Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Conclusion

As a gamer, I love Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, but as an analyst, this game annoys me to no end. If you enjoy this game’s Metroidvania elements and Souls-like combat, there is a lot to enjoy here, but if you find stutter framerates hard to tolerate, Fallen Order might as well be called Fallen Framerate. 

Our entire analysis is overshadowed by Jedi: Fallen Order’s looming framerate issues, which appear to be present on within both the PC and console versions of the game. On PC, these performance dips can be mitigated by using a powerful enough processor and fast memory, but gamers shouldn’t need to upgrade their PC to prevent what feels like a patchable issue. 

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a CPU-limited game, so much so that our RTX 2080 Ti generated practically identical performance results at both 1080p and 1440p. This made perfect 60FPS framerates impossible on our system. Perhaps a few more months of development time could have prevented this problem, or the use of a lower-level API like DirectX 12 or Vulkan on PC. Regardless, this game is very CPU-limited on PC, especially on planets like Kashyyyk. 

With our i7-6850K processor at 4GHz, SSD storage and an RTX 2080 Ti, perfect 1080p 60FPS gameplay wasn’t possible. That’s not a good sign for a modern PC game. Perhaps a patch of two will address these issues, but as it stands Jedi: Fallen Order’s PC version is far from perfect. Yes, those with stronger CPUs will have a better gaming experience, but those with older systems will inevitably struggle to run this game, especially in its more demanding areas.

Fallen Order’s performance dips and CPU performance shed a negative light on what is otherwise a good game. Even neat features like this game’s resolution scaling mode fall short because they do nothing to mitigate this game’s loading-related performance dips and CPU performance limits. Even the game’s lower graphics options have a limited impact on Fallen Order’s CPU performance limitations. 

It’s hard to talk about GPU performance in a game that’s mostly CPU-limited. If you negated CPU-related performance limits, even Nvidia’s GTX 1070 can achieve 1080p 60 FPS average framerates at Epic settings. That’s not bad for a modern AAA release. 60 average framerates should also be possible on AMD’s RX 580 and Nvidia GTX 1060 at High settings and with resolution scaling enabled. That said, on our system, the random stutters and loading-related performance dips remain. 

At the end of this analysis, we are frustrated that Jedi: Fallen Order released like this. A modern AAA title like this shouldn’t release with the game performance so heavily CPU limited on PC, especially given how relatively weak the processors on PlayStation and Xbox consoles are. Yes, this can be mitigated with stronger PC hardware, but most PC gamers don’t have the option to simply upgrade their systems on a whim to the latest and greatest kit. Hopefully, these performance issues will be mitigated with a future game patch, but as it stands, Jedi: Fallen Order is a great game that’s limited by its CPU performance woes and frequent framerate stutters on every graphics card we tested. 

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order could have, and should have released with stronger PC performance. That’s our opinion on Jedi: Fallen Order’s PC performance. Hopefully, our concerns will be addressed with future game patches, as Jedi: Fallen Order is one of the best Star Wars games of the past decade, a factor that makes this game’s PC performance all the more disappointing. 

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