Minecraft OptiFine HD Custom Settings (Low & High)

To maximize your frame rate, you should start by setting Graphics to Fast, which disables transparent textures like leaves. Lower your Render Distance to between 6 and 10 chunks; this is the single most impactful setting for performance. Set Simulation Distance to 8 chunks or lower to reduce the CPU load from mob AI and block updates. Finally, ensure Max Framerate is set to Unlimited so your PC isn’t artificially capped, and turn VSync Off to prevent input lag, unless you are experiencing severe screen tearing.

Inside the specific “Performance” submenu, you must enable Smart Animations; this is a critical setting that stops the game from animating textures (like fire or water) when you aren’t looking at them, saving massive resources. Turn Render Regions and Fast Render to On, as these optimize how the GPU draws the world. Additionally, enabling Fast Math can provide a small CPU boost. However, keep Chunk Updates to 1 and leave Smooth FPS Off initially, as Smooth FPS can sometimes cause stuttering rather than fixing it on modern hardware.

In the Details menu, the goal is to remove unnecessary visual noise. Set Trees to Smart or Fast (Smart gives you high-quality leaves without the performance hit of “Fancy”). Turn Clouds to Off or Fast and disable Fog completely to improve visibility and speed. Ensure Vignette is set to Fast. Crucially, set Biome Blend to Off or Fast (5×5 maximum); higher biome blend settings are notoriously unoptimized and can tank performance even on high-end PCs.

If you want the game to look decent without lag, keep Mipmap Levels at 4 but set Mipmap Type to Nearest. Turn Better Grass to Fast if you like the full-block grass look, or Off for pure performance. Disable Custom Sky and Custom Entity Models only if you are playing heavily modded PvP and need every last frame; otherwise, keeping them On is usually fine for vanilla survival. Always turn Anisotropic Filtering and Antialiasing Off here, as they are huge resource hogs.

Stuttering during turning or world loading is often caused by the game trying to autosave or load too many chunks at once. Go to “Video Settings” -> “Other” and set Autosave to 30 minutes (default is 45s, which causes frequent lag spikes). Also, ensure Lazy Chunk Loading is On (in the Performance tab), which spreads the chunk loading process out over time rather than freezing your game to load everything instantly.

If you are using shaders (like Complementary or BSL), your base settings matter less, but you must optimize the “Shaders” menu itself. Set Render Quality to 1x (going lower causes blur, higher causes lag). Ensure Shadow Quality is set to 1x or lower. Most importantly, inside the shader options list, look for “Profile” or “Preset” and select Medium or High Performance rather than Ultra. Shaders rely heavily on your GPU, so reducing Render Distance to 8 chunks is often necessary to maintain 60+ FPS with shaders on.

While OptiFine is excellent for features like Zoom and Connected Textures, strictly speaking, it is no longer the king of raw FPS. For pure performance on modern hardware (especially for 1.21+), the Sodium (performance) + Iris (shaders) combination often yields 2x-3x higher framerates than OptiFine. However, if you stick with OptiFine for its specific resource pack features or familiarity, the settings detailed above are the absolute limit of how optimized you can get.