10 best Minecraft optimization and performance mods (2023)

Minecraft might be an old sandbox game, but it can still be resource demanding and stress any device that it's running on. Due to its nearly endless world map, the game generates millions of blocks and thousands of mobs when players roam its world. At first, things will run smoothly. However, gradually, the CPU and GPU of your device will find it more challenging to offer a stable and enjoyable experience.

Thankfully, many third-party performance and optimization mods can drastically improve the gameplay. Here is a list of ten such Minecraft mods.

Note: This article is subjective and solely reflects the writer's opinion.

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List of great optimization and performance mods for Minecraft

1) Sodium

Sodium is a performance mod that essentially adds a bunch of new features to the title, helping smoothen out chunk rendering. Furthermore, it also fixes various graphical issues and stuttering to drastically increase FPS.

Apart from this, it has support for shaders with the help of Iris shaders. Sodium is one of the most popular performance mods out there and is used by millions of players.

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2) OptiFine

Similar to Sodium, OptiFine is a performance mod that adds many settings and makes optimizations to improve chunk rendering and enhance the title's overall graphics.

This is the oldest and most established optimization extension available for Minecraft that not only increases FPS by improving rendering systems but also offers a plethora of new video settings and even direct support for shaders.

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3) Lithium

Lithium is a performance mod that not only focuses on increasing FPS but also improves mob AI, physics, block ticking, and other systems present in this game. It works on both client and server game versions and can improve a server's tick rate by 45% as well. This is another must-have mod for playing the game smoothly.

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4) Chunk-Pregenerator

When players create a new world, Minecraft starts generating chunks that are near their spawn point. As they move around, new areas start forming around them.

This vanilla method of creating environments with chunks can be heavy on your device. The Chunk-Pregenerator mod generates loads of chunks before you enter a game, boosting the FPS and preventing drops.

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5) Entity Culling

Entity Culling is a unique Minecraft mod that prevents the game from rendering anything that is away from the player's line of sight or path. By default, it materializes everything that is around the gamer, even things that are not visible to them.

It utilizes your free CPU cores to path-trace your camera and determine whether blocks and entities are visible or not. This drastically decreases the load on your device and increases FPS.

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6) BetterFPS

BetterFPS, as its name suggests, adds various performance tweaks to Minecraft that improve this title's frame rate. From tinkering with algorithms to preallocating RAM, removing fog, and much more, this mod makes quite a lot of changes to the game and ensures smooth gameplay.

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7) Spark

Spark is a mod that monitors CPU usage, server tick rates, lag spikes, memory issues with this game's server, and more. This is particularly useful for server-side Minecraft worlds. Spark consists of a CPU profiler, a memory inspection tool, and a server health reporting tool.

This mod doesn't directly improve performance, but it can help you troubleshoot and keep track of where performance issues stem from.

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8) Clumps

Clumps is an extremely simple mod that groups XP orbs scattered around the world when a smaller entity or boss mob is defeated. Small XP orbs can contribute to lag and can be quite annoying in XP farms. Clumps ensures this is no longer a problem.

This mod is great for single-player worlds, but it's even better for multiplayer, where many players will be creating XP orbs.

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9) Cull Leaves

Players are usually roaming around the overworld, which has loads of trees and leaves. In the fancy Graphics mode, tree leaf blocks will be semi-transparent, but that can be challenging for your device to render.

This mod simply culls leaf blocks, providing a drastic boost in performance. Cull Leaves is essentially an alternative to the 'smart leaves' feature already present in OptiFine. It also lets you enjoy the Graphics mode better.

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10) FPS Reducer

This mod is somewhat unique since it does not help the game run better but allows users to optimize how demanding the game is in terms of resources. It reduces unnecessary GPU and CPU load by reducing the FPS automatically when the game window is inactive or when players are inactive in Minecraft for a certain period of time.