PUB Gfx+ is a free tool for XDA members which improves PUBG’s performance

PUB Gfx+ is a free tool made by XDA Senior Member It has one simple goal – to improve the performance of PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds (PUBG) on your mobile phone. How it works is simple, as all it does is modify the game’s configuration files on your device. This and previous tools have not gotten users banned yet, but always exercise caution when using external tools to modify your gameplay. There is a myriad of options to choose from, between ultra high graphics settings to uncapping the FPS of your device, this app has it all. What’s more, XDA members can get the full version of the application for free from XDA Labs!

PUB Gfx+

PUB Gfx+ is currently a best seller on the Indian and Indonesian Google Play Stores, and for good reason. It’s an app that does what it advertises to do well. Take a look at some of the screenshots below. Between multiple basic graphics settings, more detailed fixes, and details and advanced settings, there’s plenty here to check out.

While it’s pretty clear that the graphics settings work, what about in-game FPS? How is it affected by using settings such as Vulkan, Zero Lag Mode, or even just halving the resolution? We set out to find out. Firstly, we’re going to test what FPS we get on an unmodified PUBG installation on the OnePlus 3. We used an older flagship for testing seeing as newer flagships will not need these kinds of modifications to run the game anyway.

If you’re wondering about the exact testing conditions, my OnePlus 3 is on the latest OxygenOS version with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, Adreno 530 GPU, and 6GB of RAM. We would like to give special thanks to the team at GameBench for the assistance they provided us. Their tool makes it possible for any person, whether it be a regular user, journalist, or engineer, to test a mobile game’s performance on an Android device. They have an Android app you can install to start benchmarking your games as well.

PUBG Unmodified FPS on the OnePlus 3

While at first, this may seem like a great performance out of the box on the OnePlus 3, it’s only when you’re in-game do you notice the issues. The median FPS is 30, but by default, the OnePlus 3 runs the game at a capped FPS of 60. That means that while there are massive FPS drops, there are also massive FPS climbs to 60 for no apparent reason. For example, when driving/running and a far-off town begins to load, the FPS will drop as low as 10, which makes the game unplayable. It’s stable in a lot of aspects once you’re not moving, but driving especially is painful. Even just parachuting out of the plane at the start of the game proves a tricky task as it’s a choppy mess.

This is the baseline performance that we will be comparing all settings.

PUBG Zero Lag mode on the OnePlus 3

We decided to go for what may be the best of the bunch first – zero lag mode. This is a great result. While 38 FPS isn’t much, zero lag mode actually caps the FPS to 40 as it’s also a battery efficient mode. Keep in mind that it is a 6-minute playthrough, but that was enough time for me to go through Pochinki, get 3 kills, and drive a motorbike through the fields before crashing to my death. It’s an absolutely stellar result in contrast to the previous, which saw a 20 FPS median around the same timeframe into the game.

PUBG Vulkan mode on the OnePlus 3

Vulkan is the successor to OpenGL, and may actually be the default Android graphics renderer in the future. These results are interesting as while the FPS was capped to 20, the stability is nearly 100%. It’s a hard toss-up to choose between using Vulkan and the zero lag mode, as both have their advantages. It’s clear that with Vulkan it’s a lot more stable, and in turn thanks to the lower FPS we get a lower CPU usage and thus a lower battery drain as well. It’s clear that so far one of these two modes are the best, but we’ve got one more test to try.

PUBG Everything on low OnePlus 3

This is with graphics on low, shadows off, detail mode off, OpenGL 2.0 on, and memory boost enabled. The resolution has also been set to 960×540.

As we can see, it’s about average. This is definitely an improvement upon the initial, unmodified version, but not by much. Gunfights are smooth, but driving is choppy again as the game starts to render distant objects. When working in the same area everything is 40 FPS or higher which is nice, but there are tradeoffs in that traveling will see you face frame drops. Still, it’s worth playing with simply to see if it fares better on your device.

PUB Gfx+ – Worth it?

PUB Gfx+ works, there’s no doubt about that. Some of its settings work better than others, and the zero lag mode does exactly what it says on the tin. This is by far the best option to go for if you want a quick and easy, out of the box solution. It’s definitely worth giving a try if your device struggles to run PUBG. Let us know in the comments what you think, and be sure to buy the full version of the application on the Google Play Store to support the developer if it works for you! Check out the XDA thread as well!