Forcing Final Fantasy Remake 7 to run in DirectX 11 might help with stuttering

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Here's a public service announcement: if you're experiencing a lot of stuttering in the PC version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, which seems particularly bad in chapter 3's slums and other hub areas where a lot of characters congregate, there's a potential fix for it. While not a perfect solution, it has reduced the number of framerate drops I experienced while sprinting through the streets between sidequests.

To set Final Fantasy 7 Remake to run in DirectX 11 mode, click on your profile in the top-right of the Epic launcher and select settings from the drop-down menu. Scroll down until you see a list of currently installed games, click on Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, then tick the "Additional Command Line Arguments" box. In the space below it, type "-dx11" without the quotes. If you want to force it to run in fullscreen rather than borderless windowed, add "-fullscreen" as well.

The downside to running Final Fantasy 7 Remake in DirectX 11 is that it prevents HDR from working. According to PCGamingWiki, this can result in "wrong and washed-out colors, with severe banding." Choose SDR from what few graphics options there are.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake's PC port is a major disappointment, and not just because of some inconsistent frametimes. The inability to turn off dynamic resolution is another frustration, though there's a workaround for that as well: the dynamic resolution disabler mod, courtesy of BobG123.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.