Are you into Star Citizen? If you’re a frequent player, you might come across issues like low FPS. Wondering why and how to enhance your Star Citizen experience? Check out the solutions in NewsPivot.
Star Citizen is a space trading and combat simulation game developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games. It is one of the highest-funded crowdfunding projects, having raised over US$676 million as of April 2024. At the same time, the number of Star Citizen players had exceeded 5 million.
Star Citizen is a good game, not only because of its unique gameplay but also because the official has been committed to continuously updating the game content and optimizing the game performance.
But as games got better and better, so did the demands on computers. How to improve Star Citizen FPS has become a headache for many players. Here is a report from a player:
Hi everyone, I'm new to Star Citizen. I got the cutlass black package and am loving it but I was wondering if there are any hidden options that increase FPS? I looked at a few YouTube videos and changed some settings but I get about 25-40 FPS...some areas get really bad with me getting 15-25 FPS. Is my PC just not good enough? Anything helps thank you!reddit.com
Why Star Citizen FPS Is Lower than Normal?
Sometimes you find Star Citizen FPS is running lower than usual, you may probably encounter the situations below:
- Overheating: Star Citizen is a resource-intensive game, requiring significant processing power from both the CPU and GPU to render detailed environments and complex simulations. Under certain high-load scenarios, your computer temperature will rise very quickly. If your computer’s cooling system is inadequate or out of work after a long time of playing, your PC will be overheated, then it will cause the game frame to drop.
- Network issue: Star Citizen is designed as a universe MMO, which means that player actions can affect the game world in real time. It requires constant communication between the player’s client and the game servers. If you have network latency, it will affect your client sending or receiving data. And then, it will have an impact on your Star Citizen FPS. In this case, you’d better check your network connection.
- Server-Side Performance: In multiplayer games like Star Citizen, server-side performance can also impact FPS. If the game servers are experiencing high loads or technical issues, it can result in lower FPS and gameplay stuttering for players. You can check if the server is experiencing such a problem by visiting the official website.
- Insufficient configuration: Star Citizen has high requirements for system configuration after the updates for years. Its system configuration requirements are almost the same as or even higher than the latest single-player games. If you can’t meet its minimum requirements, you’ll have difficulties in doing the Star Citizen FPS boost.
- Memory usage: It’s a very common issue among big games. Insufficient RAM or memory leaks can lead to performance issues, including lower FPS and stuttering during gameplay.
Related article: Unable to Change Priority in Task Manager? How to Fix It
What Shall You Do to Deal with Low Star Citizen FPS?
Now you have learned some possible reasons that may cause your Star Citizen FPS to be low. And then, you will learn more about how to improve Star Citizen FPS. Let’s start.
Cool down Your Computer
As we have mentioned above, overheating is harmful to your gameplay. If you have played Star Citizen or used your computer under high-load scenarios for a long time, you may try to power off your computer and wait until it completely cools down. But be careful, don’t force your computer to shut down, otherwise, your system and data may get corrupted.
Check if Your PC Meets Star Citizen System Requirements
Before you start to improve Star Citizen FPS, you should check if your computer meets the system requirements.
You can check your computer configuration by following the steps below.
- Press Win + R to open the Run widow.
- Type dxdiag and press OK.
- Then DirectX Diagnostic Tool will appear. Select Save All Information and save the file to where you can easily find it.
Here are the minimum requirements and the recommended configuration for Star Citizen from the official websites.


