How to Increase FPS — Every Fix That Actually Works

How to Increase FPS. The number dropped. Right in the middle of the most important moment in the game.

You know that feeling. Everything is going well. Then suddenly the screen turns choppy, your character moves like they are walking through mud, and by the time your PC recovers the moment is gone.

Here is what nobody tells you clearly: most low FPS problems have a free fix. Not a hardware upgrade. Not a new GPU. A settings change that takes five minutes and costs nothing.

But the internet makes this complicated. Search for “how to increase FPS” and you get lists of twenty things with no explanation of which ones actually matter, which ones waste your time, or why any of them work.

One person on Reddit wrote: “I have a decent PC. RTX 3070, Ryzen 5 5600X, 16GB RAM. Why am I getting 60 FPS in Warzone when my friend with the same specs gets 120?”

Another posted: “My laptop was getting 90 FPS last week. Now it gets 40 FPS in the same game. Nothing changed. What happened?”

And a Minecraft player: “I have a gaming PC worth $1,200 and Minecraft runs at 30 FPS. This makes no sense.”

Three completely different problems. Three specific fixes. All free.

This guide covers every real fix organized from the fastest to the most involved. No filler. No guesswork. Start at the top and work down until your FPS is where it should be.

First — Diagnose Before You Fix

Before doing anything else, spend two minutes understanding what is actually causing your low FPS. Applying random fixes without knowing the cause wastes time and sometimes makes things worse.

Open MSI Afterburner while gaming and watch two numbers:

GPU Usage % — should be 95 to 100% during gaming for maximum performance. CPU Core Usage — open Task Manager simultaneously and check if any individual core is hitting 100%.

This tells you which component is the limit:

GPU at 95 to 100%, FPS still low — your GPU is the bottleneck. You need either lower settings, AI upscaling (DLSS/FSR), or a faster GPU.

GPU at 50 to 70%, CPU core at 100% — CPU bottleneck. Your processor cannot feed frames to the GPU fast enough. The free fixes in Section 1 will help significantly. Use our PC Bottleneck Calculator to see the exact mismatch percentage between your CPU and GPU.

GPU below 80%, temperatures above 85°C — thermal throttling. Your GPU is slowing itself down due to heat. Temperature fixes first before anything else.

GPU below 80%, temperatures normal — VSync, FPS cap, wrong power settings, or drivers. All covered below.

Now you know which section to jump to. Let us fix it.

How to Increase FPS on PC — Every Free Fix

These are organized from the highest impact to the lowest. Work through them in order and check your FPS counter after each one.

Fix 1 — Enable XMP or EXPO in BIOS (Biggest Free FPS Boost)

This single fix has recovered more FPS for more people than any other free change. Here is why.

When you buy RAM rated at 3600MHz or 6000MHz, it does not run at that speed by default. Every RAM kit ships running at a slow JEDEC baseline — usually 2133MHz — regardless of what the box says. Until you enable XMP (Intel) or EXPO (AMD) in your BIOS, you are running your RAM at roughly half its rated speed.

Slow RAM means your CPU gets data slower. Slower CPU means it takes longer to prepare frames. Slower frame preparation means your GPU sits waiting. Lower GPU usage means lower FPS.

On AMD Ryzen systems, enabling XMP alone can recover 10 to 20% FPS in CPU-heavy games. People have reported gaining 20 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 from this one free change.

How to enable XMP/EXPO:

1. Restart your PC
2. Press Delete or F2 during startup to enter BIOS
3. Look for XMP on Intel boards or EXPO on AMD boards
4. Enable Profile 1
5. Save and exit (usually F10)

Confirm it worked: open Task Manager, Performance, Memory. The speed shown should now match your RAM’s rated speed.

Fix 2 — Switch to High Performance Power Plan

Windows power plans directly control how fast your CPU and GPU are allowed to run. On Balanced or Power Saver mode, Windows deliberately holds back clock speeds to save energy. This is fine for browsing but devastating for gaming.

A user on a gaming forum described their FPS jumping from 60 to 95 simply from switching power plans. Nothing else changed. Windows was throttling the CPU the entire time.

How to switch:

1. Press Windows + R, type powercfg.cpl, press Enter
2. Select High Performance — if not visible click Show additional plans
3. For even more performance: click Change plan settings, Change advanced power settings, find Processor power management, set Minimum processor state to 100%

Also set GPU power in NVIDIA Control Panel:

1. Right-click desktop, open NVIDIA Control Panel
2. Manage 3D Settings, Global Settings
3. Power management mode: set to Prefer maximum performance

For AMD: Open Adrenalin, Performance, Tuning, set Power Tuning to Manual and move the slider to +0%.

