Performance Tweaks
Extra performance options for lower-end machines.
WhereSettings › Performance
KindClient setting
Versions1.8.9 and 1.21.11
Performance TweaksExtra performance options for lower-end machines.
World
Hide Foliage
Hide Fences
Hide Stuck Arrows
Players
Shared Skin Sheet
Shared Mob Sheet
HUD
Inventory Cache
+ 21 more settings, all listed below
Turning it on
- Sour Client menu, then Settings, then Performance, where it sits as Performance Tweaks.
- Change any row and it applies straight away. Reset puts the section back to defaults.
Good to know
- HUD Refresh Rate redraws the HUD less often than the world; the world and your crosshair stay at full frame rate.
- Hide Foliage and Hide Fences remove the models only. Fences still block you.
- Hide Stuck Arrows is worth it in bow fights: every stuck arrow is drawn separately each frame.
Every setting
In the order the game shows them. Indented rows only appear once the row above is set the way it says.
World6 settings
| Hide Foliage | Stops plants from being meshed at all - tall grass, ferns, flowers, saplings, mushrooms, dead bushes, crops, lily pads and vines. The quads are never built, so it is a real chunk saving, not just a hidden draw. On by itself in the Extreme FPS mode until you set it. | Off |
| Hide Fences | Stops fences and fence gates from being meshed. They still block you - only the model is gone. | Off |
| Hide Stuck Arrows | Hides the arrows sticking out of players and mobs. Each one is a full entity render per frame, so this is worth real frames in a busy fight. On by itself in the Extreme FPS mode until you set it. | Off |
| Far Leaves Solid | See-through leaves are slow for the graphics card. Leaves more than about 48 blocks away are drawn solid instead, where the holes are too small to see anyway. Close leaves stay see-through. Helps most near lots of trees. | On |
| Far Leaves DistanceShows when Far Leaves Solid is on | How far away leaves start being drawn solid, in blocks at 1080p and FOV 70 (closer on smaller windows and wider FOV, where the leaf holes shrink to a pixel sooner). Lower is faster on slow graphics cards; at 48 the difference is about one pixel. | 4816 to 96 |
| Hologram Text Through Walls | Floating text (holograms, leaderboards) is drawn twice: the normal text, and a faint copy that shows through walls. Turn this off to draw it once. Text you can see looks the same; a hologram behind a wall is hidden like anything else. Helps in lobbies full of floating text. | On |
Players5 settings
| Shared Skin Sheet | Draws every player's skin from one shared texture, so a crowd goes to the graphics card in far fewer draw calls. Turn it off if a skin ever looks wrong. | On |
| Shared Mob Sheet | Draws mobs, their layers (villager clothes, sheep wool, horse markings) and everyone's armour from one shared texture, like the skin sheet does for player skins, so a room of different mobs or a fight full of armour goes to the graphics card in far fewer draw calls. Off while a shader pack is on. Turn it off if a mob or armour ever looks wrong. | On |
| Lighter Nearby Capes | Other players' capes within 10 blocks are built from half as many rows (every cape is already lighter further away). Same cloth, same movement, about half the work in a crowded lobby. Your own cape is never changed. | On |
| Name Tags on GPU | Places name tags and hologram text with the graphics card instead of the processor, so a busy lobby costs the processor much less. Turn it off to compare, or if name tags ever look wrong on your graphics card. | On |
| Shader Shadow Range | With a shader pack on, players and mobs further than this many blocks cast no shadow. They are still drawn. 0 = no limit. | 240 to 128 |
HUD3 settings
| Inventory Cache | An open inventory, chest or other container draws its slots and items into a picture that is reused until something changes, like the HUD cache. Your cursor item, tooltips and the background stay live. | On |
| HUD Cache | Draws the HUD (hotbar, chat, scoreboard, HUD mods) into one picture a set number of times a second, and every frame pastes that picture only where the HUD is. Your crosshair and the world are always drawn every frame. Turn off to redraw the HUD every frame. | On |
| HUD Refresh RateShows when HUD Cache is on | How many times a second the HUD picture is redrawn. Auto follows FPS Performance Mode (Extreme 60, Balanced 144, Quality 240) but never goes above your screen's refresh rate. 60 gives the most FPS; higher makes HUD animations smoother on a fast screen. | AutoAuto, 60 (fastest), 144, 240 (smoothest) |
