Valorant FPS Boost: Best Settings on Unreal Engine 5
SHORT ANSWER
For maximum Valorant FPS, set Material, Texture, Detail and UI Quality to Low, turn off Vignette, Bloom, Distortion, Cast Shadows and V-Sync, set Anti-Aliasing to MSAA 2x and Anisotropic Filtering to 1x, keep Multithreaded Rendering on, and enable NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency at On + Boost. Valorant is CPU-bound on most systems, so low GPU utilisation is normal rather than a fault.
At a glance
| Engine | Unreal Engine 5.3 (since patch 11.02, July 2025) |
|---|---|
| Anti-cheat | Riot Vanguard (kernel-level, loads at boot) |
| Primary bottleneck | CPU |
| Biggest single win | Cast Shadows off |
| Safe to tweak? | Yes - settings-level changes only, never file or process modification |
Key takeaways
- Valorant migrated from Unreal Engine 4.27 to Unreal Engine 5.3 in patch 11.02 (July 2025). Reported gains were small on high-end systems and around 5-10% on mid and low-end machines.
- Riot Vanguard is a kernel-level anti-cheat that loads at boot. Never use tools that inject into the game process or modify game files.
- Valorant is CPU-bound on almost all hardware. Low GPU usage is expected, and lowering resolution rarely helps much.
- Cast Shadows off is the largest single graphics saving and, unusually for a shooter, does not cost you meaningful information in this game.
- Reflex On + Boost plus a frame cap below your refresh rate does more for how the game feels than any further graphics reduction.
Quick setup
- 1
Turn Cast Shadows off
The largest single saving in the graphics menu. Valorant does not project other players' shadows for you to read, so unlike CS2 this costs you nothing.
- 2
Set the four quality sliders to Low
Material Quality, Texture Quality, Detail Quality and UI Quality. Leave Multithreaded Rendering on.
- 3
Disable the post-process effects
Vignette, Bloom, Distortion and V-Sync all off. Set Anti-Aliasing to MSAA 2x and Anisotropic Filtering to 1x.
- 4
Enable Reflex and a frame cap
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency to On + Boost, then turn on Limit FPS Always and set the cap about three below your refresh rate.
- 5
Fix the CPU side
Enable XMP or EXPO, set the Windows power mode to Best performance, and close hardware-accelerated browser tabs. Valorant is CPU-bound, so low GPU usage is normal and these changes matter more than any slider.
What the Unreal Engine 5 move changed
Valorant shipped on Unreal Engine 4.27 for its first five years. Patch 11.02, released at the end of July 2025, moved it to Unreal Engine 5.3. Riot's stated goals were maintainability and faster map loading rather than raw frame rate, and the measured results match that framing.
- High-end desktops saw modest average gains - in the region of a hundred frames on systems already running many hundreds, which is a small relative change.
- Mid-range and low-end laptops reported roughly 5-10% improvement, concentrated in low-complexity scenes.
- Map initialisation got noticeably faster, shaving seconds off load times.
- Crucially, Riot avoided the performance regression that usually accompanies a UE4 to UE5 migration. Nanite and Lumen are not used, which is why Valorant did not inherit the frame-time problems that characterise most UE5 titles.
The full Valorant video settings list
| Setting | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Display Mode | Fullscreen | Exclusive fullscreen is the lowest-latency presentation path. Windowed Fullscreen adds a compositor step unless Windows windowed-game optimizations are enabled. |
| Resolution | Native, or a stretched resolution if you prefer it | Valorant is CPU-bound, so lowering resolution returns much less than it would in a GPU-bound game. Change it for the aspect ratio, not the frames. |
| Limit FPS Always | On | Pair with a Max FPS about three below your refresh rate on a VRR display. A stable cap gives more consistent frame times than an uncapped fluctuating rate. |
| NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency | On + Boost | The single most valuable latency setting in the game. Shortens the render queue; Boost additionally keeps GPU clocks up during CPU-bound moments, which is most of the time in Valorant. |
| Setting | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Multithreaded Rendering | On | Distributes rendering work across cores. Leave this on unless you have a genuinely single-core-limited machine. |
| Material Quality | Low | Shader complexity across every surface. Large saving, minimal visual difference at the distances that matter. |
| Texture Quality | Low | In most games textures are near-free if they fit in VRAM. In Valorant the assets are small enough that Low costs you nothing visually while reducing streaming work. |
| Detail Quality | Low | Controls world geometry density. Lowering it also removes small clutter objects that can obscure a peek. |
| UI Quality | Low | Renders the HUD at lower fidelity. Costs nothing you will notice and is free frames. |
| Vignette | Off | Darkens screen edges. Costs a little GPU time and darkens exactly the peripheral area where you want to spot movement. |
| V-Sync | Off | Adds a full frame of latency. Use the in-game frame cap with G-Sync or FreeSync instead. |
| Anti-Aliasing | MSAA 2x | MSAA 4x is roughly twice the cost for a small quality gain. None causes distant player edges to shimmer, which makes tracking harder. |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 1x | Sharpens textures viewed at oblique angles - floors and walls. No competitive value, measurable cost. |
| Improve Clarity | Off | A post-process sharpening pass. Costs frames; whether it helps you see is subjective, so test it rather than assuming. |
| Experimental Sharpening | Off | As above, and it is explicitly experimental. |
| Bloom | Off | Light bleed around bright surfaces. Pure cost, and it washes out contrast near light sources. |
| Distortion | Off | Heat-haze and ability distortion effects. Turning it off both saves frames and makes several abilities easier to see through. |
| Cast Shadows | Off | The largest single saving in the menu. Unlike CS2, Valorant does not render enemy shadows to other players, so this costs you no information. |
What Vanguard means for optimizing Valorant
Riot Vanguard is a kernel-mode anti-cheat that loads at boot rather than at game launch. It has the broadest system visibility of any anti-cheat in a mainstream competitive game, and that has direct consequences for how you should approach performance tuning.
