Team Fortress 2 has been running for well over a decade and it is safe to say that the game isn’t dying anytime soon. However, running on such an old architecture can bring its own set of compatibility issues.
With over 70,000 players playing the game with diverse gaming setups, you are bound to encounter some issues with the configuration. You might be wondering why your RTX 3060 is only pushing 100 FPS on such an old title and, you are not the only one who might be suffering from this issue.
The players have been encountering several issues that are causing their in-game FPS to drop. However, the main reason your FPS is dropping to an all-time low is due to a misconfiguration in graphic settings.
Luckily, there are ways to resolve such issues without spending hours going into the nitty-gritty of everything. Therefore, this guide will show you the general step-by-step method to fix such issues.
How to Fix Low FPS in TF2
There are several steps you can take in order to properly diagnose and fix this issue. Most of the time, such issues are caused by a compatibility issue caused by a graphical setting. Therefore, make sure to pay close attention from this point onwards.
Is Your PC Overheating?
An overheating PC can easily bottleneck your GPU capabilities. In modern computers, the graphics cards tend to run in a pre-allocated thermal range. If a GPU is expected to go past the limit, it will automatically temporarily downgrade its performance in order to stay within the threshold.
This is why you experience FPS drops if your PC is running too hot. The cause of this can be two factors.
Is Your PC Dust Free?
You can check this by opening your chassis to look for any dust that might be blocking the fans from spinning properly. If your PC is extremely dusty, then you may simply use a can of compressed air to blow off any dust you can find.
You can start from the fans and then gradually work your way to the whole computer.
Is Your Cooling Unit Working Fine?
If your PC is crystal clean, yet you are experiencing high thermals then you might have to consider upgrading your cooling unit. Usually, a PC has two types of configurations:
- Air Cooled: If your CPU is showing high temps then simply replace the old/stock cooler with a better one. Make sure to remove the plastic seal and check the thermal paste. For a general thermal issue, consider optimizing the airflow by adding more fans or rotating the existing ones depending on your PC.
- Water Cooled: Check the amount of your liquid coolant and add more if needed. Check your reservoir + pump to see if they’re working properly. Clean your radiators and try to tinker with the airflow in order to optimize it.
Check Your Drivers
It is always worth upgrading your GPU drivers to the latest version. You will be getting the latest error fixes and performance improvements. Running your PC on older drivers is completely fine until some compatibility issues start to surface. Therefore, make sure you are running the latest driver versions
. We will show you the steps to check for updates on both Nvidia and AMD.
Nvidia
Follow the steps below in order to update your Nvidia GPU drivers:
- Open GeForce Experience and head to the Drivers tab.
- Locate the Check For Updates button and click on it. The utility will automatically try to find a new version for you.
If a new version is found, simply click on the download button. Wait for the download to finish and express install it and you are good to go!
AMD
Here are the steps you need to take if you have an AMD Graphics Card.
- Open the Radeon Software and locate the Check for Updates button on the right.
The utility will automatically give you a prompt if it finds a newer version for your driver. Click on the download button. After waiting for the download to finish, install it and relaunch your game.
Change Your Graphics Settings
Even if you have an enthusiast PC, there is a chance that TF2 might still run inadequately. However, your system is not the one to blame. Your graphic settings might be clashing with each other due to incompatibility issues. Therefore, it is always worthwhile to tinker with your graphics.
Related: How to Unlock Your FPS in Dead By Daylight
This does not mean that lowering your graphic settings will do the trick. Instead, it is more about the individual customization options that TF2 provides to the players. However, it is better to change general settings for your GPU because the in-game settings are generally useless.
You may also set the steam launch options for TF2 by typing the following command:
-novid -high -USEALLAVAILABLECORE
Graphics Settings for AMD
Here are the settings for AMD-based GPUs. Make sure to change these in the AMD Vision Engine Control to ensure a smoother experience. Set an application profile for TF2:
| Anti-Aliasing | Use Application Settings |
| Tessellation | Use Application Settings |
| Anisotropic Filtering | Use Application Settings |
| Morphological Filtering | ON |
| Filter | Standard |
| Texture Filtering Quality | High Quality |
| Surface Format Opt | ON |
| Wait for Vertical Refresh | OFF |
| AA mode | Multi-Sample AA |
| Triple Buffering | ON |
Graphics Settings for Nvidia
Here are the settings for your Nvidia GPU. Make sure to change these in the Nvidia Control Panel:
| Ambient Occlusion | Quality |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 4x |
| Antialiasing | Use Application Settings |
| Low Latency Mode | OFF |
| MFAA | ON |
| Power Management Mode | Maximum Performance |
| Texture Filtering Negative LOD | Clap |
| Texture Filtering Quality | High |
All in all, make sure to spend some love and time on your graphic settings. If you have a general issue then it is worth checking your hardware components. Team Fortress 2 is a highly fun first-person shooter and it will most likely remain that way. Therefore, use this guide to diagnose and fix your FPS issues in order to gain peak performance out of your system.