Your PC is more powerful than you think. Most Once Human players are leaving 30 to 50 frames per second on the table simply because they never touched the right settings. This guide cuts straight to what actually matters: the exact system-level and in-game tweaks that push your FPS higher, eliminate stuttering, and make the game feel the way it was meant to feel regardless of your hardware tier.

Once Human PC optimization guide: boost your FPS

Your PC is more powerful than you think. Most Once Human players are leaving 30 to 50 frames per second on the table simply because they never touched the right settings. This guide cuts straight to what actually matters: the exact system-level and in-game tweaks that push your FPS higher, eliminate stuttering, and make the game feel the way it was meant to feel regardless of your hardware tier.

Why Once Human runs poorly on most PCs out of the box

Once Human is built on Unreal Engine and runs an always-online open world that pushes your CPU, GPU, and RAM at the same time. The default settings the game applies when it first launches are not calibrated to your specific hardware. They are a generic estimate and that estimate is almost always wrong in one direction or the other. Either the game cranks settings too high and your GPU chokes under the load or it plays it safe and leaves performance on the table that your hardware could easily handle.

The second issue is the Windows environment itself. Most gaming PCs are not configured to prioritize game performance out of the box. Background processes, wrong power plans, and outdated drivers quietly steal frames from every session. Fixing those system-level issues costs nothing and takes less than ten minutes but most players never do it.

fix your Windows settings before touching the game

Switch to high performance power plan

This is the single fastest win available to any PC gamer and it takes thirty seconds. Windows ships with a balanced power plan that throttles your CPU speed to save energy. That means your processor is running at half speed right when Once Human needs it most like during a boss fight or a dense open world zone with enemies everywhere.

Open your Windows search bar and type “power plan” then select “Choose a power plan” from the results. Switch from Balanced to High Performance. If you have an AMD CPU also look for the “AMD Ryzen High Performance” plan in the same menu since it is specifically tuned for Ryzen processors and delivers better results than the generic Windows option.

Update your GPU drivers right now

Nvidia and AMD both release game-ready driver updates for major titles and Once Human has received dedicated optimizations in several driver versions. An outdated driver can cost you 10 to 20 FPS compared to the current release and can also cause stuttering and crash issues that have nothing to do with your hardware or settings.

• Nvidia users: open GeForce Experience and check for driver updates under the Drivers tab
• AMD users: open AMD Software Adrenalin Edition and check for updates in the Home tab
• After updating always restart your PC before launching Once Human

Set Once Human to high priority in Task Manager

Windows does not automatically give games priority access to your CPU. Other background processes like browser tabs, update services, and cloud sync tools compete for the same resources. You can manually tell Windows to prioritize Once Human above everything else by opening Task Manager while the game is running, finding the Once Human process under the Details tab, right-clicking it and setting Priority to High. This takes ten seconds and gives you a noticeable stability improvement especially on older CPUs.

the in-game settings that actually move the needle

Render scale is your most powerful lever

If you only change one setting in Once Human make it render scale. This controls what percentage of your screen’s actual pixels the game renders before upscaling the result to your monitor. At 100% you are rendering every pixel in full. At 80% your GPU does significantly less work and the visual difference at normal viewing distances is almost invisible.

For GTX 1060 and RX 580 tier GPUs set render scale to 75 to 80%. For RTX 3060 and RX 6700 XT tier GPUs keep it at 90 to 100% and rely on DLSS or FSR for quality upscaling. For RTX 4070 and above keep it at 100% and enable DLSS Quality mode for the sharpest image with the least GPU cost. For the full breakdown of every setting across all hardware tiers check our Once Human PC settings guide: 7 tweaks for best performance.

Shadow quality and draw distance: the silent FPS killers

These two settings are responsible for more performance loss than almost anything else in Once Human and most players never touch them because they sound technical. Shadow quality controls how detailed and sharp shadows look across the entire game world. Draw distance controls how far away objects are rendered before they appear on screen. Both of them scale aggressively with hardware demand.

Anti-aliasing: stop using TAA if you have Nvidia

TAA is the default anti-aliasing mode in Once Human and while it looks clean it introduces a slight blur especially during fast camera movement and costs a noticeable amount of GPU performance. If you have an Nvidia RTX card switch to DLSS immediately. DLSS uses AI upscaling to deliver a sharper image than TAA while actually reducing GPU load at the same time. AMD users should look for FSR 2.0 in the graphics menu which delivers similar benefits across any GPU brand.

Turn off these post-processing effects immediately

Several visual effects in Once Human look impressive in screenshots but actively hurt your performance and gameplay clarity during actual play. These should be the first things you disable after installing the game.

