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How to improve XCOM 2’s performance

This article is over 8 years old and may contain outdated information

We’ve seen a lot of concerns about the performance of XCOM 2 since it launched and it’s taken a few days for the community to figure out ways to improve things for gamers who are experiencing performance issues.

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Having been playing the game on an I7, GTX 980 with 16Gb of RAM it’s not been too much of a problem but there are periods where performance takes a hit. So how can you improve things ahead of some kind of official update? Here’s some tips including disabling the intro screens.

Get rid of the annoying intro sequences

  • Open the Steam Library
  • Right Click on XCOM 2 and select properties
  • Click the launch option button and enter -nostartupmovies
  • Click OK and launch the game.

Fix Stuttering

  • Open the XCOM 2 configuration folder and find XcomEngine.ini (c:\users\yourname\My documents\my games\XCOM2\XComGame\Config\XcomEngine.ini )
  • Make a backup of the file before making the changes below
  • Find the following settings and make the following changes:
    • Find bUseTextureStreaming and make sure it says “bUseTextureStreaming=True”.
    • Find bUseBackgroundLevelStreaming and change it to “bUseBackgroundLevelStreaming=True”
    • Find “MipFadeInSpeed0” and change it to “MipFadeInSpeed0=0”
    • Find “MipFadeOutSpeed0” and change it to “MipFadeOutSpeed0=0”
    • Find “MipFadeInSpeed1” and change it to “MipFadeInSpeed1=0”
    • Find “MipFadeOutSpeed1” and change it to “MipFadeOutSpeed1=0”
    • Find “PhysXGpuHeapSize” and change it to “PhysXGpuHeapSize=64”.
    • Find “PhysXMeshCacheSize” and change it to “PhysXMeshCacheSize=16”.
    • Find “bInitializeShadersOnDemand” and change it to “bInitializeShadersOnDemand=True”
    • Find “DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks” and set it to “DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=False”
    • Find “UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization” and set it to “UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=False”
    • Find “PoolSize” and set it to “PoolSize=X” (X depends on the amount of VRAM you have, 512MB, set it to 128, 1GB set it to 256, 2GB set it to 512, 3GB and higher set it to 768.)
    • Find “bAllowMultiThreadedShaderCompile” and change it to “bAllowMultiThreadedShaderCompile=True”
    • Find “ThreadedShaderCompileThreshold” and change it to “ThreadedShaderCompileThreshold=Y” (Where Y is the amount of PHYSICAL CPU-cores your CPU have.
    • Find “OnlyStreamInTextures” and change it to “OnlyStreamInTextures=True”

This was the solution for the original XCOM and it also works for XCOM 2 and was provided by MGSD.

There’s a stack of settings that can be messed with in this file but you should try disabling anti-aliasing, depth of field and action camera too. These can be found in the in-game settings under Gameplay and Graphics.

If you have discovered anything else then do share it in the comments.


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Paul Younger
Founder and Editor of PC Invasion. Founder of the world's first gaming cafe and Veteran PC gamer of over 22 years.