How to Get the Best FPS Out of Sodium Without Ruining the Look

Sodium's defaults are already tuned well, but a few adjustments get you more frames while keeping the game looking normal.

Settings that matter most

• Render distance: the single biggest lever. Drop it by a few chunks and you will see a large gain. Sodium handles distant chunks efficiently, so you can often keep this higher than you could without it.
• Simulation distance: controls how far blocks and entities actually tick. Lowering this reduces CPU load and lag spikes without changing what you see at range.
• Clouds and weather: switching clouds to a cheaper mode or off frees GPU time with minimal visual cost.
• Entity distance: if you play in crowded areas, reducing how far entities render helps a lot.

What not to touch

Leave the advanced culling and threading options at their defaults unless you are chasing a specific bug. They are tuned to work together, and disabling them usually costs performance rather than gaining it.

Verify your gain

Enable the FPS display and stand in a busy area — a village or a forest — rather than an empty plain. Sodium's biggest wins show up where there are many chunks and block updates, so test where it counts. If you see no difference at all, another mod is likely handling rendering instead.