How to get higher FPS in your games

The in-game frame rates are pretty important, regardless of whether you're a fan of e-sports titles or you love getting lost in open-world RPGs. As such, watching the frame rate counter dip below the 60 FPS mark is something every gamer fears. In an idealistic world, every game would be fully optimized and would run at the same FPS as the refresh rate of your premium monitor, though the reality is quite different.

With modern games continuing to push graphical fidelity to new heights, the improved visuals come at the cost of decreased performance. Luckily, most games respond well to certain tweaks and techniques you can use to get some more frames. Here are the best methods for getting more gaming performance out of your PC.

1 Shut down programs running in the background

This one is a classic for anyone using a low-end PC. Cheaper, slower PCs (especially those with fewer CPU cores) tend to get bogged down if they try to run too many tasks at once, and this can be a significant obstacle to achieving a good framerate. If you're struggling to run games, part of the problem could be that you're trying to run too many applications simultaneously.

Streams and videos tend to be the biggest culprits here, and they'll either run directly off your CPU or your GPU, both of which are key gaming components. For lower-end PCs with weaker or older hardware, it can be quite taxing to run this kind of stuff when you're gaming, and while it's okay for streams and videos to drop a few frames every now and then, it's definitely not the same for games.

You might also want to turn off or even uninstall software known to cause performance problems on some PCs, known as bloatware. Apps like Corsair's iCUE, NZXT's CAM, and software that's installed by default on prebuilt desktops and laptops can suck up valuable resources that would ordinarily help your games run normally. While you can get rid of them entirely to solve performance issues, if you'd rather keep them installed, you can merely close them down or prevent them from running at startup. Here's a simple way to do that:

1. Right-click on the Start button and select Task Manager.
   
2. Navigate to the Startup apps, select the app you don't want Windows to automatically run on startup, and press Disable.
   

2 Disable Visual Effects

Windows 11 uses a ton of visual effects to make the UI feel refreshing and responsive. However, deactivating some of these settings can result in better frame rates if you have a low-end system.

1. Right-click on the Start button and choose Settings.
   
2. Click on System and head to the About tab.
   
3. Select Advanced system settings.
   
4. Choose Settings on the pop-up window.
   
5. Check the toggle next to the Adjust for best performance option to turn off all visual effects.
   
6. Be sure to hit the Apply and OK buttons.

3 Enable XMP, AMP, or EXPO

One thing often overlooked in PC building is enabling RAM profiles via XMP, AMP, and EXPO. If your PC doesn't have a RAM profile enabled or if you just want to check, here's a simple guide on how to do it. Remember, though, that each motherboard has a list of supported RAM, and using a RAM kit on a board that doesn't have explicit support for it might result in an unstable PC when enabling XMP, AMP, or EXPO.

1. You'll need to access your PC's BIOS, which you can do through Windows. Search for advanced startup.
   
2. Click on Change startup options.
3. In the new window, click the Restart now button next to Advanced startup.
   
4. Your PC will reboot, and select Troubleshoot when it comes back on.
   
5. Choose the Advanced options.
   
6. Next, select UEFI Firmware Settings and press restart when Windows prompts you.
   
7. When your PC turns back on, you'll be in the BIOS.
   
   Each motherboard maker puts the memory overclocking options under different headers, but you can usually find them under a tab named Overclocking, Tweaker, or Tuner.
8. Once you find the XMP, AMP, X-AMP, or EXPO option, enable it.
   
   If you have multiple profiles to choose from, pick the first option.

XMP, AMP, and EXPO increase RAM performance by boosting its clock speed and tightening its timings. The CPU's main source of memory is RAM, so faster RAM means better performance. However, you shouldn't expect that much more performance with XMP, AMP, or EXPO enabled. A 10% boost to your framerate would be a relatively high gain in most games, and this is simply because RAM isn't all that important most of the time. There are other ways of getting even more performance.

4 Overclock your GPU

Overclocking your GPU is one of the best ways to get additional performance since most games stress the graphics card the most. The best way to overclock your GPU is through MSI Afterburner, and here's the short version:

1. First, increase your power and temp limits as much as possible.
   
2. Try to increase the core clock speed by about 5%.
   
3. Run an intensive benchmark like 3DMark Time Spy.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you crash or see visual glitches known as artifacts.
5. Once you crash or see artifacts, you can increase the voltage offset (if possible) to improve stability.
   
   Do this in 25mV steps, and don't add more than 100mV total unless you know what you're doing.
6. If things are stable, you can try to increase the clock speed more.
7. Eventually, you'll find the limit of your GPU's capabilities, and you'll need to settle for a clock speed and voltage combination that makes you happy.

