Menu Lag Fixes

The most common lag or performance issue people encounter is the infamous “menu lag” on low VRAM gpus in demanding cities such as Coruscant and Dantooine. It is when you launch your game with normal fps, play normally, but then when you pause the game, your FPS dips to like 10 and STAYS that way. Quick fixes to get it back to normal include:

  • Spam pressing Esc a few times
  • Quicksaving

Please understand that this is an engine issue with the actual game, and I have personally spent $1000+ in attempts to fix it. As of August 2026, we’ve officially funded the creation of the Menu Lag Fix mod on Nexus that fixes it for most people in the 8-12 GB VRAM range, and it is automatically included in the modlist. If you still regularly encounter menu lag, we’ll need your help to fix it! Please perform the following steps:

  • Join the Discord and install the test version of Menu Lag Fix in MO2. If it fixes the issue for you, let us know! If it doesn’t, perform the following steps:
    • Launch the game and do something that triggers menu lag.
    • Wait a 5-10 seconds.
    • Send us your StarfieldPauseLODHold.log located in C:\Users\xxxxx\Documents\My Games\Starfield\SFSE\Logs

Beyond that, there are a few things you can do that minimizes menu lag.

  • Increase your page file to at least 80000 (80 GB) if you haven’t already. This is very important and the main fix to countless problems even beyond menu lag.
  • If you have 12 GB or less VRAM, make sure you are not playing at a resolution above 1440p and are not using any HD Overhaul mods.
  • Make sure none of these apps are running on your PC.
  • Disable auto-save. Many people say this helps. Just be aware that you obviously won’t have auto-save anymore. You’re gonna have to quicksave or make manual saves. It is under Gameplay Options at the very bottom.
  • Recompile your shaders by navigating to the top right of Mod Organizer 2 and swap it from SFSE to StarfieldShaderReset and run it once.

Additional Potential Fixes

  • Change the Power Management Mode for your GPU to Prefer Maximum Performance
  • Navigate to \xxxx\steamapps\common\Starfield. Right click Starfield.exe and select Properties.
    • Checkmark Disable fullscreen optimizations
    • Click the button that says Change settings for all users
      • Enable Run this program as an administrator
  • Experimental: Setting Steam to Offline Mod (One person told me this fixed it for them so idk)

Beyond these possible fixes, I recommend just using the Tab menu to “pause” your game instead of the actual Esc pause, as that doesn’t cause menu lag. Ultimately, this is just an engine/optimization issue with Starfield itself and many non-genesis users are starting tp experience it too. I’m sure the problem will be fully solved one day by either Bethesda or a very talented modder.

Many people would say this issue is caused by Genesis being “bloated”, when it is in fact the opposite. The actual Genesis modlist by itself is only ~70 GB, including textures. We rarely utilize unnecessary 4K textures, and a large majority of our textures are 1-2K. Additionally, Genesis is the only Star Wars modlist that has spent the countless hours necessary to migrate all textures to the PC-exclusive LZ4 compression for better performance. By default, all the Star Wars mods on Nexus use the outdated zlib compression so that they are compatible for consoles.