Fix 3 — Enable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS)

This Windows feature lets the GPU manage its own memory scheduling rather than relying on the CPU to do it. In most systems it reduces CPU load and improves frame timing, which shows as smoother FPS especially in CPU-bottlenecked situations.

How to enable:

1. Click Start, Settings, System, Display, Graphics
2. Click Default graphics settings
3. Turn on Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling
4. Restart your PC

Most people see 1 to 4 FPS improvement. More importantly, frame time consistency improves which makes the game feel smoother even if the average FPS number does not change dramatically.

Fix 4 — Update GPU Drivers With a Clean Install

Outdated or corrupted GPU drivers are one of the most underdiagnosed causes of low FPS. Driver updates in 2025 and 2026 have delivered 10 to 20% performance improvements in specific games. Running drivers from 6 months ago is not just missing optimizations — it can actively hurt performance.

The key word is clean install. Simply updating over an old driver often leaves corrupted files behind.

How to do a proper clean driver install:

Step 1: Download DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) from guru3d.com.

Step 2: Boot into Safe Mode. Press Windows + R, type msconfig, Boot tab, check Safe boot, restart.

Step 3: In Safe Mode, run DDU, select your GPU brand, click Clean and Restart.

Step 4: After restart, download fresh drivers:

• NVIDIA: nvidia.com/drivers
• AMD: amd.com/support

Step 5: During installation choose Custom, tick Perform a clean installation.

Step 6: Restart and test your game.

Fix 5 — Close Background Programs Before Gaming

Discord, Chrome, Spotify, RGB software, Windows Update downloading silently — all of these steal CPU time that your game needs. On a CPU-bottlenecked system, a single Chrome tab can cost you 5 to 10 FPS.

Before launching any game:

1. Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc)
2. Click the CPU column to sort by highest usage
3. End any process eating CPU that you do not need
4. Click the Startup tab and disable anything that does not need to launch with Windows

Also check: Windows Update. If it is downloading in the background it can cause sudden FPS drops mid-game. Go to Settings, Windows Update, and pause updates before a gaming session.

Fix 6 — Optimize In-Game Graphics Settings

Not all graphics settings cost the same amount of FPS. Knowing which settings are expensive and which are cheap lets you find the best balance without sacrificing everything.

Most expensive settings (lower these first for maximum FPS gain):

• Shadow Quality — On a Reddit test, turning shadows from High to Low in Warzone added 18 FPS instantly. Shadows are pure GPU work with almost no visual benefit at normal play distance.
• Ambient Occlusion — Expensive, subtle effect. Turn off for a meaningful FPS gain.
• Anti-aliasing — MSAA is extremely expensive. Switch to TAA or FXAA or turn it off entirely if you use DLSS/FSR (which includes its own AA).
• View Distance / Draw Distance — CPU-bound in open world games. Reducing this specifically helps CPU-bottlenecked systems.
• Motion Blur and Depth of Field — Turn these off. They cost FPS and most competitive players disable them anyway.

Cheapest settings (these cost almost nothing):

• Texture Quality — uses VRAM not GPU processing. Keep at High unless you are running out of VRAM.
• Brightness, Contrast, Color — no performance impact at all.
• Field of View — very small impact on most games.

Fix 7 — Enable DLSS 4 or FSR 4 (Best FPS Multiplier Available)

If your GPU supports AI upscaling, this is the single biggest FPS multiplier available in 2026. It works by rendering the game at a lower internal resolution and using AI to reconstruct a sharp full-resolution image.

DLSS 4 (NVIDIA RTX cards): Available in supported games. Quality mode gives near-native image quality with 30 to 60% more FPS. Performance mode gives even higher FPS with more visible quality reduction.

FSR 4 (AMD RX 7000/9000 series): AMD’s equivalent. Works in a wider range of games and also on older NVIDIA GPUs at lower quality.

For competitive games where you need maximum FPS and image quality matters less, DLSS Performance or Ultra Performance mode can nearly double your frame rate while keeping the game fully playable.

Enable it in your game’s graphics settings under the Upscaling or Resolution Scaling section.

Fix 8 — Check Your Monitor Refresh Rate Setting

This is a surprisingly common hidden FPS limiter that catches people completely off guard.

Windows has a habit of resetting your monitor to 60Hz after driver updates, display cable swaps, or Windows updates — even if your monitor is rated for 144Hz or 240Hz. If your monitor is running at 60Hz and VSync is on, your FPS is capped at 60 regardless of how powerful your GPU is.

