This simple mod in Stellar Blade improved performance and stuttering

So, Stellar Blade just released for PC on June 12th, and it blazed past the 1-million mark in sales in just three days. In terms of player count, the game has become the #1 PS-exclusive game ported over to Steam, hitting a peak concurrent-user count of 192,078 players. Those are insane numbers, and so is the game itself — none of the praise is undeserved.

Of course, with the PC release of the game, the servers over at Nexus Mods have been working overtime, thanks to over 500 mods now being live for the game. While most of them are cosmetic (yes, those kinds, too), there are also plenty of mods that claim to improve performance for Stellar Blade. I myself didn't have any trouble running the game, but my partner's GTX 1660 Ti-powered PC did struggle to land the 60fps-mark. Thanks to one fantastic performance-improving mod, however, that's a thing of the past.

5 Stellar Blade's PC port is fantastically optimized

It even runs well on a 6-year-old PC

Stellar Blade has been quite a popular single-player action-adventure game since its exclusive release on the PlayStation 5 in April 2024. We loved the PS5 version over here at XDA, and I myself counted the days for the PC release. Now that it's here, there's no doubt that the game deserves all the credit in the world for its fantastic gameplay, balls-to-the-wall action, and its deep and rewarding combat system.

Add to that a soundtrack you just won't be able to get out of your head, and every single character being such a joy to behold in your eyes, and you've got a stellar hit on your hands (sorry, it was low-hanging fruit). Plus, it did something that is becoming a rarity in gaming nowadays — a solid, bug-free release that is also optimized well.

I tested Stellar Blade's PC port on three different setups, using graphics cards from three different generations — an RTX 4070 Ti, an RTX 3080, and a GTX 1660 Ti. While I would've preferred to use my 2070 Super instead, it's sadly a dead GPU as we speak. Regardless, the 1660 Ti's performance was a good insight into how well the game could run on a 6-year-old PC.

4 The Ultimate Engine Tweak mod really improved performance

I could finally enjoy a stable 60fps experience

On 1080p High, the game never touched 60fps on the 1660Ti, only being able to do so at 1440p with FSR 3 turned on. That's definitely because when I bumped up the resolution, the GPU finally took the load away from an aging Ryzen 5 1600 CPU. Regardless, the game played well, despite being unable to reach 60fps on any native resolution.

The mod I then picked up off of Nexus Mods is the Ultimate Engine Tweaks mod, uploaded to NexusMods by user 'P40L0X'. It is an 'ini tweak' that helps with performance optimization. Prior to this, while running the game on FSR 3 with the 1660 Ti, I could certainly notice a lack of clarity, especially in Eve's hair, which looked downright terrible. Outside of that, there was no stuttering I encountered in any of my tests. This mod tweaks Stellar Blade's 'engine.ini' file to improve performance and stability, all while keeping things lossless.

After installing the mod, things definitely improved remarkably — even on 1080p high, the game ran on a smooth 61 fps average, not dipping below 60fps for a single second. Over at 1440p medium and high, I saw better improvement margins, as the game jumped from 63 fps and 59 fps to 69.4 fps and 63 fps, respectively. Heck, I even managed to run the game on 1440p Very High with FSR 3 on to have a smooth, 60 fps experience.

The 1660 Ti-powered PC is my partner's, so ultimately, with the Ultimate Engine Tweaks mod applied, I settled at 1080p High settings to run the game natively — we got a smooth 60fps experience, the game stopped dropping down into the 50s sporadically, and I could turn the FPS overlay off to let her enjoy the game.

3 The mod also took care of random framerate drops

It didn't help much with already-high framerates, though

Outside framerate averages, the one problem I did happen to notice in the game is how it had a bad habit of dropping 5–10 fps every now and then. It happened when Eve entered a new area, or weather effects like rain started to appear. This happened even on my RTX 3080 and RTX 4070 Ti, where average FPS on maxed-out settings never went below 90fps and 110 fps on native 1440p. Trying the mod on both of these PCs, the frame drops were gone completely.

However, when it came to framerates, Stellar Blade's performance on the RTX 4070 Ti was pretty much exactly the same on 1440p, with not a single FPS increase after the mod. The RTX 3080, however, went from a 90fps average on 1440p native to 97.5fps, while turning on DLSS Quality took the number up from 115 fps to 123 fps.

If you're wondering, and I know you are, the entire time, quality never dipped, and textures didn't either. There are a few textures in the game here and there that look right out out of a PS3-era game, but they're few and far between, and they exist even without the mod, on max settings.

2 4K performance is where the performance mod really shines

My default resolution is now 4K for Stellar Blade, thanks to the mod

Over on the RTX 4070 Ti, initial performance benchmarks on 1440p native at max settings were 110 fps on average. That number never changed, and neither did the 114fps average on High settings. With DLSS Quality turned on, I noticed a couple of framerate increases, but they were too sporadic to credit the mod for them. However, the frame drops were completely gone, and the frame rate remained stable regardless of what environment I went to.

It was now time to bump things up to 4K, and I did that only with the RTX 4070 Ti this time around. On native 4K, where I couldn't touch the 60fps mark on High settings, I now got a healthy 64.2 fps average, and maxed-out settings ran at 58.4fps instead of the older 54.2 fps.

It was a similar case with DLSS Quality and DLSS Frame Generation (2x) running, and you can take a look at the fps gains below. However, I still think the biggest advantage of the mod is how it makes the random framerate drops completely disappear. So much so that instead of playing the game at 1440p max at native resolution, I've now permanently switched to 4K max with frame generation turned on.

By the way, if you're wondering why medium and low settings aren't being discussed here, that's because they run natively, without any tweaks, pretty well. More importantly, however, is because they look terrible in this game, down to pixelated water and blood, and stretched out textures even on the ground and walls around you. Bottomline? Try avoiding medium or low settings in the game.

1 The mod helps an already smooth game run better

Running the game on the 1660Ti is now significantly easier

Going in, I definitely didn't expect this performance-enhancing mod to have much of a dent on my 1440p and 4K benchmarks, especially on the rigs with the RTX 3080 and 4070 Ti. The 1660Ti is where it really shined, and I no longer have to keep things at a low-medium spec in the game to make it playable for my partner, who can't stop noticing just how bad the game looks at times with FSR 3 enabled. Now, 1080p High at native is the final setting on that PC — it's smooth and looks good.

1440p framerates didn't go up very significantly, but the 4K performance gains I got after running the mod are remarkable. For my 4070Ti-powered desktop, the game is now set to 4K instead of 1440p, scaling on the GPU, with DLSS Quality smoothening things out. I just know that I'm going to have to trade in my base PlayStation 5 for a pro model when the Stellar Blade sequel comes around.

If you love Stellar Blade and want more out of the game, I'd recommend this mod

While it's not a mod in the traditional sense, the Engine Tweaks performance patch is an ini tweak. All you have to do is replace Stellar Blade's current 'engine.ini' file with the one on NexusMods, and things immediately take a turn for the better.

There is no denying that this game ran well on PC, and it managed to sidestep the common problems of a new PC release or a PS port such as constant stuttering, terrible optimization, and even constant shader compilations. Regardless, you can always improve performance, and this tweak from Nexus Mods does exactly that.