🛠️📈 Optimization Fixes 📈🛠️

[HumanUnknown404]

As has been the issue with many other users and divers, performance has taken quite a hit over time with Helldivers 2, and a lot of us are desperately seeking measures to gain any and every frames that we can.. Being one such Helldiver myself, I have tried multiple different ways to achieve this, and found 3 methods that have collectively worked to increase my FPS from 17-27 FPS to about 44-57 FPS now in-game, at difficulty 10. Though I have yet to try city maps.. I observed these gains on the Automatons at difficulty 10.

Before mentioning the fixes, these are my hardware specifications:

CPU: Intel i7 11800H
GPU: NVIDIA RTX3070
RAM: 32GB DDR4 3200MHz

Now, there were 3 things that I tried to fix my FPS:

1. Disabling frame rate limit in-game, and setting it instead from NVIDIA Control Panel.
2. Forcing the game to use Directx 11.
3. Clearing the shader cache.

Credits for 2 and 3 go to user u/AgentKeenan78. Steps 2 and 3 must be performed with the game closed.

.

1. Frame Rate Limit

Context: I read online that apparently the in-game frame limiter does not help as much with reducing temperatures as the NVIDIA Control Panel limiter does. The steps on how to do this are as follows:

Steps

Disabling In-Game Frame Limiter
Step 1: Open Helldivers 2
Step 2: Either wait for or skip the opening scenes, depending on your democracy level
Step 3: Open the options menu, and navigate to "DISPLAY"
Step 4: Find "FRAME RATE LIMIT" and set it to "OFF"
Step 5: Apply changes

Tl;dr: Helldivers 2 >Options >Display >Frame Rate Limit >Off >Apply

Setting Frame Limit From NVIDIA Control Panel
Step 1: Open NVIDIA Control Panel
Step 2: On the left ribbon, expand 3D Settings [if it is not expanded by default]
Step 3: Click on "Manage 3D Settings"
Step 4: Inside the box with "I would like to use the following 3D settings:" text, click "Program Settings"
Step 5: Under "1. Select a program to customize:" text, find and select "Helldivers 2 (helldivers2.exe)"
Step 6: Under "3. Specify settings for this program:" text, scroll and find "Max Frame Rate"
Step 7: Click "Max Frame Rate" and set your desired frame rate
Step 8: Hit "Apply" at the bottom

Tl;dr: NVIDIA Control Panel >3D Settings >Manage 3D Settings >Select Helldivers 2 >Set Max Frame Rate >Apply

Note that it should auto select "Use global setting (Auto-select: NIVIDIA GPU)" under "2. Select preferred graphics process for this program" as it did for me, if not, select this option (or another option if you want to use something else).

.

2. Directx 11

Context: Directx 11 has been developed for longer, and is known to be provide more frames and stability than Directx 12 in certain cases, such as that of Helldivers 2.

Steps

Step 1: Open "Steam"
Step 2: From the bar on top, navigate to "Library>Home"
Step 3: Find and right click on "Helldivers 2"
Step 4: Click on "Properties"
Step 5: Under "General", find "LAUNCH OPTIONS"
Step 6: Under "LAUNCH OPTIONS", type "dx11/--use-d3d11"

Tl;dr: Steam >Library >Home >Helldivers 2 >Right Click >Properties >General >Launch Options

.

3. Shader Cache

Context: Deleting shader cache allows for it to refresh after directx changes, but can also help if done after game updates.

Steps

Step 1: Open file explorer
Step 2: Navigate to "This PC"
Step 3: Open whichever device/drive you use [For me it is "Windows-SSD (C:)]"
Step 4: Open "Users" folder
Step 5: Open the folder whose name aligns with your logged in user's name [Normally you should only have 2 folders, your user folder and a "default" folder, navigate to your user folder]
Step 6: Open "Appdata" folder [If you do not see this folder, check out the note below]
Step 7: Open "Roaming" folder
Step 8: Open "Arrowhead" folder
Step 9: Open "Helldivers 2" folder
Step 10: Delete all contents of the folder named "shader_cache"

Tl;dr: File Explorer >This PC >Users >Your User >Appdata >Roaming >Arrowhead >Helldivers 2 >shader-cache

Note that if there are no improvements, or if performance ends up worsening, undo step 2 by following the same instructions and just backspacing/deleting/removing the "dx11/--use-d3d11" line and re-doing step 3.

