For a smoother Cities: Skylines II experience, begin with a custom 1920×1080 at 60 Hz profile, remove the most expensive effects, and then lower Level of Detail and shadows before sacrificing texture quality. Measure every change in the same in-game benchmark scene: a small map can be GPU-limited, while a large, populated city can remain slow because the simulation is CPU-limited.
Recommended starting profile
Cities: Skylines II is unusually demanding because it renders a detailed 3D city while simulating residents, traffic, services and economic activity. There is no universal setting that guarantees a particular frame rate on every computer. Use the following as a calibration profile, not as a promise of identical performance.
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| Setting | Starting value | Reason and trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 1920×1080 | This is the baseline recommended in Colossal Order’s optimization guidance. Lowering resolution reduces GPU work, but the image becomes less sharp. |
| Refresh rate | 60 Hz | Match the display target while tuning. A higher refresh target increases the frame-rate requirement without improving simulation speed. |
| Depth of Field | Disabled | Removes a cinematic blur pass that costs performance and can obscure distant buildings. |
| Volumetrics | Disabled | Reduces cloud and fog processing. The largest visual change is to atmospheric effects, not the geometry of your city. |
| Level of Detail | Lower one step if needed | Controls how much distant geometry and detail is drawn. It is one of the highest-impact adjustments, but lower values make faraway buildings and props simplify sooner. |
| Shadow quality | Lower one step if needed | Shadows are expensive to render. Reductions can improve frame rate substantially, at the cost of flatter lighting and less self-shadowing. |
| Global Illumination | Keep enabled initially; lower or disable only if necessary | Preserves indirect-lighting quality while you test larger gains elsewhere. |
| Motion Blur | Disabled if distracting or if low frame rates feel worse | Does not fix a simulation bottleneck, but removing the blur makes camera movement clearer and can improve perceived smoothness. |
| Textures | High when your graphics memory allows it | Texture quality generally has a smaller frame-rate effect than LOD or shadows. Lower it when you see texture pop-in, hitching or video-memory pressure. |
| Display mode | Test Fullscreen and Windowed Fullscreen | Performance can differ by graphics driver, monitor setup and operating-system compositor. Keep the faster mode on your system. |
After changing resolution or display mode, allow the game to finish virtual-texture processing. Colossal Order notes that buildings may look dark or show temporary artifacts during this step; on many systems it takes less than a minute, although hardware determines the exact time.
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If the starting profile still misses your target, change one expensive setting at a time. A GamersNexus case study measured the following gains on its own test system and game build:
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| Order | Setting change | Measured result in that case study | Visual consequence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lower Level of Detail | About 29% higher performance | Distant buildings, vehicles and props simplify sooner; the effect is most obvious from a high camera angle. |
| 2 | Lower shadow quality | About 37% higher performance | Less detailed shadows, shorter shadow distance and flatter scenes. Trees, buildings, cars and curbs lose some self-shadowing. |
| 3 | Disable volumetric effects | About 11% higher performance | Cloud and fog presentation changes; core city geometry remains largely unchanged. |
| 4 | Lower or disable Global Illumination | Moderate gain in the same test; no universal percentage was established | Indirect light and contact shading become less rich. |
| 5 | Adjust fog, reflections, ambient occlusion or anti-aliasing | Smaller effects than LOD and shadows in that test | Changes are visible in atmosphere, reflective surfaces, edge smoothing and small contact shadows. |
| 6 | Lower textures | Usually a smaller frame-rate change when video memory is sufficient | Surfaces look less detailed. This is more useful for memory-related stutter than for a pure GPU-compute limit. |
The 37%, 29% and 11% figures are GamersNexus results from 2023, using specific hardware, scenes and a particular game version. They are useful for ordering your tests, not for predicting your exact FPS. The two largest impacts in that report came from shadow quality and Level of Detail.
How to benchmark each change correctly
Changing several sliders at once makes it impossible to know what helped. Cities: Skylines II includes a Benchmark screen in its options/menu area. Paradox patch notes document fixes to that screen, so its layout can vary slightly between versions.
- Load one repeatable save. Use a city and camera position that represent the way you normally play.
- Write down the current resolution, display mode, weather, time of day, camera height and graphics values.
- Open the in-game Benchmark from the options or menu area and run it before changing anything.
