Hollow Knight Silksong Low FPS RTX 4070 Settings Driver Fix

Quick Answer

Low fps in Hollow Knight Silksong on a RTX 4070 usually comes from a stale driver, a power/thermal limit or settings above the card's comfort zone — not a weak card. Updating the RTX 4070 driver, enabling the right upscaler and tuning two or three heavy settings typically recovers 20-40% of your frame rate for free.

Settings that actually move the frame rate

Not every setting costs the same. In Hollow Knight Silksong, the expensive toggles are shadows, volumetric and ambient-occlusion quality, and any ray-tracing option; drop those to high or medium first and you reclaim most of the lost frames while the image barely changes. On a RTX 4070, lean on FSR/DLSS Quality or the upscaler in the handheld settings to lift fps without a visible hit. Leave texture quality high if your 12GB GDDR6X buffer allows it — textures cost VRAM, not fps, until you run out. Silksong is a light 2d engine; clean, consistent frame pacing for its precise platforming matters far more than raw fps.

Driver, power and thermals

A clean RTX 4070 driver install is the single highest-value step — remove the old driver fully and install the current release fresh. Then check thermals: in SA summer heat, a RTX 4070 that throttles will quietly shed frames, so confirm case airflow and that the card holds its boost clock under load. Make sure the GPU is running at full PCIe lanes and the system power plan is set to high performance, not balanced, which can cap clocks.

When more frames need new parts

If you have tuned settings and updated drivers and the frame rate still misses your target, the bottleneck may be elsewhere. A Hollow Knight Silksong that stays GPU-pinned wants a stronger card; one that sits at low GPU usage is CPU- or RAM-limited, where a faster chip or a jump to 32GB DDR5 helps more than a new GPU. A RTX 4070 sits in the mid-range bracket (around R13,000 as a card), so match the rest of the build to it before spending on a replacement. Evetech stocks the matching CPUs, memory and monitors to balance the system.

FAQ

Which setting should I lower first for more fps in Hollow Knight Silksong?

Shadows and any ray-tracing or volumetric option — they are the most expensive and the least noticeable when reduced. Drop those to medium-high first and enable the upscaler before you touch textures or resolution.

Does a RTX 4070 bottleneck Hollow Knight Silksong, or is it my CPU?

Check GPU usage in an overlay: if the RTX 4070 sits near 100%, it is the limiter and a settings drop or upscaler helps; if GPU usage is low while fps lags, the CPU or RAM is the bottleneck and the GPU is waiting on it.

Will a fresh driver really improve Hollow Knight Silksong performance?

Often noticeably — a clean, current RTX 4070 driver can add measurable frames and fix stutter, especially on newer titles where the vendor ships game-ready optimisations after launch.