Part of the beauty of PC gaming is enjoying the best graphics and performance the industry has to offer. But when you’re suffering from a low frame rate, it’s hard to enjoy a game at all.
Whether your latest purchase isn’t running smoothly on your PC, or you suddenly find games struggling to perform in general, we’re here to help. Here’s how to fix low FPS issues in Windows and get back to high-quality gaming.
First: Know the Difference Between Low FPS and Network Lag
Before you spend time fixing the low frames per second on your PC, it’s important to understand the difference between low FPS and online lag. People sometimes confuse these.
When you experience low FPS, something with your computer is at fault. You’ll know you have an FPS problem if games stutter like you’re watching a slideshow, even when playing an offline game. Make sure you also understand monitor refresh rates and frame rates so you know what to expect from your display and games.
Lag, on the other hand, lies with an issue in the network. You can have a high FPS count yet still experience terrible lag. This occurs when players in an online game freeze up, warp around suddenly, and otherwise don’t behave normally.
If you’re experiencing online lag, make sure your computer is wired into your router with an Ethernet cable if possible. You should also close bandwidth-hungry apps running on your network, and check for common issues that slow down your connection.
How to Fix Low Frame Rate: The Basics
Let’s begin by looking at a few fundamental fixes you should perform to boost frame rates. In many cases, when you wonder why your game FPS is so low, these tweaks will make a big improvement.
1. Update Your Drivers
Drivers are special pieces of software that handle the interface between your computer and connected hardware. Average PC users don’t usually need to worry about updating them, but it’s a different story for gamers. Running out-of-date drivers, especially your video drivers, can hamper gaming performance.
Follow our guide to finding and replacing outdated drivers to make sure everything on your system is current. The chipset driver is an important one, but your graphics driver is the most vital for reliable FPS in games.
To update your graphics driver, visit Nvidia’s driver page or AMD’s driver page, depending on what graphics card you have. If you play on integrated graphics, run Intel’s driver update tool (though remember that using integrated graphics will severely limit gaming performance).
Instead of downloading drivers manually, Nvidia and AMD both offer software utilities that make downloading the latest drivers easy. You can download these on the driver pages above, which we recommend doing. In addition to letting you know when a new update is available, they give you access to more tweaks and features.
2. Close Unnecessary Background Programs
When you’re playing a game, especially demanding modern titles, it’s a good idea to close other processes that you don’t need. This frees up resources that your computer can further dedicate to the game.
You can do this quickly by closing anything that’s open on your taskbar. It’s worth checking the system tray on the right side of the taskbar for any background apps, too.
To dive a little deeper and see what’s using up resources, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager. Click More details if needed to expand it, then you can see what’s using resources on the Processes tab and Monitors that Dont Lag while playing COD Warzone. Anything using a significant amount of the CPU, memory, or GPU will likely harm game performance. Close those before you start your game.
Having your browser open with 50 tabs, letting cloud storage apps sync, or running file transfers while trying to play games can result in lower FPS—even on a good computer. If your frame rate is low all of a sudden, check for programs that just started using a lot of resources.
Most gamers have hopefully upgraded to a solid-state drive (SSD) by now. But in case you’re still using an HDD, you should make sure the disk is defragmented. If you use an SSD, you should not defragment, as doing so can shorten the life of your drive.
To do this, type defrag into the Start menu and click the Defragment and Optimize Drives entry. If it’s been a while since the drive was last defragged, you should do so.
Modern versions of Windows do this automatically, so you shouldn’t need to defrag manually. You can adjust the schedule if you like, though. And if you are using an HDD, prioritize replacing it with an SSD as soon as possible for a boost in gaming performance.
How to Fix Low Game FPS With Windows Tweaks
Now that you’ve performed the basic steps to fix low FPS on your machine, let’s take a look at some Windows settings you can adjust to enhance gaming performance.
4. Adjust Power Options
The power options in Windows let you change settings related to energy consumption with your machine. On the default plan, Windows tries to balance power consumption with performance. Sometimes, especially on laptops, this can lead to decreased performance in games.
It’s a good idea to switch to the High performance plan. To do this, visit Settings > System > Power & sleep and click Additional power settings on the right side. If you don’t see that link text, drag the Settings window horizontally until it shows. This will lead you to the Power Options section of the Control Panel.
Note that this will increase the power consumption of your computer. On a desktop, this isn’t really a problem, aside from a slightly higher energy bill. But laptops will see worse battery life, so make sure your system is plugged in.
5. Turn Off Visual Effects in Windows
By default, Windows uses a lot of fancy visual effects around the OS. These make menus and other common elements look smother, but also use up some resources.
Since every bit of performance helps when gaming, you might wish to disable these effects. You likely won’t see much benefit from this unless you’re on a low-end PC, but it’s still worth a try.
To disable visual effects in Windows, type performance into the Start menu and select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows. On the resulting menu’s Visual Effects tab, you’ll see a list of graphical features you can enable or disable.
Click the Adjust for best performance button to disable all these effects, followed by OK. It will take a moment as Windows disables them. When it’s done, the interface won’t look as slick, but you won’t notice that when you’re playing a game anyway.
6. Disable the Game Bar and Background Recording
Windows 10 and 11 include a Game Bar feature that allows you to record game clips, take screenshots, and even stream your gameplay. While it’s handy in certain situations, it can also negatively impact game performance.
Unless you specifically want to use this feature for something, you should disable it to avoid potential interference. Head to Settings > Gaming > Xbox Game Bar and turn off the Enable Xbox Game Bar… slider at the top to prevent it from running.
Next, you should switch to the Captures tab and ensure the Record in the background while I’m playing a game toggle is turned off. This is another Windows gaming feature that makes it easy to capture big moments, but uses up system resources that are better put towards graphical performance.