Start with the Graphics Options VRAM estimate and compare resolution, upscaling and texture quality in the same scene. Those changes can help a GPU or memory constraint. If they do little, investigate CPU load and the wider session conditions before buying hardware. No single preset establishes the cause or guarantees an FPS gain.
Start with a comparison, not an assumed bottleneck. Lowering graphics settings can help when the GPU or its memory is the constraint; it may do little when something else limits the scene. RSI’s current graphics guidance describes controls for VRAM use and rendering demand. Check those alongside CPU load and session conditions before deciding that a PC upgrade is the answer.
Work through the hardware requirements, renderer choice and graphics settings below. Change one setting at a time and repeat the same scene where possible. Treat the result as evidence for the next comparison, rather than a guarantee that one component is responsible.
When CPU or session limits matter
A community performance guide archived in August 2026 emphasizes CPU performance, and starcitizenhelp.com offers community hardware advice. Neither is CIG’s official requirements page. Use RSI’s published requirements for that baseline; it also says performance can vary with location, server population, background apps and network conditions.
A busy city running more slowly than open space is a useful observation, but it does not identify the CPU as the cause by itself. Run the resolution comparison below and look up both parts in the CPU and GPU benchmark lookup before buying anything. That lookup supplies broader benchmark context, not a prediction of FPS in this particular Star Citizen session.
Check the hardware requirements first
Check memory and storage before interpreting a settings comparison. Meeting the published requirements does not guarantee a particular frame rate.
RAM: 32GB is the sweet spot. CIG’s own published spec sheet lists 32 GB DDR4 at the recommended tier and 16 GB as the bare minimum (RSI system requirements). A test on a 96GB system showed Star Citizen only using 20 to 30GB, confirming that 32GB is plenty and that more does little (citizen-history.com, archived 2026-08-14). 16GB can run the game, but 32GB is the comfort zone most players want.
SSD storage is required. CIG lists 150+ GB SSD required at both the minimum and recommended tiers (RSI system requirements). Allow additional space for Windows-managed virtual memory and other files.
The PCIe Gen 3/Gen 4 NVMe and 3,000 MB/s suggestions come from starcitizenhelp.com’s community guide, not that official specification. Those suggestions do not establish a guarantee of glitch-free play. A storage constraint is a reason to investigate loading behavior; it does not make every graphics comparison pointless.
Do not disable your pagefile. This catches a lot of people who have 32GB or 64GB of RAM and assume they no longer need swap. In Star Citizen, “disabling it, even with ample physical memory, invites unnecessary strife.” Set it to System Managed or a minimum of about 16GB, and keep it on the SSD (citizen-history.com, archived 2026-08-14). For the full breakdown of recommended parts and why they matter, see the Star Citizen system requirements guide.
Renderer and Upscaling: Your Second-Biggest Lever
Once your hardware floor is set, the renderer is the next decision. Vulkan, the Gen12 renderer, is the default as of Alpha 4.5 and it addresses “common stuttering issues and enhancing game stability” compared to the older DirectX 11 path. It precompiles shaders instead of generating them just in time, spreads rendering across multiple CPU cores, and raises minimum frame rates while cutting stutter in contested areas (citizen-history.com, archived 2026-08-14). The fallback advice is simple: Vulkan is better on most modern hardware, but if performance is worse for no clear reason, switch to DirectX 11 and test (GagandeepMalhotra gist).
One gotcha worth flagging: some auto-installed copies of vulkan-1.dll have been flagged by Easy Anti-Cheat, which can cause launch or error problems with the Vulkan renderer. If Vulkan refuses to start, RSI maintains a Vulkan troubleshooting article for exactly this. This sits close to the broader anti-cheat launch issues covered in the Star Citizen error 5007 fix guide, so check there if your launch failure looks anti-cheat related.
On upscaling, Star Citizen introduced DLSS 2 Super Resolution and deployed its Vulkan renderer in Alpha 3.23. NVIDIA’s May 2024 release note says DLSS raises frame rates where the CPU is not the limit, and that Vulkan had been deployed ahead of planned CPU-multithreading work intended to improve GPU utilization (NVIDIA, May 21, 2024). Compare Quality or Balanced upscaling in the same scene. A graphics-limited workload may benefit; a small change is a reason to investigate other constraints rather than assume that every busy area is CPU-bound.
A clear warning on Frame Generation: it is not supported in Star Citizen as of 4.5. Only upscaling, the super resolution part, works; multi-frame generation does not (starcitizen.tools). Do not go hunting for a Frame Gen toggle expecting it to double your FPS. This dated support statement should not be read as a measurement of your current session or a guarantee about future renderer features.
The Short List of Settings That Actually Move FPS
Use the settings below as comparisons, not a universal ranking. RSI’s current VRAM-budget guidance later in this article also covers resolution and texture demand.
- Planet Volumetric Clouds: Low. This is one of the biggest FPS killers in the game and can cause a 20-plus FPS difference on mid-range hardware (GagandeepMalhotra gist). Drop it first.
