How to improve FPS in Need for Speed Unbound (PC)
Need for Speed Unbound (2022) is Criterion Games' entry that reinvents the saga's street-racing formula with Lakeshore, a fictional Chicago-inspired open-world city, adding a very distinctive visual style: on top of the Frostbite engine (the same technological base as Battlefield and Battlefront, adapted here for driving), the game blends realistic 3D car models and environments with hand-drawn 2D graffiti-style particle effects that burst out while drifting, activating nitro, or performing stylish actions. That combination, plus dense urban traffic and police chases that can escalate to involve dozens of simultaneous AI cars (civilian traffic, patrol cars, reinforcements, roadblocks), means the load splits noticeably between GPU (graffiti effects, reflections, urban lighting) and CPU (traffic and police AI, multi-car collision physics).
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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 +46% free FPS.
Shadow Quality
Frostbite recalculates dynamic shadows for your own car, surrounding traffic, and police cars in every chase, one of the engine's highest GPU costs in dense urban scenes.
Traffic Density
Civilian traffic density is one of the settings that adds the most load to both GPU (more cars to render) and CPU (more AI to simulate), especially on Lakeshore's main avenues.
Particle/Grafitti Effects Quality
The graffiti-style particle effects that burst out when activating nitro, drifting, or completing a stylish action are the game's most recognizable visual trademark, but also among the most expensive to render when several stack up at once during intense chases.
Reflection Quality
Reflections on car bodywork and Lakeshore's wet asphalt (especially at night, with neon and police lights) have a notable rendering cost rarely noticed at driving speed.
Motion Blur
Motion blur adds a per-frame post-processing cost and makes it harder to read obstacles and traffic at high speed, especially relevant in such a fast arcade driving game.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Texture Quality
Bodywork, asphalt, and Lakeshore building textures cost mostly VRAM rather than raw compute power, so High is usually enough on most modern GPUs.
Ambient Occlusion
Reinforces visual contact between cars and the urban environment, but on Ultra doubles its compute cost without a perceptible improvement in motion at high speed.
Post-Processing / Bloom
The nighttime neon glow of Lakeshore and police-car lights are processed via bloom, an effect that reinforces the game's visual identity but with a notable GPU cost in busy nighttime scenes.
View Distance
Lakeshore is a dense city with lots of sightlines cut off by buildings, so draw distance is rarely appreciated above Medium while driving.
Anti-Aliasing (TAA)
Frostbite's temporal antialiasing smooths car body and urban structure edges well, but at its highest level adds a sampling cost that competes with the rest of the game's graphical effects.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS
+26% FPSNeed for Speed Unbound integrates DLSS on top of Frostbite, especially useful at 1440p/4K to absorb the load spikes generated by dense traffic and graffiti particle effects during the most intense chases.
AMD FSR
+20% FPSFSR works on any GPU and is the recommended alternative for those without a recent NVIDIA card, with good image quality in Quality mode.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Use DLSS in Quality or Balanced mode if your GPU suffers FPS drops during the longest police chases, instead of lowering native resolution.
- •Enable NVIDIA Reflex if the game supports it from the graphics options to reduce input lag, noticeable in high-speed dodge maneuvers.
- •Keep Game Ready drivers updated; EA and NVIDIA usually publish specific optimizations after major game updates.
AMD
- •FSR in Quality mode is a good option if your CPU has headroom and you're after more FPS margin at high resolutions.
- •Enable Radeon Anti-Lag to reduce input latency during the most chaotic chases, with lots of AI cars and collisions on screen.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS, since Frostbite games tend to benefit from this technology in scenes with lots of simultaneous traffic.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an SSD; streaming Lakeshore's assets (buildings, traffic, car textures) depends on read speed to avoid visual popping while driving fast through the open city.
- •Close third-party overlays (Discord, capture software) during the most intense chases to minimize micro-stutters when lots of police cars and AI pile up on screen.
- •A processor with strong per-core performance helps sustain framerate when traffic and police AI spikes during the longest chases, more than adding extra cores.
5. Known game issues
FPS drops in prolonged police chases
When a chase escalates with reinforcements, roadblocks, and civilian traffic all piling up at once, the combination of AI, collision physics, and graffiti particle effects can generate occasional framerate drops, even on rigs that have headroom the rest of the playthrough.
CPU usage spikes in dense traffic areas
Lakeshore's main avenues with high Traffic Density simulate a large number of simultaneous AI vehicles, which can translate into perceptible CPU load spikes as micro-stutters, especially on older processors.
Occasional stutter when chaining nitro/drift effects
Chaining several style effects (nitro, drift, jumps) in rapid succession during an intense chase can cause brief hitches while the engine processes several graffiti particle effects at once.
6. Frequently asked questions
What setting gives the most FPS with the least visual loss in Need for Speed Unbound?▾
Does the game have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
Why does the game slow down during police chases?▾
Is it more CPU- or GPU-demanding?▾
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Calculate FPS for Need for Speed Unbound →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →