How to speed up Minecraft and reduce lag

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The hit indie game Minecraft, as blocky and graphically simple as it seems to be, can be pretty resource intensive even on the fastest computers and will lag on older computers and notebooks.

Since Minecraft is still in Beta, many parts of the game aren’t properly optimized yet and uses more resources than it should. There are many ways to reduce the lag. Chunk updates and saves uses a lot of CPU and GPU power, and altering it using mods can significantly speed up the game, as well as updating Java.

Don’t worry, these are not considered Minecraft cheats or hacks in any way, so they will not impact you during the online multiplayer portion of the game. This article will list some of the easy steps you can take to increase the frame-rate. If that doesn’t work well though, you may want to install some advanced mods listed later in this article.

Here’s a list of great ways to speed up your game, in no particular order:

Change the graphics settings: 

If you’re lagging while your render distance is set to “Far” and “Fancy” graphics, chances that lowering them will give you a much more playable framerate. Enabling “Advanced OpenGL” also helps for some computers.

Lowering the resolution of the Window can also help; try to avoid maximizing the game widow.

Also, it might help to turn the FOV setting as of Beta 1.9 as low as possible. It reduces the amount of polygons the graphics card has to render since your field of view is lower.

Update Java:

Minecraft is coded in the Java programming language, updating it will impact your in-game performance. If you’re one of the few who is still running an outdated version of Java, update now! The updates often contains optimizations to speed up your game. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can get the unreleased Java 7.

Gamebooster:

Gamebooster is a free Windows utility that aims to close some resource intensive services and tasks to help you speed up your game performance. It can help you speed up the game if you are running a lot of programs at once. More information over here.

Install optimization mods:

OptiFine - This little optimization mod helps you increase FPS by tweaking how the fog and chunks are displayed. Also make them prettier in Fancy rendering. It will make use of occlusion Culling to prevent rendering of parts you can’t see, thus speeding up the game.

The newest release of OptiFine also includes the optimizations made in CAF-mod and OptiMine, making it the all-in-one solution mod to speed up your FPS.

A special version of OptiFine now also make use of multi-cores in order to increase rendering speed even more, in order to give you even better FPS. It also supports optimizing HD texture packs without problems.

The mod works on Windows as well as Linux and MAC OS X, so you will be able to optimize the game on your Macbook as well. Get the mode on the official Minecraft forums: OptiFine.

This video tutorial on how to install OptiFine on Windows may help you out:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctNkb4BfT8M

Still stuck?  Here’s the instructions how to install OptiFine on Windows:

Windows Instructions:

1) Find your minecraft.jar file. On Windows, it’s in %APPDATA%/.minecraft/bin. Optionally, make a backup of minecraft.jar and save it somewhere safe, in case something goes wrong.

2) Open minecraft.jar in an archive editor program like WinRar

3) Delete the META-INF folder, this is important or it will break the game.

4) Copy all files from the OptiFine package into minecraft.jar and overwrite all existing files.

5) Now, run Minecraft and test it! If everything is well, you should see an performance increase. For even more frames, the mods adds a few additional options in the video settings, tweak them to optimize the game performance.

Setting high priority to Minecraft in the Task Manager

Running MC in High Priority:

Use the Task Manager, go in processes and right click on javaw.exe. Select Priority>High.

Upgrade your computer:

If everything else fails, it might be the time to upgrade your system, either buying a new one altogether or changing the video card or CPU for a more modern one. This will cost you a few bucks, and the process to do it will not be discussed in this article. Google is your friend!

Upgrading your RAM also helps in some cases.

These tricks can help with your framerate, but don’t expect miracles and 100+FPS boosts! Be realistic. Have more tips and tricks to speed up Minecraft? Comment below!

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