- Change one setting or one closely related group, such as both shadow-distance controls if the game presents them together.
- Run the benchmark again with the same save and view. Record average FPS and whether frame times feel steadier, not just the highest FPS number.
- Repeat the test in your largest, most populated city. A setting that helps a small test map may not address a late-game simulation bottleneck.
- Keep the change only if the improvement is visible in the scenes you care about and the visual cost is acceptable.
Use the same weather and time because fog, night lighting, rain and sun angle alter the workload. Avoid comparing a clear midday run with a stormy night run. Large population counts and complicated road networks can produce uneven frame times even when average FPS appears reasonable.
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Dynamic Resolution changes the internal render resolution while the game is running to protect performance. Colossal Order describes it as a setting that helps by dynamically changing resolution. It can keep camera movement from collapsing during a demanding view, but the image may become noticeably blurry, especially when the internal resolution drops below your monitor’s native resolution.
Calibrate the fixed 1920×1080 profile first so you know what your GPU can sustain. If occasional GPU-heavy views still dip below your target, enable Dynamic Resolution and choose the least aggressive mode that prevents those dips. Check fine road markings, building signs and distant skylines while panning the camera; if they shimmer or soften too much, return to a fixed resolution and lower LOD or shadows instead. Dynamic Resolution cannot solve a CPU-bound simulation because it reduces rendering work, not citizen, traffic or service calculations.
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Fullscreen, Windowed Fullscreen and motion clarity
Test both Fullscreen and Windowed Fullscreen after selecting your resolution. Some systems gain steadier frame times in exclusive Fullscreen; others perform better in Windowed Fullscreen because of driver or desktop-compositor behavior. Keep the mode that produces the more consistent benchmark and fewer hitches.
Motion Blur is a preference as much as a performance setting. Disable it when low FPS feels smeared or when you need to read roads and zoning while rotating the camera. Do not expect this switch to raise performance dramatically; its main benefit is clearer motion and a cleaner diagnosis of whether the game is actually delivering uneven frames.
What each major graphics option changes
Level of Detail
LOD determines when the engine replaces detailed models with simpler versions and how much distant geometry remains active. Lowering it is usually a better first compromise than dropping textures: the city still looks sharp up close, while the GPU draws less detail in the distance. Inspect a high viewpoint over a dense district after every change. If cranes, trees and building silhouettes pop in too close to the camera, raise LOD one step and recover performance elsewhere.
Shadow quality
Shadows can be the single most expensive slider in a busy scene. Lower values reduce resolution, distance or cascade quality, depending on the game version. The gain can be large, but the visual cost is easy to see around tree-lined streets, elevated roads and dense blocks. If you dislike the flatter look of very low shadows, use a moderate reduction and lower LOD as the next compromise.
Volumetrics
Volumetric effects cover fog, clouds and light scattering. Disabling them usually preserves the appearance of buildings and roads while reducing atmospheric detail. Patch behavior matters: Paradox’s 1.5.9f1 update fixed a bug in which Volumetrics Quality settings did not work correctly, so an old guide may describe results that no longer match the current build.
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Global Illumination and ambient occlusion
Global Illumination supplies indirect light, while ambient occlusion darkens contact areas where surfaces meet. Lowering either can improve GPU headroom, but the city may lose depth around foundations, under bridges and between closely packed buildings. Keep them while establishing your baseline, then reduce them if LOD and shadows are already at the level you can tolerate.
Fog and reflections
Fog affects atmospheric depth and can be costly in scenes with broad views. Reflections matter most around water, glass and wet surfaces. They generally produced smaller gains than LOD and shadows in the cited testing, so adjust them after the high-impact controls unless a particular scene is dominated by water or heavy fog.
Anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing smooths stair-step edges on roads, roofs and cables. Reducing it can help a GPU-limited system, but the difference is often more apparent during camera movement than in a static screenshot. If lowering anti-aliasing introduces shimmering, restore it and use a small resolution reduction instead.
Textures
Texture quality primarily consumes video memory and bandwidth. When you have sufficient VRAM, leaving textures high can preserve surface detail with less impact than cutting LOD or shadows. Lower textures when you see hitching as new districts load, missing or muddy surfaces, or evidence that the graphics card is paging data. Texture changes will not cure a CPU simulation limit.