| Setting | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Windows, power and driver settings | Safe | These are configuration changes outside the game process. Vanguard does not object to your power plan. |
| In-game settings and config files Riot exposes | Safe | Anything you can change through the game's own interface is by definition permitted. |
| GPU control panel overrides | Safe | NVIDIA Control Panel and AMD Adrenalin settings are driver-level and outside the protected process. |
| DLL injection or overlay hooks | Unsafe | Vanguard blocks or flags processes that attempt to inject. This includes some legitimate overlay and capture software. |
| Modifying game files or configs Riot does not expose | Unsafe | File integrity is checked. Editing Unreal .ini files to unlock hidden settings is exactly the pattern anti-cheat looks for. |
| Unsigned or test-signed drivers | Unsafe | Vanguard refuses to run alongside several classes of unsigned driver, including some older overclocking and fan-control utilities. |
The practical rule is simple: change your operating system and your driver, never the game. Everything recommended in this guide falls on the safe side of that line, and so does everything Frozen Tweaks applies.
System-level changes for Valorant specifically
- Enable XMP or EXPO. Valorant's CPU-bound profile makes it unusually sensitive to memory latency, and the difference between JEDEC fallback speeds and a rated profile is often larger here than in GPU-heavy games.
- Set the Windows power mode to Best performance. Core parking between rounds produces exactly the kind of first-shot hitch that costs duels.
- Turn off Xbox Game Bar background recording. It reserves GPU encoder resources for a feature almost nobody uses.
- Close hardware-accelerated browser tabs. This is the most common cause of unexplained Valorant frame drops on otherwise capable machines.
- Cap your frame rate below your refresh rate rather than running uncapped. Valorant can produce very high frame rates that push the GPU into a power-limited oscillation, which reads as micro-stutter.
- If you use a 1000 Hz or higher polling rate mouse, verify it is not saturating a shared USB controller. Move it to a dedicated rear port off the chipset.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my FPS low in Valorant even with a good GPU?
Valorant is CPU-bound on nearly all hardware, so a powerful GPU sitting at 40-60% utilisation is normal rather than a fault. Frame rate is limited by single-thread CPU performance, memory latency and background CPU load. Enable XMP or EXPO in BIOS, set the Windows power mode to Best performance, close hardware-accelerated browser tabs, and prune startup applications - those will do more than any graphics setting.
Did Unreal Engine 5 make Valorant run better or worse?
Slightly better, and notably it did not make it worse. Patch 11.02 in July 2025 moved Valorant from Unreal Engine 4.27 to Unreal Engine 5.3. High-end systems saw small relative gains; mid and low-end machines reported roughly 5-10%. Map load times improved. Riot did not adopt Nanite or Lumen, which is why Valorant avoided the frame-time regressions common to UE5 titles.
Should Cast Shadows be on or off in Valorant?
Off. It is the largest single performance saving in the graphics menu, and unlike Counter-Strike 2, Valorant does not render other players' shadows for you to read around corners. You lose no competitive information by disabling it. This is the main reason a CS2 settings list should not be copied directly into Valorant.
Is it safe to use optimization software with Riot Vanguard?
Settings-level tools are safe; anything that touches the game is not. Vanguard is a kernel-level anti-cheat that loads at boot and has broad system visibility, but it is concerned with process injection, game file integrity and unsigned drivers. Changing Windows settings, power plans and GPU driver options happens entirely outside the protected process. Avoid anything that injects overlays, edits Unreal .ini files, or requires an unsigned driver.
What FPS cap should I use in Valorant?
Turn on Limit FPS Always and set the cap about three frames below your monitor's refresh rate if you use G-Sync or FreeSync - 237 on a 240 Hz panel, 141 on 144 Hz. This keeps you inside the variable-refresh window and avoids the latency penalty of hitting the refresh ceiling. On a fixed-refresh monitor, a cap still helps by preventing the GPU power oscillation that produces micro-stutter at very high frame rates.
WRITTEN BY
Frost Live
Frost Live is the founder of Frozen Tweaks and the creator behind the FrozenTweaks optimization guides. He has spent years testing Windows, GPU driver and in-game settings on competitive titles including Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, Fortnite, Apex Legends and Call of Duty, and turned the tweaks that survived that testing into the Frozen Tweaks optimizer.
Related guides
Read this guide as plain markdown
Stop re-doing this after every update
Frozen Tweaks applies the system-level optimizations in our guides, logs every change so you can roll any of it back, and re-applies your configuration after Windows and driver updates revert it.
Download Frozen Tweaks