How to Get More FPS in Valorant on a Low-End PC

Valorant is designed to run on low-end hardware — Riot's target is 60 FPS on an Intel HD 4000 integrated GPU. But "designed to run" and "running smoothly at consistent 144+ FPS" are very different things. If you're on a budget PC and getting sub-60 FPS, stutters, or frame drops mid-match, this guide fixes it. For the broader Windows-level changes, see the how to boost FPS in Windows 11 guide which covers power plans and GPU settings applicable to all games.

Best In-Game Settings for Low-End PCs

Valorant's graphics settings have a bigger impact than most games because several options bypass the GPU entirely or change how the CPU handles rendering.

Display

• Display Mode: Fullscreen (never Windowed or Borderless — both add latency and reduce performance)
• Resolution: Native is ideal for aim, but dropping to 1600x900 on a 1080p monitor gives a significant FPS boost
• Frame Rate Limit: Set to your monitor's refresh rate. Uncapped wastes CPU cycles rendering frames you can't see

Graphics Quality

Set everything to Low for maximum FPS on a budget PC:

| Setting | Value | |---|---| | Multisample Anti-Aliasing | None | | Anisotropic Filtering | 1x | | Clarity | Off | | Bloom | Off | | Distortion | Off | | First-Person Shadows | Off | | Material Quality | Low | | Texture Quality | Low | | Detail Quality | Low | | UI Quality | Low | | Shadows | Off |

Vignette and Improve Clarity are GPU-bound — off for performance.

Windows Settings for Valorant

Disable Xbox Game Bar and Game Mode Interference

Xbox Game Bar records your gameplay in the background even when you're not using it. On low-end hardware, this steals GPU time.

Settings → Gaming → Xbox Game Bar → Off

Keep Game Mode on — it helps more than it hurts.

Set Valorant's Process Priority

While Valorant is running, open Task Manager, find VALORANT-Win64-Shipping.exe, right-click → Set Priority → Above Normal.

For a permanent fix, this can be set automatically via registry at process launch — SageTweaks handles this for Valorant and other competitive titles automatically.

Close Background Applications

Chrome with 10 tabs open uses 1–3GB of RAM. Discord's hardware acceleration uses 20–50MB of VRAM. On a system with 8GB RAM and 4GB VRAM, this matters enormously.

Before playing:

• Close all browsers (or use a lightweight tab suspender)
• Disable Discord's hardware acceleration: User Settings → Advanced → Hardware Acceleration → Off
• Close Spotify — use the web version instead, which uses less RAM

GPU Driver Settings

NVIDIA (for GTX 900–1600 series — most common low-end cards)

In NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings → Program Settings (select VALORANT):

• Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance
• Texture filtering — Quality: High performance
• Vertical sync: Off
• Low Latency Mode: Ultra
• Shader Cache Size: Unlimited

AMD (for RX 400–580 series)

In Radeon Software → Gaming → Valorant:

• Radeon Anti-Lag: Enabled
• Radeon Boost: Enabled (dynamically lowers resolution during fast motion — big FPS win)
• FreeSync: Enabled if your monitor supports it
• Wait for Vertical Refresh: Off

System Cleanup for Low-End Hardware

On a low-end PC, every gigabyte of RAM and every background process matters more than on high-end hardware.

Disable startup apps: Ctrl+Shift+Esc → Startup apps — disable everything except antivirus. This frees RAM before the game even launches.

Clear Valorant's shader cache: If you're seeing stutters at the start of rounds, your shader cache may be corrupted.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Riot Games\Riot Client\Data\Cache

Delete the contents of this folder. Valorant will rebuild it cleanly on next launch.

What to Expect After These Changes

On a typical low-end PC (Core i5-7400, GTX 1050, 8GB RAM):

• Before: 55–75 FPS with frequent drops to 40 FPS
• After: 90–120 FPS with rare drops below 75 FPS

The biggest single win for most users is: in-game settings to Low + disable Xbox Game Bar + set GPU power mode to maximum performance.

Want all of these applied automatically, including the process priority fix that persists across reboots? SageTweaks handles the full Valorant optimization profile, including settings specific to your GPU model. For a dedicated Valorant FPS boost page, see the Valorant FPS boost guide, or explore the PC optimization checklist for a full setup walkthrough.