- Object / Object Container View Distance: Medium or High. Ultra “causes significant frame jitter with minimal visual benefit.” Medium or High is the smart trade; some guides go as low as Low for the biggest gain.
- Gas Clouds: Low. Shading: Medium. Post Effects: Low. Small but real gains.
- Object Detail: High minimum. Setting it Low “causes surface rendering issues on planets,” so do not push this one below High.
- Textures: set by VRAM, not by taste. Under 8GB of VRAM, keep textures at Medium to avoid stuttering; 12GB or more can go by preference. The redline matters here: staying under your VRAM cap is smooth, but hitting it, for example 11.2 of 11.2 GB on a 12GB card, creates stutter (GagandeepMalhotra gist).
- Shadows, Fog, Water Caustics, Video Comms: negligible FPS impact. These are player preference. Tune them for looks, not frames.
A few NVIDIA Control Panel tweaks help too, though only a few matter: expanding the shader cache to about 10GB “has been helpful for many,” and removing motion blur and film grain cleans up the image without taxing the CPU (citizen-history.com, archived 2026-08-14). On Intel 12th-gen and newer CPUs, micro-stuttering tied to efficiency cores is a known issue; disabling E-cores for the game or pinning Star Citizen to P-cores with a tool like Process Lasso can smooth it out.
Compare client performance and session conditions
This is the differentiator. Before you blame your hardware, open the console with the tilde key, type r_displayInfo 1, and press Enter. You get an FPS, RAM, and latency overlay in the upper-right corner. Higher values, r_displayInfo 2 through 4, show progressively more detail, and r_displayInfo 0 turns it off (guided.news).
If lower resolution or a different upscaling mode raises FPS in the same scene, investigate the graphics workload. If FPS barely changes, compare CPU load and other conditions next. Neither observation proves a faulty component. Keep background work consistent and repeat the comparison.
The archived community guide reports roughly 4–8 server FPS and a below-2 reading in its Q1 2024 discussion. Those are historical observations, not current pass/fail thresholds. Server simulation rate and client-rendered FPS measure different work. A different server can be a useful comparison when the session behaves badly, but it is not a guaranteed fix for low client FPS.
One more expectation to set: Star Citizen compiles shaders on startup, so very low frame rates for roughly the first 10 minutes after logging in, or after a patch, are normal and not a settings problem (boostroom.com). Clear the shader cache after major updates only. Constant clearing just forces expensive rebuilds.
Graphics memory priority and user.cfg
Can you give Star Citizen more graphics memory priority?
Windows process priority controls CPU thread scheduling. It is not a control for assigning extra dedicated VRAM to Star Citizen. Microsoft documents process scheduling priorities separately from the video memory manager, which manages GPU memory. Avoid using High or Realtime priority as a graphics-memory fix; Microsoft warns that elevated CPU priority can interfere with other work.
Use the game’s own budget indicator instead. RSI’s graphics guide identifies the bar at the bottom right of Graphics Options as estimated maximum video-memory use for the selected settings. Leave headroom for recording or other apps. Compare resolution first. Then test upscaling or texture quality separately, watching that estimate and the same scene’s frame times. These controls can help a GPU or VRAM constraint; they do not establish that either caused your slowdown.
Does a high-FPS user.cfg preset help?
Do not treat a copied configuration as a measured FPS boost for your machine or current game build. Start with the in-game settings above and compare one change at a time. Keep a backup of any existing user.cfg, and record each line you add so you can undo that change without deleting unrelated settings.
There is a specific, documented use for this file. If switching to Vulkan leaves the game crashing on launch, RSI’s recovery instructions say to exit the game, open its LIVE installation folder, and edit or create user.cfg. Add this line, save the file with that exact name, then relaunch:
r.GraphicsRenderer = 0
This selects the DirectX renderer for that recovery case. RSI does not present the command as a universal FPS increase. Once the game starts, compare renderer behavior under repeatable conditions before keeping an override. Restore your saved configuration if you need to undo your edit.
Controls and keybinding commands: a short reference
Check the active profile before using a printed controls sheet. In Options > Keybindings, select your peripheral, then open Advanced Controls Customization. The selected action shows its binding; double-click it to capture a replacement and inspect any reported conflict. Control Profiles loads a peripheral profile or resets defaults. RSI’s keybinding instructions explain those controls. Save a copy before changing them.
For a reusable cheat sheet, note the displayed bindings for the actions you use and the selected peripheral. Export that same configuration through Control Profiles > Save Control Settings. Keep its XML file with your notes so a later profile change does not silently invalidate the sheet.
RSI documents these developer-console commands in its profile guide. Load a game mode, then use the tilde/backtick key to open the console:
| Task | Command | What to check first |
|---|---|---|
| List detected input devices | i_DumpDeviceInformation | Read the device order before swapping anything |
| Export the current bindings | pp_rebindkeys export all mybindings | This creates layout_mybindings_exported.xml; keep a backup |
| Swap joystick 1 and 2 bindings | pp_resortdevices joystick 1 2 | Use only when those device numbers are the pair you intend to swap |
These commands manage inputs. They do not increase FPS or replace the rendering checks above.
