Fix Payday 2 Stuck at 60Hz - Force Refresh Rate Update

It is incredibly frustrating to have a high-refresh monitor only to have Payday 2 lock your framerate at 60Hz because the game lacks an in-game setting to change it. This happens because the game engine defaults to a standard refresh rate regardless of your display hardware, but we can force it to recognize your monitor's true speed by tweaking the configuration file.

Why this happens

Payday 2 uses a legacy renderer that does not dynamically detect your monitor refresh rate and lacks a menu toggle to adjust it. The game references a local configuration file that defaults to 60Hz unless you manually update the value.

Steps

1. 01
   Press Windows + R on your keyboard, type %localappdata%/PAYDAY 2 into the box, and press Enter to open your user data folder.
2. 02
   Locate the file named renderer_settings.xml, right-click it, and select Open with Notepad.
3. 03
   Press Ctrl + F and search for refresh_rate to find the line that says something like refresh_rate = "60".
4. 04
   Change the value inside the quotes to match your monitor's actual refresh rate (for example, 144 or 165) and press Ctrl + S to save the file.
5. 05
   If the game keeps reverting to 60Hz, right-click renderer_settings.xml, select Properties, check the box for Read-only, and click Apply.

Still not working?

If you are still locked at 60Hz, verify that your Windows display settings are actually set correctly. Right-click your desktop, go to Display Settings, then Advanced Display, and ensure your monitor is set to the highest possible refresh rate here first. If that is correct but the game still feels choppy, ensure you do not have an external FPS limiter enabled in your GPU control panel, such as NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Radeon Software.

Frequently asked questions

Will setting the renderer_settings.xml to read-only break my game?

Setting it to read-only prevents the game from overwriting your refresh rate preference, but it also prevents the game from saving other graphic settings you change in-game. If you need to change your resolution or shadows later, you will need to uncheck the read-only box first.

Does this fix affect other games?

No, this change is isolated to the Payday 2 configuration folder and will not impact the performance or settings of any other games on your PC.