Set to Low or Off . It makes textures look sharp at an angle but costs FPS.
Set to Medium or Low . If you have at least 2GB of VRAM, Medium is usually fine.
Maximum 15,000 population before crashing. Focus on small, detailed cities.
Right-click the game > Properties > Launch Options. Add:
Cities: Skylines Settings for Low-End PC Better Performance: The Ultimate Optimization Guide (2026) cities skylines settings for low end pc better
Under Hardware Settings she unlocked the game from the main thread. CPU affinity tweaks had helped on forums, but she left Advanced CPU Control alone—stability mattered more than a few percentage points. Instead she limited the Simulation View distance; seeing the whole island was lovely, but the CPU choked on simulation far beyond the city center. Reducing Simulation Range to Medium kept traffic calculations local and fluid.
Under "Graphics Performance Settings," add Cities.exe Steam Community. Set it to "High Performance."
: Downscale from your native resolution (e.g., from 1080p to 720p) if your frame rate is below 20 FPS. Display Mode Fullscreen ; however, some users report better stability in Windowed Fullscreen depending on their specific drivers. : Disable to reduce input lag and potential stuttering. High-Impact Visuals (Set to Disabled/Off) Depth of Field
Options → Audio → Set channels to or Mono . Surprisingly, audio processing can steal CPU cycles on very weak machines. Set to Low or Off
A must-have. It drastically reduces RAM usage and speeds up load times.
Disabled No performance justification for this setting.
The graphics menu contains options that heavily impact your frames per second (FPS). Turning down the right settings will drastically improve performance without making the game look unplayable. 🌟 High-Impact Settings (Change These First)
Vertical sync causes massive input lag and stuttering on low-end systems. Disable it. 🎮 Best In-Game Graphics Settings If you have at least 2GB of VRAM, Medium is usually fine
Before launching the game, optimize your operating system to ensure Cities: Skylines gets every ounce of available power.
Disabled - This can help but often causes visual artifacts that make low-end gameplay harder to tolerate.
: Low . This controls the quality of models at a distance. Setting it to low forces the game to use simpler, less demanding 3D models.