Recognizing a CPU or simulation bottleneck
A city can remain slow at low graphics settings because the processor is calculating thousands of agents, traffic routes, buildings, utilities and economic events. Signs include:
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- Frame rate changes little when you lower resolution or disable shadows.
- The benchmark or frame-time graph worsens as population, road complexity and service networks grow.
- Camera movement is acceptable over an empty map but slows over your mature city.
- Simulation speed or in-game time begins to lag even when the scene is visually simple.
When these symptoms appear, stop lowering every visual option. Keep a sensible image quality profile and accept that the largest city may need a lower simulation speed or a smaller population. Graphics settings can reduce rendering time, but they cannot remove the work required to update a complex city.
Two practical profiles to save
Balanced city profile
- 1920×1080 at 60 Hz.
- Depth of Field and Volumetrics disabled.
- LOD and shadows one step below their maximum values.
- Global Illumination, ambient occlusion and anti-aliasing left at moderate or high values if the benchmark remains stable.
- Textures high when video memory is sufficient.
- Motion Blur disabled for clearer camera movement.
This profile preserves lighting and surface detail while targeting the settings with the largest measured impact.
Large-city performance profile
- Keep 1920×1080 if the GPU can sustain it; otherwise test Dynamic Resolution or a lower fixed resolution.
- Lower LOD another step if distant-detail pop-in is acceptable.
- Lower shadows further before reducing textures.
- Keep Volumetrics disabled and reduce Global Illumination if GPU frame times remain high.
- Use the benchmark in the largest city, because a small map can hide CPU and memory pressure.
If this profile still produces slow simulation or highly uneven frame times, the limiting factor is probably city complexity or processor performance rather than another graphics slider.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Common problems and fixes
Buildings look dark or show strange artifacts after launch
Wait for virtual textures to finish processing before judging the image. The official optimization guidance says this commonly takes less than a minute, with the exact duration depending on hardware. If the appearance does not recover after processing completes, restart the game and retest the same save before changing several settings.
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Volumetrics changes do nothing
Confirm that the game is updated. Patch 1.5.9f1 fixed a defect where Volumetrics Quality did not apply correctly. Older launch-era advice may therefore give misleading results on a patched installation.
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Shadows suddenly change distance or look uneven
Update to a build containing the shadow fixes documented in patch 1.5.9f1, which addressed shadow render-distance jumps and uneven shadow cascades. Then rerun the benchmark; a previous setting comparison may no longer be valid.
FPS is acceptable in the benchmark but poor in my city
Run the benchmark or a repeatable camera pass in the actual save, at the same population and time of day you normally play. Population and city complexity can expose CPU or simulation limits that a clean test map never reaches.
The image is blurry after enabling Dynamic Resolution
Reduce its aggressiveness or disable it and lower LOD or shadows instead. Dynamic Resolution trades sharpness for temporary frame-rate headroom; it is not a free performance increase.
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Changing resolution barely improves performance
Check whether the city is CPU-limited. If frame time and FPS barely move after a substantial resolution reduction, rendering is not the primary constraint. Test a less populated save or a simpler district to confirm the difference.
When settings are no longer enough
If your GPU remains fully utilized in the benchmark, a faster graphics card can help after you have reduced LOD, shadows and volumetrics to acceptable levels. GamersNexus reported that the developers recommended a GeForce RTX 3080 in the context of Cities: Skylines II, but that is not a guarantee of a fixed frame rate and does not address a processor-limited mega-city. Match any upgrade to your monitor resolution, power supply, case airflow and the simulation performance of your CPU.
Do not buy hardware solely from an average-FPS figure. Compare frame-time consistency in your largest save, because stutter and simulation slowdown are often more noticeable than a small change in the benchmark average.
Quick Recap
Version-aware tuning checklist
- Record the game version before comparing settings.
- After a major patch, rerun the benchmark because shadow distance, cascades and volumetric behavior can change.
- Let virtual textures finish processing after launching a new build or changing relevant settings.
- Use the same save, camera, weather, time and resolution for every comparison.
- Judge both a small test map and your largest city.
- Keep the highest texture quality your video memory can handle, then spend your performance budget on LOD, shadows and atmospheric effects according to your visual priorities.
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