Experiments10 settings
| Skip Hidden Chunks (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT, off by default and not guaranteed: chunks fully hidden behind buildings or hills from where you stand are not drawn. Mostly helps when your graphics card is the slow part. Tell us if anything pops in late or goes missing. | Off |
| Shadow Pass Sharing (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT, shader packs only: a pack draws every mob and player twice a frame, once for its shadow and once for you. With this on, the work of reading each one (pose, animation, held items) is done once and used for both. Nothing should look different. Tell us if a player or mob looks wrong with a pack on. | Off |
| Lighter Shadows (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT, shader packs only: armour and held items are left out of shadows. You still see them, but a player's shadow has no sword and no armour shape. Faster with lots of players around. Tell us if the shadows look wrong. | Off |
| Skin Cutout Under Shaders (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT, shader packs only: player bodies are drawn as solid models instead of see-through ones, which the pack handles much faster when lots of players are around. Should look the same. Tell us if a player's edges or colours look different with a pack on. | Off |
| Mob Sheet Under Shaders (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT, shader packs only: mobs share one texture sheet like they do without a pack, so a room of different mobs is a few draws instead of one each. Mobs whose resource pack gives them extra shader maps are left alone. Tell us if a mob looks wrong with a pack on. | Off |
| Item Cache Under Shaders (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT, shader packs only: items and block displays that stand still (in armour stands' hands, on displays) are built once and reused, like they are without a pack. Should look the same. Tell us if a held or displayed item looks wrong with a pack on. | Off |
| Reuse Mob States (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT: every mob and dropped item keeps the same bundle of drawing data from frame to frame instead of getting a new one each frame. Less memory churn, so fewer small stutters with lots of mobs around; the picture should not change at all. Tell us if a mob looks or moves wrong. | Off |
| Moving Item Cache (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT: items that move (swords in players' and mobs' hands, dropped items) keep their shape ready instead of being rebuilt from scratch every frame. Helps in crowds and lobbies. The picture should not change. Tell us if any held or dropped item looks wrong. | Off |
| Item Edge LOD (Experiment) | EXPERIMENT: flat items (swords, pearls, anything drawn from its picture) beyond the distance below are drawn as just their two faces, without the thin 1-pixel sides. Far items cost a fraction to draw; up close nothing changes. Tell us if far items look wrong. | Off |
| Edge DistanceShows when Item Edge LOD (Experiment) is on | Blocks away an item has to be before its sides are dropped. | 248 to 48 |
Advanced3 settings
| Extra Optimisations | A set of engine speed-ups that keep the picture the same (the menu blur is worked out at half resolution, a hair softer): reused sort lists and model poses, one screen clear instead of two, fused depth clears, remembered camera fluid, hologram range, chat text, standing entities' shadows and texture settings, half resolution menu blur, shared part rotation, and high priority for the drawing thread on 4-thread CPUs. Turn it off only to compare. | On |
| Draw Buffer Pool | The game rewrites the same graphics buffer for every draw. Some drivers, mostly AMD's older one, stop and wait each time. This uses a small set of buffers in rotation instead. Auto switches it on only for that older AMD driver; leave it there unless your GPU usage drops when players or a cloak come into view. | Auto (old AMD drivers)Off, Auto (old AMD drivers), On |
| Frame Graph Only | Pressing F3+2 normally opens the whole F3 screen along with the frame graph, and the text is what costs frames. With this on, F3+2 shows just the frame time and tick graphs. Open F3 first if you want both. | Off |