How to check and fix:

1. Right-click desktop, Display settings
2. Scroll down and click Advanced display settings
3. Find Refresh rate and set it to your monitor’s maximum (144Hz, 240Hz, etc.)
4. Click Keep changes

While you are there, also check your NVIDIA or AMD control panel to confirm the refresh rate matches at the driver level.

How to Increase FPS on Laptop

Laptops have unique FPS problems that desktop guides never cover. Here are the fixes specific to laptop gaming.

Laptop Fix 1 — Always Play Plugged In

This sounds obvious but is the most common cause of suddenly low FPS on laptops. On battery power, Windows and your laptop’s firmware deliberately throttle your CPU and GPU to extend battery life. This is not optional — it is hardwired into the laptop’s design.

A laptop that gets 90 FPS plugged in may get 40 FPS on battery. The hardware is identical. The power delivery is not.

Always plug in before gaming. If you are already plugged in and FPS is still low, make sure your power adapter is the correct wattage. An underpowered charger can fail to deliver enough power to a gaming laptop under full load, causing the same throttling as battery mode.

Laptop Fix 2 — Switch to High Performance Power Mode

Laptops default to Balanced power mode which aggressively throttles performance. Switch to High Performance or Best Performance in Windows Settings, System, Power and Battery.

Many gaming laptops also have their own performance mode software — MSI Dragon Center, ASUS Armoury Crate, Lenovo Vantage, Razer Synapse. Open your laptop’s brand software and find the Performance Mode setting. Set it to Performance or Turbo while gaming.

Laptop Fix 3 — Make Sure the Dedicated GPU Is Being Used

Most gaming laptops have two GPUs. An integrated chip built into the CPU and a dedicated gaming GPU. Windows sometimes routes games to the wrong one to save power.

How to fix:

1. Right-click desktop, Display settings, Graphics
2. Click Browse, find your game’s .exe file
3. Click Options, select High performance
4. Save

Also set it in NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Adrenalin for each game specifically as we covered in the PC section above.

Laptop Fix 4 — Use a Cooling Pad and Hard Surface

Laptops thermal throttle faster than desktops because their cooling systems are much smaller. When a laptop throttles, GPU and CPU clock speeds drop and FPS crashes — sometimes from 90 FPS to 30 FPS in minutes.

A cooling pad adds external airflow underneath the laptop which can drop temperatures by 5 to 10°C. More importantly, never game on a soft surface like a pillow, bed, or blanket. These block the bottom vents completely and cause throttling within minutes even on high-end gaming laptops.

Always use a hard flat surface. A table, a desk, or a cooling pad. This single change fixes throttling-related FPS drops for many laptop users at zero cost.

Read our complete CPU Temperature Range guide to understand exactly what temperatures cause throttling on your specific laptop CPU.

Laptop Fix 5 — Undervolt Your CPU (Advanced)

Laptop manufacturers often apply higher voltages than necessary to guarantee stability across all units. This generates extra heat which triggers throttling. Undervolting reduces the voltage to a more efficient level without reducing performance.

Tools: ThrottleStop for Intel CPUs, Ryzen Controller for AMD.

Start with a conservative offset of -50mV. Test stability in a demanding game for 15 minutes. If stable, reduce by another -10mV and test again. Most laptop CPUs accept -80 to -100mV safely. This can reduce temperatures by 10 to 15°C which directly prevents throttling and recovers lost FPS.

This is more advanced than the other fixes so only attempt it if the simpler fixes above did not fully solve your problem.

How to Increase FPS in Minecraft

Minecraft is a special case. It looks simple but it is one of the most poorly optimized games ever made relative to what it is trying to render. A $1,500 gaming PC can get 60 FPS in vanilla Minecraft while running Cyberpunk 2077 at 120 FPS. This is not your PC’s fault. It is Minecraft’s Java rendering engine.

The good news is that the Minecraft community has created performance mods that fix this almost completely.

Minecraft Fix 1 — Install Sodium (Java Edition)

Sodium is a free rendering optimization mod that rewrites Minecraft’s rendering engine. It is the single most impactful thing you can do for Minecraft FPS. Most players see 2 to 3x their current FPS after installing it.

Where to get it: modrinth.com — the official and safe source.

Sodium requires the Fabric mod loader. Install Fabric first from fabricmc.net, then add Sodium from modrinth.

