Gaming experience: PUBG & Fortnite

PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG)

We started with PUBG and, like any serious PC gamer, the first thing we did was to turn the settings up to eleven. We were over-enthusiastic. Putting the game on Ultra caused some very noticeable framerate droops, even when simply queuing in the lobby and watching the idle animations. Turning it down to a more reasonable setting of High made the game slightly smoother, but it was still prone to frame drops when mucking around in towns.

Our in-game settings recommendation

The most optimal setting for a balance between smooth gameplay and pretty scenery will have to be Medium, though if you are in it to win it, I recommend keeping the graphics settings at Low for a slightly more stable frame rate. Don’t expect much, though. On Medium the game was pulling around 20 FPS, while Low bumped that up to 25-30 FPS. Hopefully, with a few optimization patches we can start seeing improvements but, for now, 30 FPS hits the bare minimum needed for a smooth run.

So yes, you can run PUBG at the notebook's native resolution 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and have a usable framerate. Should you need higher frame rates to eliminate any unforeseen dips, you can easily get a big boost by taking the resolution down a notch. As it stands now, for a notebook of this caliber, the in-game experience is reasonable even at Full HD resolution when using this in-game setting:-

Fortnite

Up next we have the trending game of the year, Fortnite. This battle royale kept a steady 25 FPS on High quality settings, though Medium pushed it all the way to a respectably solid 60 FPS and higher.

Our in-game settings recommendation

For competitive play, set all the options to Low but max out the draw distance and screen resolution. This setting brings you up to a comfortable 120 FPS, which is turned to an unwavering 60 FPS when vSync was enabled. Fortnite runs amazingly well on the FX504 – everything was smooth and responsive. As such, we can comfortably say that most other notebooks configured around the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti should offer you a similar gaming experience.

One of the highlights testing Fortnite was an exceptionally long-range pistol kill. After a few potshots from extreme range, we picked off a player who just survived a firefight. Draw distance truly is your best friend.