Payday 2: Best Settings for Maximum FPS (2026 Guide)

If your frame rate in Payday 2 is stuck under 60, the game is likely struggling to process unnecessary visual effects or background overlays. These settings will strip away the overhead that drags your performance down without sacrificing the core look of your heist.

Why this happens

Payday 2 uses an older engine that handles post-processing effects and background overlays inefficiently, leading to stuttering on many modern systems.

What you'll need

Just your game client and access to the Steam settings menu.

Steps

1. 01
   Open Payday 2, go to Options, then Video, and finally Advanced.
2. 02
   Turn Vsync, Depth of Field, Chromatic Aberration, Plus GPU, and Ambient Occlusion to Off.
3. 03
   Set Shadow Quality and Corpse Limit to Low.
4. 04
   Set Texture Quality to Medium, or High if you have more than 8GB of VRAM.
5. 05
   Keep Anisotropic Filtering at 16x and Animation Quality at High.
6. 06
   Set Anti-aliasing to FXAA and adjust your Field of View to 90.
7. 07
   Set the Frame Rate Limit to unlimited or match your monitor refresh rate.
8. 08
   Open the Steam client, click Steam in the top-left, and select Settings.
9. 09
   Navigate to the In-Game tab and uncheck Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game.