Overclocking a GPU's memory follows the same basic process, but many recent cards don't permit you to increase memory voltage, which means you're just increasing the memory's clock speed until you find the highest, stable value. But like with enabling XMP, AMP, and EXPO, a GPU overclock isn't going to get you all that much more performance, maybe around 10% to 15% more frames in the best-case scenario.

5 Overclock your CPU

The process of overclocking a CPU is pretty similar to a GPU, but these days, you might not even want to do traditional, manual overclocking. Overclocking on AMD Ryzen CPUs, in particular, is difficult, often results in more problems than it's worth, and can even reduce performance in some situations. You can follow our guide on manual CPU overclocking, but most people will be better off with automatic overclocking. Proceed with caution, however, as any sort of overclocking can result in hardware damage if done carelessly.

For AMD Ryzen CPUs, you can use Ryzen Master's Auto OC instead of a classic manual overclock. However, you will need to make sure your CPU has very good cooling to get the most out of Auto OC, especially on Ryzen 7000 series CPUs. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Download Ryzen Master and install it.
2. Open it once it's installed.
3. Click Auto OC.
4. Then click Apply.

Intel CPUs don't have access to automatic overclocking tools like AMD CPUs do, but you can try Intel XTU and do something similar. However, like with Ryzen Master's Auto OC, you will need good cooling for your tweaks in XTU to work.

1. Download Intel XTU and install it.
2. Open it once it's installed.
3. Drag these sliders fully to the right: Processor Core IccMax, Turbo Boost Short Power Max, Turbo Boost Power Max, and Turbo Boost Power Time Window.
4. Then click Apply.

You might also want to enable Multicore Enhancement in your motherboard's BIOS settings. This process is different for every board, and some might not even have it, so consult your motherboard's manual or look around in the overclocking section of your motherboard's BIOS to find the multicore enhancement option.

Overclocking your CPU will only help in situations where you're CPU bottlenecked, and usually you're only CPU bottlenecked if you're trying to hit a pretty high framerate (higher than 90 FPS generally) or your CPU is really low-end and slow in general. Plus, overclocking on the latest CPUs really doesn't net you a ton of extra performance since they already come with a pretty high clock speed out of the box.

6 Change or reduce graphics settings

This is probably not a piece of advice you really want to hear, but one of the best ways to get more performance that works almost every time is to change your graphics settings, usually by lowering some or all of them. While overclocking your PC and turning off background apps can provide a decent boost for lower-end systems, you're not likely to see a dramatic increase in FPS without turning some settings down a notch.

Certain post-processing settings, like screen space reflections, anti-aliasing, and ambient occlusion, can be especially demanding for your graphics card. For those with limited GPU VRAM, reducing the texture quality can help improve performance. Then there's ray tracing, which can easily bring the most expensive GPUs on the market to their knees.

Upscalers like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS have come a long way over the last few years. These days, a frame upscaled using the newer versions of DLSS and FSR can seem indistinguishable from a game running at the native resolution. Not all of these solutions work on all GPUs, though. In fact, you won't even find the newer versions of Nvidia's DLSS technology on older graphics cards from Team Green. Nevertheless, if your game supports upscaling, you should make use of this facility to increase your frame rates with minimum to no impact on the overall visual fidelity.

Unfortunately, the situation is quite dire if you're more CPU. Besides the draw-distance, there aren't that many settings that you can modify to improve the FPS. They're called graphics settings for a reason, and it's notoriously difficult to actually solve a CPU bottleneck, unless you resort to one last trick that has a guaranteed chance of success...

7 Upgrade your PC with new components

If you didn't want to hear that you should probably reduce graphics settings, then you'll really not want to hear about the best method of getting better performance: upgrading your PC. Unfortunately, no magic or secret technique will really boost your performance like an upgrade will. Upgrading your PC is easily the best and most reliable way to increase your framerate.

You'll particularly want to upgrade to one of the best gaming GPUs, though a great gaming CPU will also help if you want a really, really high framerate in the 100s. While upgrading will cost you money, there are some decent budget GPUs and CPUs out there that won't financially ruin you, and you can also buy used hardware for additional savings. In a good gaming PC that's fit for the 2020s, I'd recommend getting a GPU with at least 8GB of VRAM and a CPU with at least six cores.

Are you getting stable 60 FPS in your games?

Unless you're using a state-of-the-art PC, achieving the best performance in every game is not easy. While it's not fun being told to get new components to get better performance, that's essentially the reality of the situation. Boosting the performance of your existing RAM, GPU, and CPU will realistically only give you 30% extra performance at best, which isn't a game-changing amount of frames. To truly make a difference, you'll have to either sacrifice the graphical fidelity of your favorite game, or get new hardware.