How to improve FPS in It Takes Two (PC)
It Takes Two is Hazelight Studios' cooperative adventure that reinvents its own genre every few minutes: one chapter is a platformer, the next a third-person shooter, and the one after that a racing stage or a musical minigame. It all runs on a heavily modified version of Frostbite, Battlefield's engine, adapted here to render dollhouse-sized scenes with an unusually high level of detail for a game of this kind. The key to its performance isn't the complexity of a single frame, but the fact that the game is designed for local split-screen play, which forces the GPU to render two complete cameras simultaneously. Fortunately, Hazelight optimized the game to run well on PS4/Xbox One-generation hardware, so on current PCs it runs smoothly even on modest rigs.
This is what you'd gain with a NVIDIA RTX 3050
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Calculations based on our FPS model combined with the % gain of each setting (measured in public benchmarks).
1. Quick wins (no visual loss)
Start here. Each one adds a little, but together they give +16% free FPS.
Motion Blur
Motion blur in Frostbite adds a post-processing pass per rendered camera, so in split-screen its cost doubles. Disabling it also improves sharpness during fast platforming sections and races.
Depth of Field
Depth of field is used heavily in Frostbite's narrative scenes to direct attention, but during active gameplay it only adds post-processing cost without providing any clarity.
Screen Space Reflections
Frostbite's screen space reflections are costly because they require an extra rendering pass per camera, and with two active cameras in split-screen the cost multiplies.
View Distance
Since It Takes Two's environments are mostly enclosed, small-scale spaces, draw distance is rarely noticeable beyond Medium.
Anti-Aliasing (TAA)
Frostbite's TAA smooths edges very well in the game's macro-photography environments, but at its highest level it adds a noticeable sampling cost in split-screen.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Shadow Quality
Frostbite's dynamic shadows are one of the game's most expensive settings because they're recalculated for each of the two cameras in split-screen.
Texture Quality
Thanks to the miniature scale of most environments, textures on High already look crisp up close without needing Ultra, which demands more VRAM without adding much.
Post-Processing
This setting groups effects like bloom, vignetting, and color correction, which in Frostbite are applied after compositing both split-screen cameras.
Particle Quality
The game's particle load varies wildly from chapter to chapter: platforming corridors barely use particles, while the musical sequences ramp them up until they become the main bottleneck.
Ambient Occlusion
Ambient occlusion reinforces the diorama look of the miniature environments, but on Ultra it doubles its cost since it's calculated for each split-screen camera.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable Reflex or low-latency optimizations from the NVIDIA control panel to minimize input lag during platforming sections and reaction-heavy timing.
- •If your GPU has little VRAM (4GB or less), set Texture Quality to High instead of Ultra to avoid stutters when loading each chapter's new assets.
- •Use Optimal Power mode in the NVIDIA panel instead of Maximum Performance; the extra power draw doesn't translate into real FPS in a game as well optimized as this one.
AMD
- •Enable Radeon Anti-Lag to offset the added latency in split-screen, where the engine has to synchronize rendering of two cameras per frame.
- •Check that Radeon Chill isn't capping your framerate below your target rate; in a game with such variable GPU load between chapters it can kick in without you noticing.
- •Keep drivers updated, especially after the game's launch; Frostbite has received several optimization patches specific to AMD GPUs in the past.
Sistema
- •If you're playing local split-screen on a single PC, first check that your GPU comfortably handles the single-player profile, since the cost doubles once you enable the second viewport.
- •Close overlay or recording software running in the background during local split-screen; with two cameras active, any extra process competes more directly for GPU resources.
- •If you play online instead of locally, rendering cost returns to a single camera per machine, so you can raise settings that you'd otherwise need to lower in split-screen.
5. Known game issues
FPS drops in musical sections and dense particle scenes
Chapters with giant musical instruments and massive particle effects generate GPU load spikes far above the rest of the game, causing occasional framerate drops even on rigs that handle everything else comfortably.
Micro-stutters when switching chapters
The transition between the game's different themed environments, each with its own set of textures and shaders, can cause small streaming stutters on mechanical hard drives or systems with little available VRAM.
Estado: post-launch patch 2021
Uneven split-screen performance depending on monitor resolution
On very high-resolution monitors, the added cost of rendering two full cameras in split-screen is much more noticeable than at 1080p.
6. Frequently asked questions
Do I need a powerful GPU to play in split-screen?▾
Why does performance vary so much from one chapter to another?▾
Does it have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
Which setting is best to lower first if I have a limited GPU?▾
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Calculate FPS for It Takes Two →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →