How to get a Massive FPS Performance Boost in Silent Hill 2 Remake

All new games that release have performance issues that are generally dealt with in future patches however if you're not interested in waiting for those updates and want to get the best performance possible now this guide will take you through the best method you can use to get a nice FPS and general performance boost in Silent Hill 2 Remake on PC.

How to get a Massive FPS Performance Boost in Silent Hill 2 Remake

If you're looking to significantly boost performance in Silent Hill 2 while maintaining excellent visual quality, one of the most effective methods is to utilize DirectX 11 by adding a launch option to the game. This simple tweak can offer a dramatic improvement in frame rates, particularly at higher resolutions such as 1440p. It's also damn easy to enable.

• Open your Steam library (or the platform where you purchased Silent Hill 2).
• Right-click on Silent Hill 2 in your game list and select Properties.
• In the General tab, you’ll see a section labelled Launch Options.
• Type -dx11 in this box and close the properties window.

Note: As new game updates come out you will probably want to revisit the change as it may not be required anymore or may even cause more problems. But for now, at the time of writing, it seems to give a solid boost to FPS and overall performance even at 1440p

Why Does Switching to Direct X 11 Work?

When comparing DirectX 11 to newer APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan, the differences primarily revolve around how these APIs manage hardware resources, optimize performance, and handle modern rendering techniques. Each of these newer APIs aims to extract more performance from hardware, especially multi-core CPUs and high-end GPUs, but DirectX 11 still holds some advantages, depending on the specific game and system setup.

• DirectX 12 and Vulkan are considered low-level APIs, which means they give developers much more control over hardware resources. This allows developers to fine-tune performance for specific systems, making better use of multi-core CPUs and modern GPUs. As a result, DirectX 12 and Vulkan can offer better scaling on systems with multiple CPU cores and can handle more complex rendering tasks with less overhead.
• DirectX 11, on the other hand, is a high-level API, which abstracts much of the hardware complexity, making it easier for developers to work with. This abstraction comes at the cost of not fully utilizing the potential of multi-core CPUs. However, for many games, this higher-level API is still highly optimized and can provide stable, reliable performance without requiring extensive fine-tuning.

In terms of raw performance, DirectX 12 and Vulkan can deliver more FPS in demanding, modern games, especially when using features like ray tracing, but DirectX 11 is often more than sufficient for less demanding titles or older hardware. Again though, even with all this fancy tech talk claiming that DX 12 is better than DX 11 sometimes DX11 just works way better for some games.