How to fix lag in Valorant?

Content:

• How to fix lag in Valorant?
  • Check your internet connection
  • System requirements
  • Check Riot Server Status
• How to reduce stuttering / freezing in Valorant
  • Update graphics drivers
  • Power mode
  • Uncheck Full Screen Optimization
  • Enable hardware accelerated GPU scheduling
  • Game Mode
  • In-Game Settings
  • Reinstall the game
• Summarizing

Lag is a nightmare for every online gamer. It ruins your gaming experience and fuels your frustration to the point where you just want to exit the game. If you’re playing any FPS like Valorant, you’ll want the game to run as smoothly as possible so you don’t miss those crisp headshots.

So, let’s dive into the various fixes you can use to reduce and ultimately prevent your Valorant from freezing, stuttering or lagging in-game.

How to fix lag in Valorant?

If you’re on the verge of rage quitting Valorant due to constant freezes and stutters, hold your horses. We’ve listed a few solutions for you to try and we hope they get you out of this weird situation and get you back on the road to rank up with your friends!

The first step to fixing game lag is to determine if your internet is causing the problem or if your computer is incompatible with running a game like Valorant.

Check your internet connection

Facing packet loss and high ping in the game? This may happen because your computer has insufficient bandwidth to quickly receive or send a response to the riot server.

An FPS game like Valorant requires a minimum internet speed of 3Mbps. You can test your internet speed with SpeedTest and contact your ISP if it’s not up to par. You can also try restarting the internet to fix the problem.

System requirements

Like all other PC games, Valorant also has its own system requirements that your PC must meet to provide you with a more immersive and smooth gaming experience. If your computer does not meet these specifications, you will likely have to deal with frequent frame drops and stutters.

Here are the minimum requirements; as stated by Riot itself:

Frames per second output CPU requirement GPU requirement

Tip: Since Valorant is a CPU intensive game, we recommend upgrading the CPU before the GPU.

Check Riot Server Status

There’s a chance that if your PC’s specs and internet speed aren’t an issue, the real problem could be with Riot’s servers. Sometimes the servers can be down due to maintenance, or they can go haywire, which can be the reason why you’re lagging behind.

You can visit the Riot website to check the current status of the server, or check out Twitter for any updates regarding the game.

How to reduce stuttering / freezing in Valorant

If your game constantly stutters or freezes, it can be excruciating for the player. That’s why we’ve listed some tweaks and important fixes below to help fix your problem so you can enjoy a smoother gaming experience:

Update graphics drivers

Whenever you encounter performance issues with any game, your first step should be to check if your graphics drivers are up to date. Graphics card manufacturers regularly release updates to improve performance or fix any bugs and glitches that might be causing your PC performance issues.

It is possible that your Valorant is slow or slow due to an old graphics driver. Here is how you can update your graphics driver:

• Open device manager. You can find this by typing “Device Manager” in the Windows search bar.
• Go to “Display adapters” and double click on it.
• Right-click the name of your graphics card and select Update Driver.
• Select “Search for Drivers Automatically” and follow the instructions to update the driver successfully. Make sure you have a stable internet connection during the process.

Power mode

By default, your power mode is set in the middle between “Best Energy Savings” and “Best Performance”. If you want to squeeze every last FPS your computer is capable of outputting and reduce the blinds, you should set the Power Mode to “Best Performance”. Here is how you can do it:

• Search for “Power and sleep settings” in the search bar and click on the first result.
• Go to “Power Mode” and move the slider to the right to select “Best Performance”.

If step 2 is not available for you, you will have to go to “Advanced Power Options” and select “Maximum Performance” from the options.

Uncheck Full Screen Optimization

Disabling full screen optimization can help improve and smooth the performance you get in Valorant. Disabling this setting can help increase the FPS counter a bit if you follow these steps:

• Right click on the Valorant icon and go to Properties.
• Then go to “Compatibility” and uncheck “Disable Full Screen Optimization” if it’s not checked.
• Click “Apply” and then “OK” to save your changes.

Enable hardware accelerated GPU scheduling

Hardware accelerated GPU scheduling is a feature introduced in Windows 10 that allows your graphics card to manage its scheduling instead of relying on the CPU. This naturally reduces latency and provides a significant performance boost.

Therefore, it is always recommended to enable hardware acceleration, and here is how you can do it:

• Open graphics settings by typing “graphics settings” in the Windows search bar.
• Enable GPU scheduling hardware acceleration and restart your computer to apply the settings.

Game Mode

Game Mode is another feature introduced in Windows 10 to improve gaming performance. Basically, Game Mode detects the games on your PC and gives them high priority to use resources like your CPU and GPU while other apps go into the background.

Although Game Mode is enabled on your computer by default, it can sometimes cause freezes, freezes, and crashes in your games. Therefore, you can try disabling this feature and see if you see any performance improvements in Valorant. As a general rule, if you own a low-end PC, it’s a good idea to enable Game Mode as it can provide a significant performance boost.

With that said, you should probably try both settings to see which one works best for you. Here’s how you can turn Game Mode on or off:

• Navigate to the Game Mode settings through the Windows search bar.
• From here, you can enable or disable Game Mode settings with the toggle

In-Game Settings

If you don’t care about aesthetics and only want performance, lowering the graphical settings in Valorant can increase FPS significantly. Here are some important settings that can greatly affect your in-game FPS when tweaked:

SettingValue

Also, make sure that the display mode is set to Full Screen on the General tab and that the refresh rate matches your monitor’s frequency.

Reinstall the game

If none of the above fixes worked for you and you are still experiencing lag, we recommend reinstalling Valorant as a last resort. Reinstalling the game can do wonders as there is a chance that some of your game files may have been corrupted during installation and downloading them may fix them as well as lags and stutters.

First, you need to uninstall the game, and here’s how you can do it:

• Navigate to “Add/Remove Programs” via the Windows search bar.
• Find “Valorant” and click on it to display the “Uninstall” button. Click the Uninstall button to remove Valorant from your PC.

Once you have uninstalled Valorant, you can visit their Riot website to download the game again.

Summarizing

While the lag is annoying, the good thing is that it can always be fixed by changing the game settings or, even worse, updating the computer to improve performance. So, lately, if your Valorant experience has been filled with frequent stutters and FPS drops, we hope our aforementioned fixes have helped you.