Add these companion mods for even better performance:

• Lithium — optimizes game physics and mob AI, no visual changes
• Sodium Extra — adds more graphics options to Sodium
• FerriteCore — reduces RAM usage, reduces stuttering

Combined, these mods can take Minecraft from 60 FPS to 200+ FPS on the same hardware.

Minecraft Fix 2 — Use OptiFine (Alternative to Sodium)

OptiFine is the classic Minecraft performance mod that most players know. It is compatible with Forge mods and adds extensive graphics options, including dynamic lighting control, better chunk loading, and shader support.

Download only from optifine.net — the official site. Do not download OptiFine from any other source.

Expected FPS improvement: 20 to 50% on most systems. Less than sodium but compatible with more mod packs.

Minecraft Fix 3 — Adjust These Specific Settings

Even without mods, these vanilla Minecraft settings have the biggest impact on FPS:

Render Distance — this is the number one FPS killer in Minecraft. Every chunk you add multiplies the amount of geometry your CPU has to process. Start at 8 chunks and increase until FPS drops to an uncomfortable level. Most players find their sweet spot between 8 and 12 chunks.

Graphics: Fancy vs. Fast—switch to Fast. This changes how leaves, water, and other elements are rendered. Fast mode is noticeably less pretty but gives 15 to 30% more FPS.

Smooth Lighting — set to Minimum or Off. Minimal visual difference, meaningful FPS recovery.

VSync—turn off. VSync caps Minecraft at your monitor’s refresh rate and adds input lag. Use a frame limiter instead if you want to cap FPS.

Particles — set to minimal. Particle effects in busy scenes (combat, explosions) eat CPU cycles.

Entity Shadows — turn off. Removes the shadow circle under every entity. Small FPS gain, barely noticeable visually.

Minecraft Fix 4 — Allocate More RAM (But Not Too Much)

Minecraft runs on Java, which uses RAM differently from other games. Too little RAM causes stuttering because Java has to constantly garbage collect. But too much RAM also causes stuttering because the garbage collector takes longer to clean a larger memory pool.

The sweet spot for most players:

• Vanilla Minecraft: 4 to 6 GB
• Modded with 50 to 100 mods: 6 to 8 GB
• Heavy modpacks (200+ mods): 8 to 12 GB

Never allocate more than 12 GB to Minecraft. More RAM does not mean more FPS in Java — it means longer garbage collection pauses which cause FPS drops.

How to allocate RAM: In the Minecraft Launcher, click Installations, find your installation, click the three dots, Edit, More Options. Find the JVM Arguments line and change the number after -Xmx to your desired amount. For example -Xmx6G for 6 gigabytes.

When Free Fixes Are Not Enough — Hardware Solutions

If you have worked through every fix above and FPS is still not where you want it, the issue is that your hardware genuinely cannot produce the frames you want at your settings and resolution. Here is what actually helps:

Upgrade your GPU — if GPU usage is at 95 to 100% and FPS is still low, the graphics card is the limit. A GPU upgrade directly increases how many frames your system can produce. This is the most effective hardware upgrade for FPS in GPU-limited scenarios.

Upgrade your CPU — if GPU usage is 50 to 70% with one CPU core maxed out, your processor cannot feed the GPU fast enough. A CPU upgrade fixes this. Use our PC Bottleneck Calculator to find which CPU upgrade delivers the most improvement for your specific GPU without overspending.

Add a second RAM stick — if you are running a single RAM stick (single channel), your memory bandwidth is cut in half. Adding a matching second stick and enabling dual channel is often cheaper than a CPU upgrade and delivers meaningful FPS improvement in CPU-bottlenecked systems. We covered this in detail in our RAM Bottleneck guide.

Switch from HDD to SSD — hard drives cause texture loading stutters and long load times. An SSD does not increase average FPS but eliminates the FPS drops that happen when games stream new textures from storage.

Quick Diagnosis Tool

Frequently Asked Questions

One Last Thing Before You Go

Most low FPS problems have a free fix. The two changes that help the most people the fastest are enabling XMP in BIOS and switching to High Performance power plan. Combined they take less than 10 minutes and cost nothing.

After those, clean your PC, update your drivers cleanly, and close background programs before gaming. These free fixes solve the problem for the majority of people.

If you have worked through everything above and FPS is still not where you want it, the next step is understanding whether your CPU or GPU is the actual limit. Upgrading the wrong component wastes money and changes nothing.

Our free PC Bottleneck Calculator tells you in 30 seconds which component is holding your system back, what the mismatch percentage is, and which upgrade gives you the most FPS improvement for the least money.

Check that before you buy anything.

Now go get those frames.