Is Fortnite CPU-heavy or is it just me?

Posting this mostly so the next person searching finds an answer. Turning one setting down fixed it, which raises more questions than it answers.

Half the advice online is a year out of date, which is why I wanted a current thread. Will update the post if I find a cleaner solution.

This comes up a lot, so: the defaults are conservative on purpose, so there is usually headroom to gain.

Good luck, it is a common snag.

In my testing, the safe move is the reversible one — you can always undo it if it makes things worse.

In my testing, region and server load matter more than most guides acknowledge.