Introduction
In this tutorial you will learn how to enable the FPS overlay in Battlefield 1, so that you can check out with how much frames per second you can run the game. Enabling the FPS overlay was already possible in previous games of the Battlefield series or games with the Frostbyte engine. I wrote very similar guides for EA games like Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline, Star Wars Battlefront and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst but for the sake of completeness and distinction, I am writing this separate FPS tutorial for Battlefield 1 as well, even if the approach to enable the FPS overlay is the same. Read on to learn more…
How to Show the FPS in Battlefield 1
The following method is very simple and the best method if we just want to show the FPS for a short period…
- Just open the Battlefield 1 console with the tilde key (~).
- In the console we have to type the command “perfoverlay.drawfps 1” without the quotation marks please and confirm the command with the return key.
How to disable the FPS overlay in Battlefield 1
- Just open the Battlefield 1 console again with the tilde key (~).
- This time we have to type the command “perfoverlay.drawfps 0” without the quotation marks and use the return key to confirm.
- By the way, the FPS overlay will also be disabled if we just restart the game.
Permanent Activation of the FPS Overlay
In case you want to have the FPS constantly shown for a longer benchmark test, the following method might be better for you…
- Learn how to create a Battlefield 1 config file called “user.cfg”.
- Store the command “PerfOverlay.DrawFPS 1” in a separate line of the “user.cfg” file.
- If you don’t need the FPS overlay anymore, you can just disable it by removing the line from the text file, or by changing it to “PerfOverlay.DrawFPS 0”.
Currenty the “perfoverlay.drawfps” command is not working consistently. Several players reported in the web that they have issues with the command. It might be that this is a temporary bug. In case you have trouble too, file a bug report and let them know it!
Closing Words
Now you know two methods to enable and show the FPS display in Battlefield 1. The method with the console works just well if you don’t want to check out your frame rate all the time, while the method with the config file might be more appropriate if you want to show the FPS for a much longer time. I hope this short tutorial was helpful and I do also hope that your gaming rig works more than smooth with Battlefield 1. Let me know in the comment section what you think about the game, how well your rig runs the game, or if you want to drop any other thoughts. Also check out all the other useful Battlefield 1 console commands. Happy gaming!
Diary of Dennis 
Just what I was looking for! Thank you, Dennis. 🙂
I am happy that I could help 🙂 I hope the command works again perfectly, because I’ve nioticed that it didn’t work consistently for some people.
Ty it works but only for 1min or so then disappears not bad tho Im getting 50 to 60 fps on a gtx 970 with a 3770 and 8 g ram high settings haven’t tried ultra yet
It’s strange that they still didn’t fix the FPS overlay. For now it’s better to use screen capture tools that have an FPS overlay too. But well, it’s anyway just benchmarking for a moment, and then just playing 😉 I hope you have fun!
Thank u always wondered what the hell poped up on ~ was hit by accident, an i got my fps on screen thanks a million.
I am glad the guide was useful for you.
I find out when I change any graphical settings whatsoever the draw FPS setting has to be done over again
You might try this then: https://diaryofdennis.com/2016/08/11/how-to-create-a-config-file-for-battlefield-1/
However, it’s maybe still bugged but you can try out.
-PerfOverlay.FpsTimePeriod I set mine to 55 not sure if thats seconds, min, hours, days, etc…. but it stays up. Also you might like PerfOverlay.FpsDisplayScale 5 any bigger than that and it’s weird.
The PerfOverlay.FpsTimePeriod command sets the refresh rate of the FPS counter and you can use float values in seconds. Something like “PerfOverlay.FpsTimePeriod 0.5” would mean the counter is refreshed every half second. In your case you did set it to every 55 seconds. Still interesting if using this command in combination with the “PerfOverlay.DrawFPS” fixed your issue. Could you test if that is still the case with 0.5 or 0.1 seconds refresh rate? If that is fixing it too, that would be the ideal workaround for the disappearing fps counter. Alternatively there is another fix…
The commands also work if you put them in the launch options, and if “-PerfOverlay.DrawFps 1” (dash needs to be used before the command) is used there, it won’t disappear anymore.
PerfOverlay.FpsDisplayScale sounds interesting. I do still wonder why they minimized the size with BF1, the default size in previous BF games was just fine.
Nice one dude.
I am glad you like the guide 🙂