Transport Fever 3 Performance Fix: Low FPS and Stutter

By Tobias Lindqvist · Updated October 1, 2026

Start with the hard requirements

Some Transport Fever 3 performance complaints are really compatibility problems. The Steam store and the official wiki list three requirements that a settings change cannot work around:

• AVX2 support. Both the minimum and recommended CPU entries on Steam say AVX2 is required. The wiki’s troubleshooting page adds that older CPUs without AVX2 are not compatible.
• An SSD. Steam lists “SSD required” for both minimum and recommended specs, with 90 GB of free space.
• Apple Silicon on Mac. Intel-based Macs are not supported. The minimum Mac chip is an M2 Pro with 16 GB of memory.

Linux needs Ubuntu 24.04 or newer, with the same hardware. Full details, including Mac specs, are on our PC requirements page.

The SSD rule has a footnote. One commenter under the official launch post says the game ran on an external HDD at 30 to 40 FPS on an older laptop with a GTX 1060. That is a single player report. Urban Games still lists an SSD as required, so do not count on a hard drive working.

Find your bottleneck in 30 seconds

Both the official wiki and the support page use the same two tests:

1. Pause the game and watch the frame rate. If FPS is still low while nothing is simulating, your graphics card is the limit.
2. Unpause and switch to 2x or 4x speed. If the game barely speeds up, or vehicles start to jump, your CPU cannot keep up with the simulation. Lowering graphics will do little here.

The support page also suggests watching CPU, GPU, RAM and VRAM usage in a monitoring tool. If VRAM is close to full, drop texture quality. If the GPU sits at full load, lower quality or resolution. If a few CPU cores are maxed while the GPU is not, the simulation is your limit.

Fixes when the GPU is the limit

The Graphics tab has four presets. This is what each one sets, according to the official settings page:

Steps that help most:

• Play at 1920x1080 instead of 4K. The support page says this alone can cut GPU load a lot.
• Use Resolution Scale in Window Settings. It lowers the rendering resolution of the 3D view only, so the interface stays sharp.
• Lower texture quality if you are short on VRAM. The wiki says this, together with dropping mods that use high-resolution textures, can raise FPS a lot on cards with little VRAM.
• Check which GPU the game uses. On laptops with two GPUs, set the dedicated card under Windows Settings, then System, Display, Graphics, or in the NVIDIA or AMD control software.
• Update your graphics driver and close background apps.

Reviewer Cory Wells at Hardcore Gamer noted that the PC version has no DLSS or FSR and no frame rate cap, only a VSync toggle. The official settings page matches this: VSync, Resolution Scale and the presets are the GPU options. Do not look for an upscaler in the menu.

Fixes when the CPU is the limit

Urban Games explains that the game simulates every inhabitant’s trip between home, work and shops, so the load grows with your network. To lighten it:

• Avoid placing many towns close together. More reachable destinations per resident means more pathfinding.
• Lower the Population slider in the Advanced gameplay settings when you start a new map. The manual says population directly affects simulation performance.
• Stay on standard map sizes. Experimental sizes need at least 16 GB of RAM, as our bigger maps guide explains.
• Cut back on large or script-heavy mods. The mod troubleshooting page says hundreds of mods can overwhelm slower PCs. If one mod causes a sudden slowdown, test without it. Browse carefully on our mods page.
• On laptops, switch off power-saving modes and watch for thermal throttling, both named on the support page.

Display mode and other quick checks

• Try fullscreen. One Steam reviewer said the game first launched in windowed mode and went past 130 FPS at 1440p medium after switching to fullscreen. Press Alt+Enter to cycle Windowed, Borderless and Fullscreen. This is a player report, not an official fix.
• Show an FPS counter. In settings.lua, setting debugInfoShowFps = true shows your frame rate in a corner. Edit the file only while the game is closed. Paths are in our save file location guide.
• Keep the warnings on. The Advanced settings include Show Video Memory Usage Warning, which tells you when graphics settings are too high for your VRAM.

Repair steps for stutter, crashes and broken rendering

If the problem started suddenly, try these in order. All three come from the official troubleshooting page.

1. Verify game files. On Steam: right-click the game, choose Properties, then Local Files, then Verify integrity of game files. On Epic: three dots next to the game, then Verify. On GOG Galaxy: Manage Installation, then Verify / Repair.
2. Delete the shader cache. Remove the shader_cache folder inside userdata if rendering looks broken or the game crashes on startup.
3. Reset settings. Delete settings.lua while the game is closed. Reinstalling does not reset settings, because they are stored in userdata.

Is Urban Games fixing performance?

As of October 1, 2026, the official known issues page lists three problems, all on consoles. None covers PC frame rates. The only build so far is the launch version (40408 on Steam), and the release notes show no testing build. For everything else that is broken or missing at launch, read our known issues roundup.