In our first Minecraft tutorial, we did the most important thing: set up a Minecraft account, install Minecraft, and create our first world. If you only read the first tutorial in this long series, you’ll still be completely ready to play. Today we’re going to look at the second most important thing: optimizing Minecraft for the smoothest possible gaming experience.
Most people are caught off guard by how resource intensive Minecraft is. At first glance, it looks so simple: just a sea of low-res blocks and what seems to be pretty elementary game mechanics. The game is much more complex than a simple shell would suggest.
There is a huge amount of activity going on below the surface. Both the CPU and the GPU are taxed to bring together the Minecraft worlds we enjoy exploring.
The game engine is responsible for rendering everything you see, keeping it up-to-date, keeping track of how all elements interact with each other (for example, when lava meets water or the player falls off a cliff), rendering lighting when day turns to night, spawning and the disappearance of the game’s creature, and dozens of other small subtle changes. It might seem like a simple game compared to a super slick modern game with photorealistic graphics, but there’s a ton of stuff under the hood.
Whether you have an inexpensive computer that struggles with the game, or a high-end computer that provides quick access to Minecraft, there are plenty of tricks and tricks you need to be aware of to ensure a stable and enjoyable experience. time with the game. Let’s take a look at all the ways you can tweak things to make sure you’re getting the best frames per second (FPS) you can.
Preparing your computer
While tweaks are important to the game, and we’ll get back to them shortly, there are a few things you’ll want to do before you even launch Minecraft to make sure you’re not accidentally killing the game’s performance.
lighten the burden
If you’re not using a powerful computer, the first thing you should do in your quest to improve Minecraft’s performance is to close any application that you’re not using while you’re actually playing, such as when you might leave your music app playing in the background, there is no reason to leave a word processor and web browser open and suck up resources.
Also, if you’re playing on a laptop, you should always keep it plugged into the wall while you’re playing Minecraft. Laptops typically reduce GPU and CPU performance when on battery power to conserve power and increase time between charges. It’s great when you’re finishing a book report, but not so much when you’re playing.
Update Java
Minecraft runs on Java, so any issues with the general installation and version of Java on your computer will be cured and cause issues with Minecraft ranging from FPS drops to complete crashes.
First, if you are running a 64-bit computer/operating system (many computers are 64-bit these days), you want to run the 64-bit version of Java. If you’re not sure, check your computer’s system settings.
Windows users can open a command prompt and type:
wmic os get OSArchitecture
The value returned will indicate whether the OS is 32-bit or 64-bit.
Second, make sure the version is up to date. At the time of publication, Java 7 is the general release of Java. You can run Java 8 for even more performance.
Third, make sure you only have one copy of Java installed. Many Minecraft players are reporting issues when they have multiple copies of Java on their computers (older versions alongside newer versions, 32-bit alongside 64-bit, etc.).
Update GPU drivers
When you’re just using your computer to surf the web, pay bills, and perform other light tasks, it hardly matters if you’ve updated your GPU drivers, as any performance improvements and fixes will likely go unnoticed.
However, when it comes to a game like Minecraft where you can really sweat your computer, all those little updates in the new driver pack can really help. Check the make and model number of your GPU, and then visit the manufacturer’s website to see if updated drivers are available.
Monitoring Minecraft using the debug menu
The basics of the previous section ensure that you don’t limit your productivity before you even get started. Once you launch Minecraft, the best thing you can do is start tracking your in-game performance. You don’t have to keep the monitor on all the time, but it’s very handy for understanding how various performance settings and game events affect performance.
Launch Minecraft and enable debug information by pressing F3 on your keyboard.
Temporarily saving this text overlay while playing can really help diagnose problems with the game. Let’s see what information you get. The very first line at the top of the left side is the most useful as it shows your game version and in brackets your FPS (frames per second) and the number of recent chunk updates.
Remember how we mentioned that Minecraft maps are essentially endless? While this is true, no desktop computer will be able to display the entire map at once, which is why the game relies on «chunks». Each chunk is 16×16 wide and 256 blocks high (world height limit). As you move, the game loads additional chunks, one 16x16x256 chunk at a time. Each piece is continuously loaded from the rock at the bottom of the world all the way to the sky.
On faster computers this process is fast and you will see the world rapidly expanding in front of you as you fly. On slower computers, things can slow down if you try to zoom in on the world in Fly mode. Luckily, if you’re just walking around, you’ll be moving slowly enough that even less reliable computers won’t struggle too much.
