How to improve FPS in Mafia: The Old Country (PC)
Mafia: The Old Country is Hangar 13's prequel that abandons the open world of previous entries to tell a linear story set in rural early-20th-century Sicily. Built on Unreal Engine 5, the game leans on Lumen for global illumination and Nanite for the massive geometry of vineyards, quarries, and coastal towns, all with a level of detail befitting a cinematic title. Not having to sustain a persistent open map, the load concentrates on artistically polished scenes: interiors with complex indirect lighting, rural exteriors with dense vegetation, and action sequences with heavy particle effects. The result is a hardware-demanding game but one that's more predictable in its performance than an open world, since each chapter has a well-defined graphical budget.
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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 +50% free FPS.
Lumen Global Illumination
Lumen recalculates indirect lighting in real time for every scene, and in Sicilian villa interiors with multiple light sources the cost on Epic is considerable. On Medium, much of the light bounce is kept without saturating the GPU.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows in rural exteriors, with vegetation and stone structures casting shadows over uneven terrain, are among the engine's most expensive settings.
Foliage/Vegetation Density
Vineyards, olive groves, and Sicilian fields are populated with individual vegetation that Nanite handles well geometry-wise, but whose density still costs shading and wind-simulation time.
Particle/Effects Quality
Action scenes with gunfire, smoke, and dust generate particle spikes noticed especially in firefights with several simultaneous enemies.
Motion Blur
Motion blur adds a post-processing pass at no real performance benefit and tends to reduce sharpness during chases and firefights.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Nanite/Mesh Quality
Nanite virtualizes the geometry of rocky scenery and Sicilian stone structures, allowing very high geometric detail without the traditional polygon cost, though it still carries an associated streaming cost.
Texture Quality
Period textures, with detail in fabrics, aged stone, and wood, weigh more on VRAM than on raw compute power if the card has enough memory.
Post-Processing
Groups bloom, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and color correction, effects that reinforce the game's cinematic aesthetic but which on Epic add a noticeable rendering cost.
Ambient Occlusion
Reinforces contact between objects and surfaces in period-prop-heavy interiors, but its cost grows quickly on Epic when combined with Lumen.
Anti-Aliasing (TSR/DLAA)
Unreal Engine 5 depends on its temporal antialiasing to clean up the noise Lumen and Nanite generate, and TSR offers a good cost balance on hardware without dedicated AI upscaling.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS 3
+32% FPSDLSS 3 with Frame Generation is the most powerful option on RTX 40- and 50-series GPUs, especially useful for absorbing Lumen's cost in brightly lit interiors without sacrificing too much sharpness.
AMD FSR 3
+26% FPSFSR 3 works on any modern GPU, not just AMD cards, and its Frame Generation offers a notable improvement in vegetation-dense exterior scenes.
Intel XeSS
+22% FPSXeSS is a solid alternative on Intel Arc GPUs and is also compatible with NVIDIA and AMD hardware, with reasonable image quality in Quality mode.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable DLSS in Quality or Balanced mode at 1440p/4K to offset Lumen's cost without losing too much sharpness in narrative close-ups.
- •Use Frame Generation only if you already have a stable 50-60 FPS baseline, since below that the added input lag is more noticeable than what it makes up for.
- •Update to the latest Game Ready drivers before playing; Unreal Engine 5 usually receives Nanite- and Lumen-specific optimizations with every major engine version.
AMD
- •Enable FSR 3 with Frame Generation to offset AMD GPUs' tendency to perform somewhat worse under workloads with Lumen active on Epic.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS, since it especially helps UE5 games with Nanite geometry streaming.
- •On RDNA 2 cards or older, consider lowering Lumen to Medium instead of keeping it on Epic to avoid sharp drops in complex interiors.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an NVMe SSD: texture and Nanite geometry streaming depends on read speed to avoid visual popping and loading hitches between scenes.
- •The first play session may show shader-compilation stutter, typical of Unreal Engine 5; it's recommended to let the game finish this process without forcing a close.
- •Keep some free VRAM headroom on 8GB or less cards, since High/Ultra textures combined with Lumen can approach the limit in the most detail-heavy scenes.
5. Known game issues
Shader compilation stutter on first launch
As with most Unreal Engine 5 games, the first hours of play — and especially the first visit to each area — can show hitches while the engine compiles shaders on the fly. The impact decreases with use and driver updates.
VRAM usage spikes with textures on Ultra
Setting Texture Quality to its highest level together with Lumen on Epic can push VRAM usage beyond what 8GB or less cards can comfortably handle, causing momentary framerate drops in the most detailed scenes.
Micro-stutters in chapter transitions
Being a linear game with very different settings from one another, loading new assets and shaders when switching chapters can generate small streaming hitches, especially on mechanical hard drives or with limited available VRAM.
6. Frequently asked questions
Do I need a high-end GPU to play Mafia: The Old Country well?▾
Why does the game demand so much GPU if it's a linear narrative title and not an open world?▾
Does it have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
What setting should I lower first if I have a limited GPU?▾
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Calculate FPS for Mafia: The Old Country →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →