Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was easily one of the most anticipated games of 2023. The follow-up to 2019’s Fallen Order had a lot to live up to. After all, Cal Kestis’ first adventure got such great critical reception, that it was many media outlets’ Game of the Year!
It had one of the best Star Wars stories we’d ever seen, had great Souls-like combat, and was also stunning visually. So, Respawn had a pretty big challenge on their hands to not only match the brilliance of Fallen Order but also address some complaints people had about it.
For instance, the map was a bit too complicated, the cosmetics were lacking, and the game didn’t have fast travel which ruined the experience for some.
Thankfully, however, Respawn has fixed almost every single complaint fans had about the first game. The map has been completely redesigned and is much more useful now, we have fast-travel points for quick progression, and even the cosmetics have been bumped up to the max. In fact, you can even have a mullet and mutton chops for your Cal Kestis, which is absolutely incredible.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor also does one thing brilliantly that a lot of other Metroid-Vania games seem to miss; It doesn’t take away your tools from the first game by finding some vague reasoning. So, the game doesn’t just start with Cal getting kidnapped or losing his Jedi powers that he’d spent so much time re-learning in the first one.
Instead, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor starts off roughly a few years after the events of Fallen Order, with Cal’s force abilities still intact. As a matter of fact, the game is perfect for those looking to fulfill that power fantasy of being a strong Jedi who can obliterate enemies effortlessly. Of course, this means that players have force pull, force push, and the time slowdown ability.
Check out how to tackle the Dark Side in Jedi Survivor right here!
What’s perhaps even more impressive though, is Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s ability to add combat mechanics on top of an already impressive arsenal; that too without making things feel complicated.
As a result, players get to choose two different lightsaber stances out of five, and they all come with their own skill trees. This opens up the potential to experiment vastly and allows each player to customize their Cal Kestis visually and mechanically just the way they want. You can have a normal single-blade lightsaber, the Kylo-inspired crossguard saber, dual-wield lightsabers, a blaster-saber combo, or a double-sided saber like Darth Maul.
The possibilities are endless here, and it’d be safe to say that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a better overall package than Fallen Order in every single way. Well, except for one thing – performance.
Sadly, much like its predecessor, Jedi Survivor has also launched in a rough state, so much so that it is unplayable for a lot of people. Whether it’s constant frame drops, low FPS, stutters, glitches, or even straight-up crashes, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has every single one of these performance issues.
In addition to that, while poor optimization on PC has been a thing for many games this year, Jedi: Survivor fails to deliver a consistent framerate on the console as well. On Xbox Series S, it doesn’t run above dynamic 1080p at 30 FPS, which makes the game look blurry and jittery. The more disappointing thing, however, is the way it performs on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, because, the quality mode cannot deliver a stable 30 FPS at 4K, and the performance mode just looks bad visually.
Overall, this is arguably one of the worst games we’ve seen in a long time in terms of its performance, and even if you have a beefy PC, you’ll struggle to run it at a consistent framerate. Some people think that these issues are a result of the Denuvo anti-cheat that comes packaged with the game. Regardless, the developer has already acknowledged the issue and is working on a patch to iron out a lot of these performance issues in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Until that comes out, however, there are still a few things you can try to make the game not only look better visually but also extract some extra performance out of it. So, if you wanna play Star Wars Jedi: Survivor right now, and have performance issues like low FPS, lag, stutters, and crashes, here’s what you need to do to fix it:
1. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor System Requirements
Before you try out any of the fixes, however, you need to make sure that your machine is powerful enough to run the game in the first place. Since Jedi Survivor is a current-gen-only game, it is not gonna run on anything older than a few years ago.
Also, keep in mind that due to poor optimization, even the minimum system requirements may not be enough to run the game in 720P with 30 FPS. So, ideally, you’d want a machine that’s at least close to the recommended requirements for Star Wars Jedi Survivor.
Nonetheless, here are the official PC requirements for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor according to EA.
Minimum System Requirements:
- Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit
- RAM: 8 GB
- CPU Features: 4 cores / 8 threads
- CPU – AMD: Ryzen 5 1400
- CPU – Intel: Intel Core i7-7700
- GPU – AMD: Radeon RX 580
- GPU – NVIDIA: Nvidia GTX 1070
- GPU Features: DX12, 8 GB VRAM
- Storage: 155 GB
Recommended System Requirements:
- Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit
- RAM: 16 GB
- CPU Features: 4 cores / 8 threads
- CPU – AMD: Ryzen 5 5600X
- CPU – Intel: Intel Core i5 11600K
- GPU – AMD: RX 6700 XT
- GPU – NVIDIA: Nvidia RTX2070
- GPU Features: DX12, 8 GB VRAM
- Storage: 155 GB SSD
As you can see, you’d ideally want an NVIDIA RTX 2000 series card at least to make the game run smoothly. However, judging by how much people are struggling, even having an NVIDIA RTX 3080 might not be enough in some cases, especially if you want to run the game at anything higher than medium settings, which is an absolute bummer.
So, without further ado, let’s get into some of the fixes that might help improve your performance in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
2. Update your Graphics Card Drivers:
Sometimes, when a new game comes out, GPU manufacturers like NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel push out drivers that are specifically made to optimize performance for that particular game. Being a big AAA title, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has got those from a bunch of GPU companies too.
So, to make sure you’re using your GPU to the fullest and it’s not running on older unoptimized drivers, you need to download the new ones and update them.
Here’s how you can update your graphics card drivers:
For NVIDIA GPUs:
- Open the NVIDIA GeForce Experience app.
- If you don’t have it on your PC, download and install it from NVIDIA’s website right here.
- Select the “Drivers” tab.
- Once you’re in, just click the “Check for Updates” button.
- The app will scan for the latest driver version available for your NVIDIA GPU.
- If a new driver is available, it will prompt you to download it.
- Now, click on “Download” to start the installation process.
- Then, just follow the on-screen instructions to complete the update.
For AMD GPUs:
- Open the AMD Radeon Settings app.
- If this is the first time you’re doing this, download and install the app from AMD’s official website here.
- Now hit the “Updates” tab.
- Click on “Check for Updates”. The app will scan for the latest driver version available for your Graphics Card.
- If a new driver is available, click on “Download”.
- Just follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process.
It’s the same thing for Intel GPUs as well.
In case you don’t want to update through any of these apps and just want to download the driver directly, you can head over to the websites given below instead.
3. Verify Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Game Files on Steam and Epic Games Launcher
There is also a possibility that you didn’t download the game properly and that some of the files that you downloaded are corrupted. Even though this would usually result in a crash, or the game not booting at all in most instances, there is a slight chance of it hindering performance without affecting other things as well. So, in order to make sure your game files are intact and your installation isn’t corrupted, you can run an automatic check via Steam or Epic Games Launcher.
Here’s how to do it via Steam:
- Launch the Steam app.
- Head over to the library and find Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
- Right-click on it and select “Properties”.
- Go to the “Local Files” tab.
- Hit “Verify Integrity of Game Files”.
- Wait for the process to complete.
- If Steam finds that any of your game files are corrupted or missing, it will automatically download and replace them with new ones.
Here’s how to do it for Epic Games Launcher:
- Launch the Epic Games Launcher on your PC.
- Head over to the game library and find Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
- Click on the “three dots” icon next to the game title to open the options menu.
- Hit “Verify” from the drop-down menu.
- Wait for the process to finish. This can take a while so go and get yourself a drink while it finishes.
- Once the process is finished, the Epic Games Launcher will let you know if the game files were, indeed, corrupted.
- If corrupted files were found, it will automatically try to replace them with newer ones.
4. Make sure Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is using your dedicated GPU.
If you’re playing the game on a laptop, or a chipset that also has an integrated GPU on it, chances are that your PC reverts between the dedicated graphics card, and the integrated GPU to conserve energy. While this is obviously the more efficient way to go and works well for the most part; there are instances where the dedicated GPU doesn’t actually kick in when you launch the game, and it keeps running on the integrated hardware.
In the past, this would’ve resulted in the game not booting at all. However, thanks to integrated GPUs getting better over the past few years, chances are that not only will the game launch perfectly, but it will run with significantly reduced performance as well. In this case, it can be really hard to discern what the actual issue is.
So, to make sure that your PC is using your dedicated NVIDIA or AMD Graphics Card for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, follow these steps:
For NVIDIA GPUs:
- Right-click anywhere on an empty desktop and select “NVIDIA Control Panel”.
- Hit the “Manage 3D settings” tab from the menu on the left.
