Are you tired of experiencing lag and poor performance while playing Cities Skylines? If so, you've come to the right place. In this article, we will provide you with expert tips on how to boost FPS and improve the performance of your game. Whether you're a seasoned player or new to the game, these tips will help you achieve a smoother and more enjoyable gaming experience.

Optimize the Cities Skyline In-Game Settings

Most of these settings will depend on your system’s components and if your CPU or GPU is a bottleneck to your performance. Set the Aspect Ratio and Resolution option to your native monitor resolution. In case none of the following changes helped you as much as you wanted, reduce the resolution option. This will reduce the visual quality, but your performance will increase in any way. Set your Display Mode to fullscreen. Make sure to disable Vsync and then apply your display settings.

Graphics Preferences

In your Graphics preferences, set the Color Correction Override to your liking, we prefer to disable this option as well. Below, disable the Depth of field type, and the Film Grain option will not change your performance.

Quality Settings

In your Quality Settings, make sure to disable Shadows, set the Texture Quality to low, Level of Detail to medium, and disable Anisotropic Filtering and Anti-Aliasing.

Graphics Settings — Adjust the Cities Skylines graphics settings

Change the Cities Skylines Process Priority

To further increase your Cities Skylines performance on your PC, we will change the application’s priority compared to other programs running in the background. Right-click your taskbar to open up your Task Manager. In the Processes tab, right-click the Cities Skylines process and select Go to Details. In the Details tab, the application should be highlighted. Right-click the game process and set the priority to high.

Task Manager > Details > CitiesSkylines.exe > Set Priority > High

This turn allocate more resources to playing Cities Skylines and should increase your performance, especially if you have other programs running in the background. To reduce the CPU utilization from other programs, we suggest you end some programs from running in the background, which you don't need when playing Cities Skylines. Only to end programs from running that you know won't break your operating system.

In the Startup tab, you can additionally prevent programs from starting up on system boot.

Use Launch Options for Cities Skylines

Open up your Steam library. Right-click Cities Skylines and navigate to the Cities Skylines properties. In the General tab, select Set launch options. The commands you enter into this dialogue box will be applied to the game every time you launch it. These commands will make sure that the game is utilizing the most from your system’s performance, and will in turn also reduce the overall performance needed to run it on your PC. If, in any case, one of these commands worsens your performance, for example for systems running on a dual-core CPU, then you can permanently remove the command after.

limitfps. This command will uncap your FPS when setting the value to 0, or you can cap it to 200 when using the command with a value of 200. We suggest capping your FPS to a value higher than your screen’s refresh rate.
-noWorkshop. This will disable the workshop, and it’s mods, and other resources completely, in order to troubleshoot where performance issues are coming from.
-force-glcore30. If you prefer to use OpenGL instead of DirectX, then use this launch option.

4 launch options.jpg — Use launch options to improve the game’s performance

Verify the Integrity of the Cities Skylines Game Files

Ensure your game files are complete and up to date. In the local files tab, select Verify integrity of game files. This will take a minute to re-download any missing or replace corrupted files.

Cities Skylines Properties > Local Files > Verify Integrity

Update Graphics Card Driver

NVIDIA graphics cards can utilize the GeForce Experience application. Click here to download the application to your system. When the download is completed, open up the application, and in the Drivers tab, select Download. This will download and install the latest GPU update and should take a few minutes to complete.

Update Operating System

To optimize your system for performance, you should make sure that your operating system is up to date. Search for Update in your taskbar search. In your Check for updates system settings window, make sure to download the latest update and make sure to restart your PC after that the download is completed. This will in any case help you with performance issues.

Disable Windows Game Bar Recording

Some native Windows 10 settings can reduce your overall performance while in-game. Disable the Game Bar recording option, as it continuously records your gameplay and audio. In your taskbar search, enter: Game Bar to open the game bar system settings.

Uncheck the recording option. In the Captures tab, disable the background recording option additionally. These settings will only reduce your performance. If you want to record your gameplay, then we suggest using OBS Studio, or an external capture card if you lack performance.

NVIDIA Control Panel

Making changes to your NVIDIA control panel can be essential. Change a few options in your NVIDIA control panel to improve the game’s performance on your system. To open up your NVIDIA control panel, right-click your desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel. In your control panel, navigate to Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings.

Select to Add a program to customize and then add the game from the program list. If you can’t find the game in the program list, click on Browse. In your file explorer, you must locate the drive and path on which you installed the game and add it to the program list from there. Ensure the CUDA setting is set to your main GPU, set the Power management mode to Prefer maximum performance, and set the texture filtering quality to Performance.

Change the Cities Skylines Graphics Preference

Windows 10 allows you to utilize power user settings, such as your graphics settings. To change your graphics settings, enter Graphics Settings in your taskbar search to open up your native settings. When selecting Browse, your file explorer will open up, where you will have to navigate to the drive and path where the game is saved. After adding the program to your graphics settings list, the operating system lets you choose between the following:

Let Windows choose
Power Saving (Usually Intel HD Graphics)
High Performance (Usually, your graphics card(s)
Specific GPU (Choose which GPU to use)

For the most system performance, use the High-Performance option. If your GPU is bottlenecking your performance, you should set it to Let Windows Decide. Don't forget to apply your changes.

Graphics Settings > Graphics Preference > High Performance

Delete the Windows Temporary Files

Your hard drive might be cluttered with unwanted files. These files will induce lag if not removed properly. You can delete your temporary files manually or use PC cleanup programs, such as CCleaner. These applications are usually the best choice as it will automatically keep your hard-drive clean for you.T o manually delete your temporary files, enter %temp% in your taskbar search and hit enter.

A new folder will open up. Delete the content of your temporary files folder. Sometimes, this can take a few minutes if you haven’t done this before. Some files will most likely stay in your temp folder, as these are still in use by your programs. To completely delete these files, you should also empty your recycle bin.