Valorant how to improve FPS - get the maximum out of your PC

While Valorant is a decent running game and developers put much of their attention into improving it to have high performance on some older computers, it might still drop below 60 fps. Whether you want to cross this border or if you are looking to get the best Valorant performance out of your PC - in this "Valorant how to improve FPS guide", we want to show you how to squeeze and optimize every additional frame from your hardware.

What's FPS?

FPS stands for Frames Per Second, also called Frame rate. It's the amount of "pictures" that your computer shows you each second that make up for smooth animation. It means that with 10 FPS, your eye will see only 10 "pictures" each second, and you won't witness a smooth video but a slideshow. That's because a human eye can only notice up to 12 individual frames per second. More than that becomes a motion for our brain.

What is the optimal FPS?

Ideally, you want to reach for the highest possible FPS since more of those mean more fluid animation that you will see. But wait, there's a catch! If you think that getting to 1000 FPS will let you gain an unfair advantage over the player with 200 FPS, then you are mistaken. While FPS improve your gaming experience - especially in shooter games like Valorant or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO), it only does it to a certain degree. Many years ago, in Call of Duty 2, players with higher FPS count were able to jump to places unreachable for others. 

Many people believe that the "Human eye cannot see the difference above 60Hz". This sentence is false, and you shouldn't believe it. The human eye can see the difference even up to 1000Hz. This number is not exact since each human is different, and our eyes aren't the same. So what is the optimal FPS? For a 60Hz monitor, you should have over 60 FPS at all times, and for a 144Hz monitor, aim to keep it above 150. Beyond that, the difference in the animation that you will see shouldn't be noticeable.

System Requirements for an overall good performance

It is possible to be a competitive player on a low-power PC. Based on the official site, here are the lowest possible settings and the recommended ones for playing Valorant.

To truly play with the best settings available, you’ll have to take it to the next level and invest in a powerful machine. You’ll have to compare graphic cards performance like the differences between the NVIDIA GeForce and the AMD Radeon. Either way, you’ll have to make sure to update them with the latest drivers. The better specs your computer has, the better results you’ll get.

But not everyone can open up their wallets like that. So through the magic medium of the internet, we’ll share our top solutions to end and fix your FPS problems. 

What can you do to increase FPS in Valorant?

Switch to a lower graphic's setting in the game

The first thing that you should try to increase FPS is switching to lower settings in the video section of in-game options. In Valorant, it won't give you a huge boost of FPS unless you are using advanced shaders and complicated filtering settings. To maximize FPS, turn every option to the lowest possible.

Turn off unnecessary programs and remove them from startup

The amount of FPS that you get depends on the processing power of your PC. It gets lowered for each program that is currently running on your computer, so when you are set to play Valorant, be sure to turn off all programs that aren't essential for the work of your machine. You can also remove them from startup to make sure that they won't run again with the next startup of your PC. To do that, use the Ctrl+Alt+Del combination of keys and open Task Manager. You will be able to find the startup section and remove all of the programs that you do not need.

A random browser tab could be the one to blame for your issues. There are programs and applications that you can set to enhance the performance of your PC. These apps will disable non-essential functions, shut down some processes, and provide the maximum power for CPU and GPU.

Clean your computer from the trash

Many computer cleaners can help you with this task. Removing unnecessary cookie files, browser histories, and other logs that are completely trivial for most of the PC users can make a great difference - especially if you have never cleaned your computer before and have a full disk. Such programs are safe to use, and most likely, you won't witness that something is missing - maybe besides your lower FPS in games.

Change the graphic card settings

If you haven't altered the settings that your graphic card offers you, then you're in for a treat. It is by far the best thing that you can do to improve your FPS. Most of the graphic cards allow you to personalize the way you want them to work. Especially cards made by Nvidia have a lot to offer in this field. To find the optimal Nvidia control panel settings, be sure to find which options you should set for your graphics card.

Unpark cores

It is a more "hardcore" solution that should be used if all other tricks did not give a pleasing effect. Your processor consists of multiple cores. As your computer runs, some of your cores are set to "parked" mode because the PC doesn't need them at the time. It is done to preserve energy and let some cores “rest” while others do it. The goal of unparking cores is to force all of them to be active at all times. If you set it up like this, it may speed up your GPU's performance since it won't waste time for parking and unparking of your cores. To unpark your cores, you will need a special program. There is free software that can do this task automatically and completely free of charge, so look it up on Google.

Change “hidden” settings in files

Valorant is one of those games that have hidden settings that can be altered from files but cannot be accessed directly from the game. This is your ultimate line of defense against low FPS, and you shouldn't use it unless you cannot squeeze a steady 60 FPS. That's because those settings may drastically change the way the Valorant game looks and might even discourage you from playing it. It’s not hard, but it’s not advisable. 

To find hidden settings, you have to find the AppData folder. You can quickly access it by pushing together Windows+R buttons on your keyboard and typing %AppData% on the “Run” window. You may also search for it in user files or type it on the “start” search bar. After you are inside, open up “Local” files and find the “Shooter Game” folder. There you want to select “GameUserSettings.ini.” The whole path looks like this:

AppData > Local > Shooter Game > Saved > Config > Windows Client > GameUserSettings.ini

On the config folder, you may have also noticed a subfolder that is named with a very complicated combination of numbers and letters. Here you can also find another GameUserSettings.ini file. In both of those files, you want to change numbers that are under the "[Scalability Groups]" line.

Here you can change such various settings, including Resolution Quality, which is a percentage value of your graphics quality. You may turn it down a notch, but everything set below 50.000000 (50%) will be almost unplayable. You can set qualities such as View Distance, Anti-Aliasing, Shadows, Post Processing, Textures, Effects, and Foliage according to your preference. Unlike Resolution Quality, those values aren't a percentage, and here 5 is the maximum, and 0 is the minimum. When you change the options right, click on the settings icon to turn off the "read-only" mode and turn it back on when you are done editing.

Play on fullscreen

This last one might sound obvious to some of you, but there are players that like to play on window mode. Since your PC won’t have to split its resources rendering the Windows menu and Valorant content. Besides, there is no reason to check a Twitter page or Facebook posts while the map is being taken from you. Play with your head, go fullscreen and sync with your team to press the enemy team.

Summary

That's it for our guide on how to increase FPS in the Valorant game. We hope that we can bring you some insight on that topic, and with the methods stated above, you will be able to squeeze more out of your PC. If you want to read more guides like this, be sure to visit the official MMOAuctions blog page, where we are writing about the most popular online multiplayer games. On the other hand, you may also see what's in stock at the gaming market where players from around the world are posting goods for sale. Buy and sell currencies, items, accounts, bots, cheats, and all sorts of different things on  the MMOAuctions marketplace! Thank you for reading, and see you in the next one!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can Valorant run on Windows 7?

Yes, it will do well enough. Although it will perform better on Windows 10.

What's Anisotropic Filtering?

It improves how the texture quality and material quality looks like. Turning it down may drastically increase FPS.

Is Riot Games taking care of the optimization?

Certainly, yes! Riot Games improves the game's performance on every patch. The patch always comes with a bit of buffs and nerfs for Agents, so be sure to read them to select the meta picks and have a better result on your ranked games.

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