How to Fix Palworld 1.0 VRAM Leak and Long-Session Stuttering

When Palworld 1.0 launched, I couldn’t wait to jump back into the Palpagos Islands. The update added plenty of reasons to return, and for the first hour or two everything felt fantastic. My frame rate stayed comfortably above 100 FPS, the world looked gorgeous, and even my busiest base was running smoothly.

Then it happened.

Without warning, the game slowly became harder to play. Small stutters appeared every few seconds. Fast traveling suddenly took longer. Opening menus felt delayed. Eventually my smooth gameplay turned into a slideshow hovering somewhere around 20 FPS. Restarting Windows wasn’t necessary—but restarting the game instantly restored performance.

After spending several evenings experimenting, reading player reports, comparing hardware setups, and testing different settings myself, I became convinced that this isn’t simply “my PC getting old.” The behavior points toward a memory management issue that becomes more noticeable during long play sessions.

If you’re experiencing the same thing, here are the changes that actually made a difference for me.

Why Performance Gets Worse the Longer You Play

Unlike games with small levels, Palworld constantly streams new environments into memory as you explore.

Every time you visit another biome, teleport between distant bases, or fly across the map, the engine has to load:

• terrain textures
• building assets
• Pal models
• effects
• shadows
• vegetation

Normally, older assets should disappear from memory once they’re no longer needed.

Right now, though, that cleanup doesn’t always seem aggressive enough. As your session continues, VRAM usage slowly climbs until your graphics card starts juggling more data than it comfortably can.

Once that happens, Windows begins moving information between GPU memory, system RAM, and virtual memory on your drive. That’s where the massive frame-time spikes begin.

The interesting part is that many players notice almost identical timing. Everything runs perfectly for roughly 90–120 minutes, and then performance gradually falls apart instead of crashing immediately.

The Biggest Improvement I Found: Switching to DirectX 11

I honestly expected this to be another internet placebo.

Instead, it became the single biggest improvement.

Palworld defaults to DirectX 12, which usually offers excellent performance in modern Unreal Engine games. However, at the moment DX11 seems noticeably more forgiving during extended sessions on many systems.

Changing it takes less than a minute:

1. Close the game completely.
2. Open Steam.
3. Right-click Palworld.
4. Open Properties.
5. Under Launch Options type: -dx11

That’s it.

On my machine, peak FPS became slightly lower, but the important part was consistency. I’d gladly trade five average FPS for several hours of stable gameplay.

Texture Quality Matters More Than You Think

This surprised me.

I assumed lowering shadows or effects would have the biggest impact.

Instead, Texture Quality ended up making the largest difference in VRAM usage.

If your graphics card has 8 GB of VRAM or less, running textures on Medium is often the sweet spot.

Everything still looks surprisingly sharp, but the game doesn’t keep nearly as many huge texture files loaded simultaneously.

Here’s a quick comparison.

Unless you’re constantly stopping to inspect every rock and tree, Medium textures are difficult to distinguish during actual gameplay.

Unlimited FPS Can Make Things Worse

Most PC players naturally disable frame caps.

Normally that’s fine.

During my testing, though, leaving Palworld completely uncapped seemed to increase the speed at which performance degraded.

Instead, I recommend matching your monitor’s refresh rate.

• 60 FPS
• 120 FPS
• 144 FPS
• 165 FPS

A stable frame rate also makes frame pacing feel much smoother, especially during combat.

View Distance Is Another Hidden VRAM Hog

One setting I rarely touch in games is View Distance.

Palworld changed my mind.

Keeping this at Epic means the game tries to maintain a huge amount of distant scenery in memory.

Dropping it to Medium barely changed what I actually noticed while exploring, but memory usage stayed much healthier during long sessions.

For me, this was one of those “free performance” settings.

Give Windows More Room to Breathe

This recommendation sparks endless debates online.

Some players swear pagefiles don’t matter.

Others insist they’re essential.

From my own testing, increasing Windows virtual memory didn’t magically eliminate the leak—but it absolutely reduced hitching once memory became heavily loaded.

A fixed pagefile also prevents Windows from constantly resizing it while you’re playing.

A simple guideline is:

If you have a fast NVMe SSD, this adjustment costs almost nothing and may reduce severe stuttering during marathon sessions.

Large Automated Bases Are Surprisingly Expensive

One thing I noticed while comparing saves with friends was that tiny exploration-focused worlds stayed smooth much longer than giant industrial bases.

The more automated workers you have, the more the game constantly tracks:

• movement
• production
• dropped resources
• storage
• AI behavior
• pathfinding

None of these individually cause major issues.

Combined over several hours, however, they seem to increase memory pressure.

I’ve started organizing bases vertically instead of spreading them across huge areas.

Not only do they look cleaner, but worker navigation also feels more reliable.

Clean Up Dropped Items

This is one optimization many people overlook.

Thousands of loose items scattered across the world force the game to keep tracking them.

If you’re hosting your own world or dedicated server, lowering the maximum number of dropped items can noticeably improve long-session stability.

It’s one of those settings you probably won’t even notice during normal gameplay—but your PC definitely will.

Keep Graphics Drivers Clean

Whenever Unreal Engine games begin behaving strangely after major updates, I immediately check my graphics drivers.

Simply installing new drivers over old ones usually works.

Occasionally, though, leftover shader caches or corrupted driver files create additional problems.

If you’ve upgraded GPUs several times or haven’t cleaned drivers in years, using a proper driver cleanup tool before installing fresh NVIDIA or AMD drivers may eliminate unrelated performance issues.

I wouldn’t call this a guaranteed fix for Palworld specifically, but it’s worthwhile maintenance anyway.

Memory Cleanup Utilities

Some experienced PC players also use lightweight standby memory cleanup utilities.

These tools automatically clear Windows standby memory whenever available RAM drops below a chosen threshold.

Opinions differ on whether they’re necessary.

Personally, I don’t think everyone needs one.

However, if you regularly leave multiple games, browsers, Discord, recording software, and editing programs open at the same time, automatic standby memory cleanup can keep Windows feeling more responsive.

Settings That Worked Best for Me

Here’s the combination I’ve settled on after dozens of hours.

With these settings, my sessions regularly extend well beyond the point where they previously became unplayable.

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Is This Something Pocketpair Needs to Fix?

Absolutely.

Players can work around the issue, but they shouldn’t have to.

Modern PCs with powerful GPUs and plenty of RAM shouldn’t gradually lose performance simply because the game has been running for a couple of hours.

Fortunately, the good news is that this feels like the kind of problem developers can improve through engine updates and memory optimization patches.

Until then, a few smart adjustments dramatically reduce how noticeable the issue becomes.

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Final Thoughts

I always prefer fixing a problem at its source rather than tweaking endless Windows settings, but until another optimization patch arrives, these changes have made Palworld far more enjoyable for me.

The biggest lesson from all my testing is that consistency beats maximum benchmark numbers. Chasing the highest possible FPS isn’t worth much if performance collapses halfway through a long exploration session.

Switching to DirectX 11, lowering texture quality to Medium, limiting the frame rate, and giving Windows a properly configured pagefile turned what used to be a frustrating two-hour limit into an evening of uninterrupted gameplay.

If you’re still seeing heavy stuttering after trying these adjustments, the problem may also be tied to specific save files, oversized automated bases, or hardware-specific driver behavior. But for many players—including myself—these small changes make Palworld 1.0 feel much closer to how its performance should have been from day one.

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