Fix Battlefield 2042 Stuttering, Lag, and FPS Drop

Harsh Clif
9 Min Read

Battlefield 2042 is less than an hour from the global launch. Players who purchased the Gold or Ultimate editions got a week early access. Both during the beta and the early access, the game has suffered from problems such as stuttering, lag, FPS drop, and rubber banding. The rubber banding issue has been fixed by the devs in yesterday’s patch and the servers are more stable now. But, as you launch the game, there is a chance you can run into performance problems leading to Battlefield 2042 stuttering, lag, and FPS drop.

First Published – 06 Oct 21. We have updated the guide with the best solutions to fix performance problems with BF2042. We will keep this post updated so you can revisit it once in a while for new info.

Battlefield 2042 Stutter Fix Update 19th Nov

Before we go ahead with the guide, we tested the game on low-range, medium, and high-end PCs, and the game definitely is unplayable on low-end PCs. For medium-range PCs, there is still stutter, but setting the graphics settings to medium resolves all issues. Go down to ‘Low’ if you want a more stable game. Besides that, here are some things to resolve Battlefield 2042 stutter.

  1. Enable the Game Mode. Press Windows Key + I, go to Gaming > Game Mode.
  2. Update the graphics card drivers
  3. Enable DirectX 12. Playing the game on DX12 provides a much smoother experiece. This is a tip from the first 20 minutes of play, so we will tell you more about it later. For now, it looks like the DX12 does reduce stutter and overall performance of the game on RTX card. You cannot set the DX12 from the menu. Go to C/Users/username/Documents/Battlefield 2042/Settings > Open PROFSAVE_profile with a Notepad > Set GstRender.Dx12Enabled 1
  4. Delate the cache for the game.
    • Head to C/Users/username/Documents/Battlefield 2042 or directly go to the Document folder on your PC.
    • Open the Cache folder and delete every folder in it.
  5. Disable Control Flow Guard for BF2042.exe
    • Before you disable it, you should know more about it as it’s important for your security. Disabling the Control Flow Guard will instatly boost your FPS and reduce stutter, but don’t do it globally as it will put your system at risk. Control Flow Guard is an exploit protection feature, so it’s very important. Here is how to set exception for BF2042.exe on COntrol Flow Guard.
    • Open ‘Virus & threat protection’ > go to ‘Apps & browser control’ > click on ‘Exploit Protection Settings’ > toggle ‘Program Settings’ > click the plus icon ‘Add porgram to customize’ > choose ‘Add by program name’ > paste ‘BF2042.exe’ > scroll on the new window to find Control flow guard (CFG) and check Override system settings > click Apply > Yes.
  6. If you ahve the VSync On and the game stutters, try disabling it from the game and enable it from the Nvidia Control Panel.
  7. If the game is still stuttering, here are the best settings that we have found to work best for reducing stutter
    • Texture Quality — High
    • Texture Filtering — High
    • Lighting Quality — Medium
    • Effects Quality — Medium
    • Post Process Quality — Low
    • Mesh Quality — Low
    • Terrain Quality — Medium
    • Undergrowth Quality — Medium
    • Antialiasing post-processing — TAA High
    • Ambient Occlusion — Off
    • Dynamic Resolution Scale — Off
    • Nvidia Reflex Low Latency — Enabled + Boost
    • Future Frame Rendering — Off
    • Vertical Sync — Off
    • Field of View — 74
    • Brightness — 60
    • Motion Blur — 0
    • Chromatic Aberration — Off
    • Film Grain — Off
    • Vignette — Off
    • Lens Distortion — Off
  8. Verify Integrity of game files
  9. Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling. Go to Windows Key + I > System > Display > Graphics > click on Change default graphic settings > turn on Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling.

How to Fix Battlefield 2042 Stuttering, Lag, and FPS Drop

There are a few things to keep in mind when dealing with stuttering. A drop in FPS will most definitely result in the game stuttering. As Battlefield 2042 is an always-online game, a drop in the internet bandwidth will contribute to the lag, FPS drop, and stuttering. So, if you have encountered these problems with the game, the first and the obvious place to look is your internet connection. Besides that, here are the things you can do.

  1. Wired internet connection is the best for gaming. Using mobile hotspot and Wi-Fi is advised against as those connection can be volatile and cause bandwidth drops.
  2. Update the graphics card driver software. We will update the post if there is a specific driver with day-one support for Battlefield 2024 beta.
  3. Play the game on Fullscreen Mode rather than Windowed mode. While the Windowed Mode is good if the game is crashing, it can cause the game to stutter.
  4. Play the game on default settings. If the game still stutters, reduce all the settings. We will put a link here at a later date that shows the best Battlefield 2042 settings for performance and FPS boost.
  5. If you are playing the game using the Steam client, disable the Steam Overlay as it’s known to cause stutter in games. Also, disable the Windows Game Bar and the GeForce Experience Overlay.
  6. Run the game in a clean boot environment, so there’s no background applications causing the stutter and lag. Refer to the crashing article for the steps to launch the game in a clean boot environment.
  7. If Battlefield 2042 freezes and there is drop in FPS when you click on the mouse, set the mouse polling rate to 125 or something around that.
  8. Set the power settings on your GPU to maximum perforamnce.
  9. If Battlefield 2042 is stuttering a lot, limit the FPS. Go to the Graphics Settings of the game and limit the FPS to match your display Hz or 1 above.
  10. Set Battlefield 2042 at High Priority. To do it, open Task Manager > More Details > Details > Right click on Battlefield.exe > Set Priority > High.
  11. Do not overclock the GPU as it can also cause stutter at time when the GPU becomes unstable due to OC.

If trying the above steps has not fixed your problem, the problem may be with your connection. Perform a lag check to see if your ping is too high.

  • Press Windows Key + R > type ping google.com –t > hit Enter
  • The Ping you should aim for is below 50, but anything below 100 is also good. If higher than 150, your ping is too high.

That’s all we have in this guide. We hope you were able to fix the Battlefield 2042 stuttering, FPS drop, and lag with the help of the guide. If you have a solution that worked for you, please share it in the comments for other users to try. We will update this post periodically, so check back once in a while.  

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He is caught in a loop between writing about games and playing them. It's a vicious cycle. Although he's biased towards PC, you can occasionally find him on the PS5. He does not own an Xbox Consoles but plans on getting one soon.
3 Comments
    • I tried disabling control flow guard, but only for BF2042. Didn’t really improve my FPS, but it also caused no errors or crashes with the games. It’s not that.

  • What specs are these? The settings you listed are because of trying to balance the cpu and gpu utilization correct?

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