- Click on the “Program Settings” tab.
- If you want to apply these settings to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor only, click on the “Add” button and navigate to the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor game executable file (.exe).
- Select the game and click on “Add Selected Program”.
- If you want to apply this to all games, then just hit global settings instead.
- Once you’re done, choose the “Select the preferred graphics processor for this program” option, and click on “High-performance NVIDIA processor”.
- Now hit “Apply” to save the changes.
For AMD GPUs:
- Right-click anywhere on your desktop and open the “AMD Radeon Software”.
- Head over to the “Gaming” tab from the top menu.
- Click on “Add” and navigate to the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor game executable file (.exe).
- Select the game and click on “Open”.
- Under “Graphics Settings”, select “High Performance”.
- Click on “Save” to save the changes.
And there you have it, your PC will now use only the dedicated hardware!
5. Optimum Graphics Card Settings for NVIDIA and AMD users:
While ensuring that the game is only using your dedicated GPU is great, the work is not quite done yet. To get the full benefit of your GPU performance, you also need to tweak some other things within the Graphics Card settings.
Even though it may not feel like these settings are making a difference, since they’re largely external and don’t seem related to the game you’re playing, they are actually very important. In fact, sometimes, playing around with these settings can totally eliminate any issues with a struggling game like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
So, here’s what you need to do:
NVIDIA Users:
- Right-click the desktop and open NVIDIA Control Panel.
- Head over to Global Settings under the Manage 3D Settings tab and change the following settings:
- Set power management mode to Prefer Maximum Performance.
- Change Texture Filtering Quality to High Performance.
- Enable Threaded Optimization.
- Disable Triple Buffering.
- Turn off V-Sync.
- Enable Low Latency mode.
- Set Maximum Pre-rendered frames to 2.
- Enable G-Sync if available.
AMD Users:
- Right-click while you’re on the desktop and choose AMD Radeon Software.
- Head over to Global Settings under the Gaming tab.
- Change the following settings:
- Change Anti-Aliasing mode to Use application settings.
- Set Texture Filtering Quality to Performance.
- Turn on Surface Format Optimization.
- Disable V-Sync and Tessellation mode.
- Set Threaded Optimization to On.
- Change Power Management to Maximum Performance.
- Turn on G-Sync if you have a compatible monitor.
6. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Graphics Settings:
Now, while external fixes can genuinely help fix the performance issues with Star Wars Jedi Survivor, we all know that the issue is within the game itself. So, making changes within the game is arguably the best approach when it comes to maximizing performance.
However, since the PC port for Jedi Survivor is utterly broken at launch, there really isn’t much you can do to really impact performance. Well, other than playing with the graphics settings, anyway.
Thankfully, Respawn has given us plenty of sliders and settings to play with when it comes to the graphics settings for Jedi Survivor. In fact, there are certain visual elements within the game that are way too power-hungry but don’t add much to the actual visual fidelity of the experience.
So, in order to make sure you’re striking the perfect balance of performance and graphics, you need to use the optimum PC settings for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Just open the game, head over to the Visuals menu under settings, and apply these!
- Set display resolution to 1920 x 1080
- Change the window mode to Fullscreen. Borderless gaming does not work well with Jedi Survivor so don’t even try that.
- Set Graphics Quality to Medium
- Change the View Distance to Low. If you have a powerful GPU with loads of VRAM, however, you can change it to Medium or High.
- Keep Shadow Quality at Low regardless of how powerful your PC is. This is one of the most taxing settings in the game.
- Set Anti-Aliasing to Low.
- Change Texture Quality to Medium.
- Keep Visual Effects at Medium.
- Set Post Processing to low.
- Foliage Detail should be low as well.
- Turn off V-Sync unless you experience some really bad screen-tearing,
- Disable Ray Tracing.
- Set AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 to Performance mode.
- Turn off Motion Blur, Film Grain, and Chromatic Aberration.
- Set Camera Shake and Ambient Camera Sway to 0 percent.
Hopefully, after applying all these fixes and changing the graphics settings, you’ll see a significant improvement in the performance of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on your PC and this would’ve solved the low FPS, lag, stuttering, or crashing issues you were facing earlier.
If not, then you’re sadly out of luck and you’ll have to wait for an official patch from EA to sort out your issues.
Regardless, good luck with the game, and, like always, may the force be with you!