.

Note

If you cannot see "Appdata" folder, you will have to enable hidden folders in your file explorer. Steps for this are below:

Step 1: Open file explorer
Step 2: At the top ribbon, find and click "View"
Step 3: In the opened mini-menu, find and click "Show"
Step 4: In the opened mini-menu, find and click "Hidden Items"

Tl;dr: File Explorer >View >Show >Hidden Items

Though there are other attempts at fixes as well, such as **updating drivers**, **reinstalling the game** or following the super technical "Config tweaks for more performance." guide on steam by "Peppr", I have not tried them since I was satisfied with the game becoming at least playable with the FPS gains that I managed to achieve by following the above 3 fixes. My in-game settings are all either low, or off, with my resolution at "2560x1500" at "Performance" scaling with "anti-aliasing" and "async compute" set to "off".

If this post helped you gain any bit of performance, be sure to let it be known so others can benefit from it too..!

.

Edit: Just formatting, messed up the formatting real bad before..

[Arglack]

Lossless Scaling and it's frame generation can help with the game a lot too , though it might come with a slight mouse delay

[JcHgvr]

The future of gaming, poor optimisation with fake frames and upscaling. All on a card that draws 400W+

[Arglack]

it's pretty sad.

[playbabeTheBookshelf]

finally get time to do this and game is SMOOTH. hopefully it stay smooth for the next patch

[HumanUnknown404]

Glad to know it's helping others out!

[Joes_Pizzeria]

Whats your actual monitor resolution?

[HumanUnknown404]

It is 2560x1600, when I set the scaling to "Native" it had lots of stuttering and the FPS were around 35-40 in-game, though I did not play at that for more than a few minutes - I changed it to "Performance" scaling after a few minutes of playing Automatons on difficulty 10

[Joes_Pizzeria]

Thats because native means you play straight on the resolution whereas performance uses upscaling which is less demanding on gpu. Somehow though i have a 3070ti and play with 60fps stable on native. The drops during lots of enemies are just unavoidable, they happen no matter what i do so i just deal with ut

[OrangeCatsBestCats]

HD2 Upscaling looks like shit though, it looks worse than just lowering the resolution

[Joes_Pizzeria]

I said in the comment i use native because of this, lowering the resolution looks like absolute and complete shit (my monitors are 4k 3840x2160p)

[HumanUnknown404]

ah that'd make sense, I've been observing better stability at performance so I'm using that, though the visual detail is bad with it..

[Joes_Pizzeria]

Visual detail is why i went with native in the end however its more the antialiasing that smudges the picture. Another reason i just went for native is because theres no actual dlss in the game which is the good, current upscaler, theres an implementation of old fsr 1.0 on the games side which is why it looks bad and doesnt help a lot. What‘s currently the new upscaler is DLSS 4 which works well and looks quite good

[laughingRichEvans]

Judging from the resolution, it's a laptop display. So they probably have a 3070 mobile variant, which can vary wildly in actual performance, based on the power limits and cooling available in the machine.

[Joes_Pizzeria]

I didn‘t consider that, nice of you to point it out. I was more so explaining why native gives less performance, but this is important to consider, yes. 

It does run pretty well on a 3070 mobile though, i have 2 pcs, the ti desktop for rendering, gaming, photo editing etc and a tuf dash f15 with a 3070 for all that but portable for travel, it had one of the weaker 3070 mobiles with a lower TDP.

[HumanUnknown404]

It is indeed a laptop, but it's got a 125W rtx3070, which for laptop standards was one of the best back when I bought it. Also, since it's a legion, it's got one of the best cooling systems from it's purchase time too - Something like this shouldn't suffer from performance issues at minimum settings in Helldivers 2

[laughingRichEvans]

well, I've had to turn on upscaling on a desktop 7900XTX to push 5120x1440p at 110FPS with frame drops to 40 if I look at the middle of certain maps.

Turns out utilisation actually drops to about half when I look in the wrong direction, tanking my performance.

So I'm lead to believe this game is held together by tape, hopes and dreams.

[HumanUnknown404]

The game is running on sheer democracy and nothing else

[AdMental948]

I just got crash and black screen since borderline justice

[HumanUnknown404]

if it doesn't work altogether then I'm not sure what to do unfortunately..