Disable these right now

• Motion blur — smears the screen during fast movement, hurts enemy tracking
• Depth of field — blurs background elements, costs GPU for no gameplay benefit
• Chromatic aberration — adds color fringing around edges, zero gameplay value
• Lens flare — purely cosmetic, adds GPU overhead during bright outdoor scenes
• V-Sync — introduces input lag, replace with a manual FPS cap instead

advanced optimizations for maximum FPS

Cap your FPS slightly below your monitor’s refresh rate

Running Once Human uncapped means your GPU is working at 100% load constantly to push as many frames as possible even when those extra frames exceed what your monitor can display. That full load generates more heat, increases fan noise, and can cause thermal throttling where your GPU actually slows itself down to prevent overheating which drops your FPS mid-game at the worst possible moment.

Set a frame rate cap at two to three frames below your monitor’s refresh rate. If you have a 144Hz monitor cap at 141. A 60Hz monitor should cap at 58. You can set this inside Once Human’s graphics settings or use Nvidia Control Panel and AMD Radeon Software to apply it globally. Your GPU will run cooler, quieter, and more consistently as a result.

Install Once Human on SSD and manage your VRAM carefully

Once Human streams world assets constantly as you move through its open environment. On a traditional hard drive that streaming process is slow enough to cause stuttering and pop-in during zone transitions. On an SSD those issues essentially disappear because the drive can deliver data fast enough to keep up with the game’s demands. If you have not already moved Once Human to an SSD this is one of the highest-impact changes you can make outside of the actual graphics settings.

VRAM management is equally important. Texture quality directly maps to how much VRAM your GPU needs. If you push texture quality above what your card can hold the game starts pulling texture data from your system RAM which is dramatically slower and causes the stuttering that many players mistakenly blame on their CPU. Match your texture quality setting to your VRAM as follows: 4GB VRAM use low textures, 6GB use medium, 8GB use high, 10GB and above can use ultra comfortably.

Disable Xbox Game Bar and background recording

Windows 10 and 11 both ship with Xbox Game Bar enabled by default. This feature runs background recording processes that consume CPU and RAM even when you are not actively using it. For players on mid-range or older systems this overhead is measurable and costs real frames. Go to Windows Settings then Gaming then Xbox Game Bar and toggle it off. Also check that background recording under Captures is disabled in the same menu.

Use GPU control panel settings to squeeze extra performance

Both Nvidia and AMD offer additional performance settings in their control panels that the game itself cannot access. For Nvidia users open Nvidia Control Panel and set Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance for Once Human specifically. Also make sure Texture Filtering Quality is set to Performance rather than Quality. For AMD users open AMD Software and enable Radeon Anti-Lag which reduces input latency noticeably in online games like Once Human.

How to diagnose where your FPS is actually being lost

Check GPU and CPU usage while the game is running

Before you start changing settings blindly it helps to know exactly which component is limiting your performance. Open Task Manager and keep an eye on GPU and CPU usage while Once Human is running at your current settings. If your GPU is sitting at 95 to 100% your graphics settings are too demanding for your card and you need to lower them. If your GPU is sitting at 50 to 60% but your FPS is still low one or two CPU cores are likely maxed out which means your processor is the bottleneck not your GPU and lowering graphics settings will not help as much as you might expect.

For a bottleneck caused by your CPU the fixes are different. Enable high performance power plan, close all background apps, lower your in-game simulation distance rather than visual quality settings, and consider overclocking your CPU if your cooling setup supports it safely. Reducing the number of active players visible on your server screen can also help significantly in dense multiplayer zones where the CPU load spikes highest. For a complete hardware-specific settings breakdown check our Once Human PC settings optimization guide which covers GPU, CPU, and RAM bottlenecks across every hardware tier.

Quick reference: full optimization checklist

Complete PC optimization checklist for Once Human

• Switch Windows power plan to High Performance or AMD Ryzen High Performance
• Update GPU drivers to the latest game-ready version
• Set Once Human process priority to High in Task Manager
• Disable Xbox Game Bar and background recording in Windows Settings
• Set render scale to 75 to 90% based on your GPU tier
• Drop shadow quality and shadow distance to medium
• Switch anti-aliasing from TAA to DLSS or FSR based on your GPU brand
• Disable motion blur, depth of field, chromatic aberration, and lens flare
• Turn off V-Sync and apply a manual FPS cap 2 to 3 frames below monitor refresh rate
• Install Once Human on SSD not HDD
• Match texture quality setting to your GPU VRAM capacity
• Enable Prefer Maximum Performance in Nvidia Control Panel or Anti-Lag in AMD Software

Boosting your FPS in Once Human does not require new hardware. It requires spending 20 minutes on the right settings in the right order. Start with the Windows power plan and driver update, then work through the in-game settings from render scale down to post-processing effects, and finish with the GPU control panel tweaks. Stack all of these together and you will be amazed at how different the game feels on the exact same machine. If you want to go deeper on individual settings and hardware-specific recommendations our Once Human PC settings guide has every option covered in full detail. Now get in the game and enjoy the extra frames.

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