Vanilla Minecraft isn't exactly great in terms of performance, but we can fix that.
For years now, Optifine has been the gold standard in terms of mods that increase performance, but the problems are:
- Closed source. Open source allows other people to make sure nothing suspicious is in the code, and fix problems they find.
- Not the best anymore. Performance from the mods we'll be installing in this guide will be much better than what Optifine can provide.
- Updates take forever. The project is so large, that it takes forever for it to be updated to new versions.
But what is the solution? Isn't Optifine the best? Wrong!
Thanks to the CaffieneMC team, the Iris team, and many other people, we can have MUCH better performance than Optifine, and have almost the same features! These projects are rapidly updated, and best of all, they're open source!
This guide is designed for Minecraft version 1.16.5, using the MultiMC launcher.
First things first, you'll need the latest version of Java.
On Windows, you can get it from here.
On Arch based Linux distributions, you can install jdk-adoptopenjdk from the AUR.
On Debian/Ubuntu based Linux distributions, instructions are available here.
Once installed, we can move on to installing MultiMC.
If you already have MultiMC, you can skip the installation process, and go straight to installing the modpack.
On Windows, you can get it from here.
On Arch based Linux distributions, you can install multimc5 from the AUR.
On Debian/Ubuntu based Linux distributions, you can download the .deb file here.
When you first launch MultiMC, it will ask you for your Java version. Select the Java version we installed earlier.
Now, we can move on to installing the modpack.
The modpack can be downloaded here.
You can find the list of mods here.
To install the pack, go to Add Instance > Import from zip > Browse, and select the modpack.
Right click on the new instance, and click Edit Instance.
Within the instance editor, go to Settings > Java, and check the Java installation checkbox.
Select your Java version. Sometimes, MultiMC can't auto detect it, and you will have to find where it's located yourself.
Now, check the Memory box, and adjust the Memory allocation settings to your liking. Around 50% of your system memory is the sweet spot.
Now, launch the game. Congratulations, you're done! But, if you want to squeeze even more performance out of Minecraft...
Note: All of these steps are optional, but are recommended if you want the absolute best performance.
Install Gamemode if you haven't already.
On Arch based Linux distributions, you can install gamemode and lib32-gamemode from the main repositories.
On Ubuntu based Linux distributions, it should already be installed. If it isn't, install gamemode from the main repositories.
Run Minecraft with your wrapper command set to gamemoderun
This can be done in the Instance Editor under Settings > Custom Commands.
Tick the Custom Commands checkbox, and put the wrapper command in the Wrapper command: box.
If applicable, also follow the changes listed below.
Run Minecraft with your wrapper command set to env mesa_glthread=true allow_glsl_extension_directive_midshader=true gamemoderun
Some shaders will also require force_glsl_extensions_warn=true.
Put it in after allow_glsl_extension_directive_midshader=true if needed.
Run Minecraft with your wrapper command set to env __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 gamemoderun
Type these commands in your terminal:
git clone https://github.com/ninja-/glfw.git -b wayland_fixes
cd glfw
sudo cmake --build . --target install
This will install a custom GLFW fork for Minecraft on Wayland, which provides some fixes/performance improvements.
Then, in Settings > Minecraft > Native library workarounds, check Use system installation of GLFW.
I hope this helped boost your Minecraft performance, even just a bit. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to reply to this Gist. I will try to respond to them.