How to Increase FPS or Frame Rate in Games [Top Tips]

Are you getting low frame rates or FPS in games? If yes then you are at the perfectly right place because here I am going to tell you how you can increase the frame rates or performance of your PC games. FPS or Frame Rate is the number of frames rendered per second on your monitor by the graphics card. PC gaming cannot be enjoyed if there is too much lagging or lower frame rates. To eliminate lag you should get at least minimum lag-free fps.

How much FPS is needed for Smoother Gameplay

For lag-free gameplay, you should get at least 30 fps or frames per second. It is the bare minimum fps number for decent gameplay. For super-smooth gaming and absolutely lag-free gaming, 60 fps is recommended. You can have a smooth gaming experience at 60 frames per second or higher.

How to measure FPS in Gaming

There are generally two ways to measure FPS in games which are being mentioned below:

In-Game Console Commands – Some PC games have an inbuilt console or command-line interface where you can type in various specified commands for different results. You can also get the in-game live fps counter using the fps command for that particular game. For example, in Half-Life 2 you can invoke the command console and type in the cl_showfps 2 command to display the FPS counter on the game screen. Not every game has the command console especially the latest games so for them you can use the next method mentioned below to know the FPS count of any game.

Using Third-Party Software – Using third-party real-time benchmarking software you can measure the FPS and record real-time video in games. There are some very good game benchmarking software for Windows such as Fraps, Bandicam, and MSI Afterburner. Fraps and Bandicam are mainly game FPS and video recording software while MSI Afterburner is a very popular graphics card overclocking software than can measure FPS as well.

Must Read: How to Find out whether you can Run this Game?

Tips to Increase FPS or Frame Rate in Games

Here are the top performance tips and tweaks that you can try to increase the FPS or performance in your games. Using these tips you can definitely get a decent jump in your games frame rates.

Overclock Graphics Card

The first thing to do is to overclock the graphics card. Overclocking a graphics card will increase its performance and thus leads to higher FPS. Overclocking a graphics card is a technical procedure that involves some thinking and testing. You can use good graphics card overclocking tools such as EVGA Precision, MSI Afterburner, etc. to overclock the graphics card. Below is a guide on overclocking a graphics card for getting maximum performance out of it.

Check out: Guide on Graphics Card Overclocking

Update Video Card Drivers

It is always recommended to update the video or graphics card drivers to the latest ones. The latest video drivers often contain bug fixes, support for the latest games, and performance enhancements. The amount of FPS increase in a game from the latest drivers varies as it can be a decent increment or average to none in some cases.

Here the only thing to keep in mind is that you must always download the drivers from the GPU chipset official website only. Here below are the official driver download links for both Nvidia and AMD / ATI.

• Download Nvidia Drivers
• Download AMD Radeon Drivers

You can use Display Driver Uninstaller or DDU to completely uninstall graphics card drivers from your PC.

Lower Graphics Settings

You can turn down the game graphics settings or options to increase FPS to a significant level. Disable the Anti-aliasing (AA) because it is the most resource-intensive feature in the games. You can lower the resolution from 1080p to 720p and turn down settings for textures, graphics detail, HDR effect, motion blur, shadows, water, anisotropic filtering, or other settings based on the game. There is a sharp increase in the FPS when you lower down graphics settings but you may lose some of the eye candy in the game.

Apply Latest Patches

If the game is poorly optimized then the game manufacturers do release patches for it to increase performance and fix bugs. Download the game patches whenever released and apply them. There is a good possibility that you get a decent FPS boost after applying patches but it depends on game to game. Also, you must keep your operating system up to date by applying the OS service packs and patches from time to time.

Turn Off Background Applications

When playing a game you should turn the unwanted background applications and services. I also recommend that you turn off the antivirus when playing any game.

Get Better Hardware

Well if all of the above suggestions fail then it means you have to upgrade your computer hardware that mainly includes the graphics card, processor, and memory. If you have a good processor but a weak graphics card then you should upgrade your graphics card only and if you have a good graphics card but a weak dual-core processor then you should buy a good quad-core (or higher) processor. For memory, you should have at least 8GB of RAM for running the latest games at high settings.

Check out:

• How to Fix Low GPU Usage in Games
• How to Fix Stuttering in Games
• How to Limit Frame Rate in Games
• Best Budget Graphics Cards for Gaming
• How much RAM do you need for Games?

Final Words

Well, in the end, I would like to say that I have listed down all the important things that you can do to increase FPS in games. If you have any queries then you can ask me by leaving a comment below.