of now, while many changes have been made to rectify these mistakes and the game is genuinely on a path to improvement, the same cannot be said for the dwindling player base.

As an emergency measure though, EA has already brought the studio head of Respawn and an EA executive, Vince Zampella into the fray. Zampella, who has propelled Respawn to arguably the best EA studio has taken on the role of the head of the Battlefield franchise in hopes to steer the franchise in the right direction. And, honestly, the foundations are already there for a great game. The addition of some quality-of-life improvements and some other features can really propel Battlefield 2042 into the limelight again.

The game already has some really special game modes like Portal, which lets you combine different Battlefield eras into one match and play around with the rules. So, we could potentially see Battlefield 2042 turning into a platform that gradually evolves and turns into a mega-game that combines all the other entries in the franchise.

Battlefield 2042 Performance Issues

However, while the future of the franchise does seem exciting, the truth of the matter is that the game is not in a good place right now. The active player count continues to drop every day and updates from DICE have been scarce. In addition to that, the current status of the game is just not ideal.

The game has many issues with its performance, optimization, and connectivity. Many players on PC have complained about issues in Battlefield 2042 like lag, low FPS, frame drops, stutters, freezes, crashes, and other performance-related problems. Not only that but the server connection side of things also does not seem to be faring very well with players reporting massive lag spikes and rubber banding during matches. These issues combined with game-breaking bugs have made Battlefield 2042 almost impossible to play at times leading to this mass exodus of players. And, with no support from EA or DICE within sight, it doesn’t seem like these issues will be patched out any time soon either.

Thankfully, the community has discovered certain settings and system adjustments that have been proven to help massively improve the performance issues in Battlefield 2042. So, if you are one of those people who want to get into the game but the poor optimization is a roadblock, you can try one of the fixes given below to improve the performance or server connection in Battlefield 2042.

Battlefield 2042 Official System Specification Requirements:

Before we get into the fixes though, you need to first make sure that your PC is powerful enough to match the system requirements needed to run the game smoothly. Battlefield 2042 is a step up in terms of scale and visual fidelity which means the specifications required to run it have also gone upwards. Not only is the game demanding even for mid-range PCs, turning up the settings requires you to dial into the latest generation of NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards, which are hard to get these days due to the global chip shortage. With that said, most people with an average PC build should be able to run the game at smooth framerates if they turn down the settings and resolution by a bit.

Minimum System Requirements:

• Operating System: 64-bit Windows 10 or 64-bit Windows 11
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 or Intel Core i5 6600K
• Memory: 8 GB DDR4 RAM
• Video Memory: 4 GB
• Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 560
• DirectX: 12
• Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
• Hard-drive space: 100 GB

Recommended System Requirements:

• Operating System: 64-bit Windows 10 or 64-bit Windows 11
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X or Intel Core i7 4790
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Video Memory: 8 GB VRAM
• Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT
• DirectX: 12
• Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
• Hard-drive space: 100 GB SSD

1. Create and Edit the Battlefield 2042 Config File:

While Battlefield 2042 is a fairly demanding title, the game also has some strange optimization quirks that don’t make much sense. For instance, one of the biggest culprits of bad performance and low framerate in Battlefield 2042 is the way it utilizes your CPU. Essentially, Battlefield 2042 only uses physical cores and distributes its load evenly across them. However, if you know anything about CPUs, you’d know that most modern CPUs have multiple threads/logical processors in addition to the physical cores. These are also called virtual cores. So, by not utilizing any of these additional threads, the game leaves a lot of CPU free, bogging down the performance.

So, if your CPU usage is not peaking for some reason in Battlefield 2042, this is why. Of course, this fix is only for those with CPUs that support hyper/multi-threading or core virtualization. If you are one of those people, you need to follow these steps to make sure your CPU is properly being used to run the game:

1. Head into your Battlefield 2042 installation directory. This will either be the Origin Games folder or the SteamApps folder depending on your platform.
2. Look for a file called “user.cfg”. If the file is not present there, create a new notepad file and change its name to user.cfg.
3. Now paste the following lines into the document (if you’re unable to copy this, head to this helpful Reddit post to get the lines): 

   Thread.ProcessorCount <core count here>
   Thread.MaxProcessorCount <thread count here>
   Thread.MinFreeProcessorCount 0
   Thread.JobThreadPriority 0

4. Now, replace the <core count here> with the number of physical cores that your CPU has. You can find this number in the performance tab of the task manager.
5. Also, replace the <thread count here> with the number of cores you just entered +1. So, if you entered 6 for the core count, this would be 7, and would look like this:

   Thread.ProcessorCount 6
   Thread.MaxProcessorCount 7
   Thread.MinFreeProcessorCount 0
   Thread.JobThreadPriority 0

6. Once you’re done, save the notepad document as user.cfg in the main installation directory for Battlefield 2042.
7. Launch the game and test your CPU usage. If it is still way too low, you can increase the thread count value by 1 and relaunch the game until you find the sweet spot. If you enter a number that’s too high, the game will start to stutter as it will push your CPU usage to 100%. The maximum number of threads you can enter is 17, beyond which the game will just crash. In our testing though, CPU core +1 has been the sweet spot for performance but your mileage may vary.

Battlefield 2042 is out now on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. You can check it out right here.