How to Increase FPS

Frames per second, or FPS for short, is a measure of how many individual frames are displayed per second, and an indication of how smooth something is. What that “something” is has a fundamental impact on what is considered an acceptable FPS. Films, for instance, are generally considered to be choppy if they run at less than 24 FPS, which is why most films are shot at 24 FPS.

When it comes to gaming, those sorts of frame rates are not going to cut it. For single player games, where you have time to explore the world and interact with objects and characters in it, you’re going to want to be closer to at least 60 FPS. If it’s a shooter, then the more frames your machine can produce, the better. It’s in the competitive scene where things get really serious. Here, 120 FPS+ isn’t uncommon, as giving yourself time to react to events in the game is more important than anything else.

There’s another factor here as well, and that’s the minimum frame rate. We generally concern ourselves in PC gaming with the average frame rate, as that’s a good indicator of overall smoothness, but if you have jarring frame rate drops, then you’re not going to feel like you’re having a smooth overall experience. So essentially, you want a high average frame rate (how high depends on the type of game) along with a minimum FPS that doesn’t break the game’s immersion, and generally not too far off those averages.

Possibly the easiest way to improve your frame rate is to reduce the game's render resolution. This is going to have a negative impact on how sharp the game looks, but if your machine is struggling to render at your screen’s native resolution, it’s a good place to start. If, for example, you can’t hit a smooth frame rate at 1080p, then no amount of settings tweaking outlined below is going to help that much, and you’re probably going to have to look at upgrading.

Lower resolutions significantly reduce the load on your GPU. For instance, a 4K image takes 4x the processing power of a 1080p one. While the scene still needs to be built and all the models processed, there are far fewer pixels to render each frame, which reduces the overall workload and improves performance.

Modern graphics cards can help offset the visual loss. NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel all offer upscaling technologies that render the game at a lower internal resolution and then upscale it to your display resolution. This can deliver a useful boost in FPS while preserving much of the original image quality. It’s not identical to native resolution, but it’s often a good compromise between performance and visual clarity.

If your game is generally running at a reasonably smooth frame rate but you want to squeeze a few more frames per second out of it, then the in-game settings screen is where you want to spend your time. Depending on the game you’re playing and your hardware, you could have plenty of leeway for performance improvements here. For instance, turning off high-end effects such as ray tracing, global illumination, and real-time shadows can significantly improve frame rate.

In fact, ray tracing on its own can mean the difference between a stuttering, unplayable slideshow and a smooth experience. That is the exception to the rule, though, as ray tracing is computationally on a completely different level to most other settings. If you’ve got up-to-date hardware then it can look incredible (we’re looking at you, Cyberpunk 2077), but you’ll still probably need to drop the render resolution and use upscaling to maintain a smooth frame rate.

So which settings should you focus on? Every game is different, and how each one implements these features can vary. The settings that tend to have the biggest impact are Shadows, Anti-Aliasing, Ambient Occlusion, Texture Quality, and render distance. But honestly, everything is up for tweaking if you’re trying to maximize performance.

One thing worth checking is that Game Mode is turned on in Windows. It is by default, but you never know. It’s intended to optimize your PC for gaming, although don’t expect huge gains. Still, every little helps. You’ll need Windows 10 or Windows 11 to see this option. Press the Start button, search for “Game Mode,” and make sure it’s enabled.

It’s also worth checking that your power settings aren’t holding you back. Windows has gotten better at managing power efficiently, which is great for everyday use, but not ideal when you’re trying to maximize performance. Right-click the Start button, select Power Options, expand Power Mode, and set it to Best Performance.

Keeping your graphics card drivers up to date is generally considered a good idea. It’s particularly important if you’re playing a newer game, as driver updates often coincide with releases to fix bugs and ensure the latest titles run optimally.