War Thunder — a light title that runs on modest PCs: specs & FPS

War Thunder is a free-to-play cross-platform vehicular combat MMO with more than 1000 playable aircraft, helicopters, tanks or ships sprawled over huge maps that feature real-life locations and battles that transpired over the course of 20th century, most notably during WWII.

### Gameplay Air and land warfare pits 2 sides against each other up to 32 players who must battle over points or achieving total elimination against enemy forces across huge maps. There are also PVE missions including dynamic historical campaigns and solo missions plus the custom events that add limitations or put certain victory conditions.

### Changes Back in 2013 War Thunder featured 50 vehicles from the German and Russian trees of air forces and a small selection of maps to choose from. Over the course of the open beta and up to the original release in December 2016, the developers have added over 800 land and air vehicles spawning from British, Japanese, American and other vehicle trees, expanded the map selection, upgraded the interface and tweaked out the graphics and sound for better optimization.

As a 2013 fast-paced shooter title, War Thunder sits at demand tier 2 (Light (entry discrete GPU)) — light on PC. It is light enough for older hardware and even integrated graphics at lower settings.

What to tune first on War Thunder

• Drop shadows, ambient occlusion and volumetric fog first — they cost the most FPS for the least visual change.
• Disable ray tracing unless you have a high-end GPU; it rarely changes competitive feel.
• Cap the frame rate to your monitor refresh to keep input lag consistent.

The FPS table above is a model estimate from the demand-tier + GPU-index method. Real frame rates vary with drivers, background apps, thermals and resolution. Treat it as a buying or upgrade planning aid, then verify in-game. For step-by-step fixes, see the crash-fix and optimization guides linked on this page.