While DirectX 12 offers better visuals, it is significantly more taxing on VRAM and system memory. Performance mode is the standard for competitive play and systems with 8GB–16GB of RAM.

Click the (...) next to Fortnite and select Options . Uncheck High Resolution Textures and click Apply .

The internal rendering engine is the largest consumer of RAM. Swapping to more efficient modes can immediately drop usage by several gigabytes.

External applications often "starve" Fortnite of the RAM it needs, causing the "out of memory" crashes seen in dense endgame lobbies.