Where to Go Next
Use the comparisons above to decide what to investigate next. The CPU and GPU benchmark lookup adds broader hardware context, while the Star Citizen system requirements guide helps plan a compatible build. Neither establishes which part limits your current session.
For a game that refuses to launch, the Star Citizen error 5007 fix covers anti-cheat and Vulkan launch failures. Once the game runs well, the in-game questions are on my Star Citizen tools site, starting with ship stats and rankings.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best Star Citizen settings for FPS in 2026?
Why is my FPS so low in Star Citizen even with a good GPU?
Does Star Citizen support DLSS Frame Generation?
Does more RAM raise FPS in Star Citizen?
Should I use Vulkan or DirectX 11 in Star Citizen?
How do I check if I am CPU-bound or GPU-bound in Star Citizen?
Updates and corrections
- Last updated
- Methodology
- See our methodology for research and review standards.
- Update log
- 2026-10-02 — Citation correction: the cited MMOPixel Vulkan article contains no DLSS, DLSS 4, transformer, FSR, or XeSS support statement. I removed the unsupported Alpha 4.5 transformer and upscaler-list claims from the body and FAQ, then cited NVIDIA’s May 21, 2024 release note for the narrower facts it directly documents: Alpha 3.23 introduced DLSS 2 Super Resolution and deployed the Vulkan renderer.
- 2026-08-15 — Two corrections to the 2026-08-14 sourcing repair below. (1) That repair was only half done: it raised this page’s storage figure nowhere, while its sibling page, edited at the same time, was corrected to CIG’s ‘150+ GB SSD required’. This page went on telling readers to budget ‘around 100GB free’ under the words ’the official guidance is explicit’, sourced to a community guide. My two Star Citizen pages gave conflicting space budgets, and this one under-advised by 50GB against the vendor sheet. The storage sentence now carries CIG’s own figure, which I re-derived today from support.robertsspaceindustries.com article 360042417374; the NVMe speed guidance keeps its original source. (2) The note below records citizen-history.com as timing out on every request. That was accurate from my network on 2026-08-14, but the site is reachable today (HTTP 200 in 0.75s, real article content), so read it as blocked from my network at that moment, not as a dead domain. The known gap that note declared was later closed: all remaining citations to that source were re-pointed to a dated Wayback snapshot.
- 2026-08-14 — This closes the known gap logged in the entry below. citizen-history.com still times out from my network today (repeat check, 2026-08-14), but the Internet Archive holds a capture of the cited page taken 2026-08-14 12:16 UTC, and I re-derived every claim against that capture verbatim. Five checked out and are now cited to the archived copy rather than to a URL that resolves for nobody: the two CPU-over-GPU pull quotes, the 96GB/20-30GB memory test, the pagefile ‘invites unnecessary strife’ quote, and the Vulkan-default-since-4.5 claim with its ‘common stuttering issues and enhancing game stability’ quote. Two did not survive as written. (1) The CPU-bound-versus-GPU-bound resolution test was cited to that page, which contains no such diagnostic. The citation supported nothing and was removed; the reasoning stands on its own and is now unattributed. (2) The source dates its 4-8 server-FPS figure ‘at the time of writing (Q1/24)’, which this page presented as a current 2026 reading; the vintage is now stated. The NVIDIA shader-cache line also overstated its source, which says expanding the cache to 10GB ‘has been helpful for many’ and says nothing about streaming-heavy areas; I reworded it to match. Separately, the RAM FAQ still asserted ‘32GB of DDR4 or DDR5’ after the 2026-08-14 body fix dropped ‘or DDR5’ as unsupported by CIG; the FAQ and body now agree on CIG’s 32 GB DDR4 / 16 GB minimum.
- 2026-08-14 — Sourcing repair. The RAM recommendation previously asserted ’the official recommended spec is 32GB of DDR4 or DDR5, with a 16GB minimum’ with its only citation pointing at citizen-history.com, which as of 2026-08-14 resolves in DNS (45.141.37.223) but times out on every request over both HTTP and HTTPS, at the article path and the site root, across repeated attempts, so the claim was effectively uncited. I re-cited it directly to CIG’s own requirements article (support.robertsspaceindustries.com 360042417374, last edited 2026-07-27), which states 32 GB DDR4 at the recommended tier and 16 GB minimum. CIG lists DDR4 only, so I dropped the ‘or DDR5’ wording as unsupported. Known gap: six further claims on this page still cite the same unreachable citizen-history.com source (CPU-bound quotes, the 96GB memory-use test, the pagefile advice, the Alpha 4.5 Vulkan-default claim, the NVIDIA Control Panel shader-cache figure, and the 4-8 FPS server-tick reading). I did not re-verify these in this update, and they are flagged for a follow-up.
- Corrections
- Spotted an error? Email a correction with the affected line and what you found. The draft includes this page’s address. Verified changes are recorded here. Contact details.