Turn off the Full-screen Optimization
Although full-screen optimization is designed for Windows to optimize playing games or watching videos in full screen, it sometimes brings problems. You can turn it off to avoid low FPS and similar problems. Moreover, you can run Star Citizen as an administrator to avoid insufficient permissions when playing.
To do this, you do like this:
- Right-click the StarCitizen.exe or the shortcut and select Properties.
- Go to the Compatibility tab.
- Tick Disable fullscreen optimizations and Run this program as an administrator.
- Then choose Apply and select OK to confirm.
Disable the Background Programs
As a high-load game, Star Citizen requires plenty of system resources. What you need to do is ensure there are enough system resources for Star Citizen. You can close the background apps or programs you don’t use through Task Manager.
Here is how to open it:
- Right-click your taskbar and choose Task Manager. Or, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open it.
- Under the Processes tab, right-click each of the unnecessary applications and choose End task.
After you finish it, don’t close Task Manager, there is another thing you can do to improve your gaming experience.
- Choose Details and find StarCitizen.exe.
- Right-click it, select Set priority, then choose High in the expanded list.
Setting priority for Star Citizen will ensure it can get more system resources.
Perform a High-performance Power Plan
You can create a high-performance power plan to improve Star Citizen FPS. Though you may use the balanced mode most often, the high-performance plan will strengthen your game performance.
Here is the tutorial:
- Press Win + I to open Settings.
- Hit System > Power & sleep, then click Additional power settings from the right panel.
- Then click Create a power plan.
- Tick High performance, then hit the Next button. In the new window, click Create.

Now your system will automatically use the new power plan.
Change the Game Settings
If you feel your Star Citizen FPS is low or going up and down, you can change your game settings to improve it.
Here are some settings that can affect the FPS.
- Motion Blur: Low impact. Many players choose to turn it off.
- VSync: Low impact. It should be very a big topic basically, but in current Star Citizen, it’s not so important. If the game’s FPS is low with it turned on, you can turn it off.
- Sharpening: Low impact. It is a post-rendering technique, which is used to make the final image appear sharper and make objects look crisper.
- Scattered Object Distance: Low impact. High is recommended, but you can reduce it if you have poor performance issues.
- Planet Volumetric Clouds: Medium impact. It will use more resources to add extra “volume” to clouds around planets.
- Field of View: Medium impact. You can adjust your field of view if you want to see more towards the left and right, however, it has a performance impact as more stuff is to be rendered on screen.
- Resolution: High impact. You can change your resolution until you find a suitable one with the acceptable FPS.
- Quality: Low impact. You can try to put it on High if you are putting it on Very High.
- Window Mode: Low impact. It’s recommended you set it to Borderless.
After all, you adjust your game settings until you find the best one that fits you.
Enable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling
Turning this option on will enhance the performance of your graphics card, but it will also increase your electricity bill. So you’d better turn it off after you finish playing games. Let’s see how to open it.
- Press Win + I to open Settings and select System.
- Choose Display and select Graphics settings.
- Turn on Hardware-Accelerated GPU scheduling.
Related article: A Comprehensive Guide on PC Accelerate Pro Uninstall
Delete Your User and Shader Folders
It is strongly recommended that you delete your USER and Shader folders for the Star Citizen client after patching. Here is how to delete them.
For Shader folders:
- Type %localappdata%\Star Citizen\ into the Windows search bar.
- Press Enter on your keyboard to open the folder in Windows Explorer.
- Delete all subfolders in the folder.
The USER folder can be found at C:\Program Files\Roberts Space Industries\StarCitizen\LIVE.
Upgrade the Graphics Card Driver
When your graphics card driver conflicts with your system or Star Citizen, it can cause frame drop issues. You can avoid this problem by upgrading your graphics card driver.
Here are the steps to do it.
- Right-click Start and select Device Manager.
- Double-click Display adapters to expand it.
- Then right-click your graphics card and select Update driver.
Increase Virtual Memory
Virtual memory provides additional space for high-speed memory functions when the RAM is not enough to run a program.
Step 1: Type View advanced system settings in the search bar, then open it. In the new window, go to the Advanced tab, then hit the Settings button under Performance.
Step 2: Select Advanced and choose Change.
Step 3: Untick Automatically manage paging file size for all drives, then tick Custom size and put a value for the Initial size and Maximum size. Or you can simply tick No paging file.

Step 4: Click OK on each pop-up window to apply the changes.
Reinstall Star Citizen on an SSD
Sometimes an HDD may not read as fast as an SSD, which causes Star Citizen FPS to drop during gameplay. If you have an SSD, it’s recommended you install the game on the SSD. This will reduce the loading time of the game and make your gaming experience smoother.
Bottom Line
Star Citizen FPS runs low should be a big trouble for you. After finishing reading this article, you can have more knowledge to deal with it. We’re glad to see you can play your game with satisfaction.