Valorant can show a high FPS counter and still feel jerky if frames arrive unevenly. Short freezes during peeks or ability use usually come from drivers, Vanguard, settings, storage, background tasks, or network spikes.
These steps apply to Valorant on Windows desktops and laptops.
Does this affect you?
Use this if Valorant hitches, freezes briefly, or feels choppy even while the FPS number looks high.
Update your graphics driver and check Vanguard
Drivers and Vanguard are the most common starting points.
- Open NVIDIA GeForce Experience or AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition.
- Install the latest graphics driver.
- Restart the PC.
- Restarting also lets Vanguard update and load cleanly at boot.
- If stutter began after a Windows update, check Settings > Windows Update > Update history.
- In Valorant, set Video > General > Display Mode to Fullscreen.
- Test in the practice range before joining matches.
Fullscreen mode often gives Valorant more consistent frame pacing than windowed or borderless modes.
Adjust in-game and Windows settings
Target settings that can hitch during round starts, ability casts, or enemy contact.
- Open Video > Graphics Quality.
- Lower Anti-Aliasing.
- Lower or disable Improve Clarity.
- Temporarily turn off Multithreaded Rendering to test whether it helps or hurts your system.
- In NVIDIA Control Panel, set Valorant Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance.
- Close browsers, Discord screen share, cloud backup, and other CPU or disk-heavy apps.
- On laptops, plug in power and use High Performance or Best Performance mode.
Multithreaded Rendering helps some PCs and hurts others, so treat it as a test setting instead of a universal rule.
Storage, downloads, ping, and background spikes
If Valorant is installed on a hard drive, move it to an SSD through the Riot Client settings. Texture and asset loading is smoother from SSD storage.
Pause Windows Update, Steam, and other launcher downloads before competitive matches. Disk and network usage can cause sudden hitches.
Check in-game ping when stutters happen. If ping spikes at the same time, the problem is network latency, not local FPS.
Use Task Manager to catch random CPU spikes from search indexing, antivirus scans, or background software.
Sources
- Riot Games Support – Valorant Performance and FPS Issues (2025)
- NVIDIA Support – Optimizing PC Performance for Gaming (2025)
- Riot Games Support – Vanguard Anti-Cheat Troubleshooting (2025)