Best Valorant Settings for FPS and Low Input Lag (2026)

The best Valorant settings: the full video table

The table follows the menu in order: General first, then Graphics Quality, then the one Stats row worth turning on. Work from top to bottom and you are done in about five minutes.

One setting is missing from the table on purpose: Raw Input Buffer. Older guides tell you to switch it on under General, then Mouse. Riot removed that toggle in patch 11.06, in September 2025, and made raw input the permanent path for every player, because it is the more performant option. If you cannot find the switch, nothing is wrong with your game. You already have it.

Before you blame a setting, find your bottleneck. Open Video, then Stats, and set CPU Frame Time and GPU Frame Time to Text Only or Show Both. Play one match. Whichever number sits higher is the part holding you back. On most PCs it is the CPU number, which is why this guide spends its time on Multithreaded Rendering and frame caps, and why a graphics card upgrade often changes less than players expect.

On a strong PC you can buy back some picture. Raise Texture Quality to Medium or High and Anti-Aliasing to MSAA 4x. Leave the rest on Low. The game stays clean and readable, and the frame rate barely notices.

What pro players use: the settings snapshot

ProSettings.net tracks the setups of around 700 professional Valorant players, and the picture is boring in the best way. Almost everyone plays at 1920 x 1080 in Fullscreen: 68 percent use that exact resolution, and not one tracked pro plays on a monitor under 144 Hz. The most common screens run at 240 Hz, or 360 Hz and faster. On the Graphics Quality page the rows read Low from top to bottom, with Multithreaded Rendering on, VSync off and Reflex on.

The mouse numbers tell the same story. The average pro eDPI is 267 and the median is 240, and 79 percent leave scoped sensitivity at 1.00. Copy the video settings exactly. Treat the sensitivity numbers as a starting range only, because aim is personal in a way graphics are not.

Best Valorant settings for a low-end PC

Valorant was built to run on almost anything. Riot’s own minimum spec is an Intel HD 4000 era PC, listed for 30 FPS, and its 144 FPS spec asks only for a GTX 1050 Ti class card. If your PC is old, a basic laptop, or running on integrated graphics, copy this setup.

• Know which part is slow before you change things. Valorant leans on the CPU, so a weak processor caps your FPS long before a weak graphics card does.
• Close browsers, other launchers and recording overlays before you play. On a small PC, every background app takes frames.
• Update your graphics driver from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel. Old drivers are a common cause of stutter.
• Lower the resolution only as a last step. It works, but the blur makes distant players harder to read. Change the quality rows first.

Settings that barely change FPS

A few rows in the menu change your frame rate so little that they are nearly free. Texture Quality mostly uses graphics memory, so Medium costs almost nothing on a modern card. UI Quality changes how menus and portraits are drawn, not the match itself. Anisotropic Filtering above 4x is hard to see and hard to feel. One more thing belongs here, because it changes nothing about performance: your crosshair. Crosshair shape and colour are pure personal preference, and they deserve their own guide, so this one leaves them out on purpose.

Common Valorant settings mistakes

• Leaving VSync on. It holds your frame rate at the refresh rate and adds input delay on top. Turn it off and control the cap yourself.
• Capping FPS the wrong way. A cap set under what your PC can do throws frames away, and no cap at all lets the rate swing and the fans scream. Cap at what you can hold in a fight.
• Playing in a window. Windowed and Windowed Fullscreen hand your display to the desktop as well. Fullscreen is the low-delay path.
• Hunting for the Raw Input Buffer switch. Old guides still tell you to turn it on. Riot removed the toggle in patch 11.06 and left the feature on for everyone.
• Turning Multithreaded Rendering off. The same old guides blame it for stutter. On any modern multi-core CPU it is the biggest FPS win in the menu.
• Judging settings in the lobby. Menus are capped on purpose, and the practice range is light. Judge every change in a deathmatch or a real match.

Want a calmer place to test? Load a custom game, fill it with bots, and change one setting at a time. Our guide to adding bots in a Valorant custom game walks you through the setup.

Valorant settings questions

Does Valorant need a stronger CPU or GPU?

For most PCs, the CPU. Valorant’s graphics are light by design, so the processor feeding frames is usually the limit, especially at 1080p. You can check your own PC in one match: open Video, then Stats, turn on CPU Frame Time and GPU Frame Time, and see which number runs higher. If CPU Frame Time leads, lower graphics will not raise your FPS much. If GPU Frame Time leads, the quality table in this guide is where your frames are.

What is the best FPS limit in Valorant?

The best Limit FPS Always value is the highest rate your PC can hold during a real fight. A steady 240 feels better than a rate that swings between 180 and 400, and a cap also keeps heat and fan noise down. If your PC holds far more than your monitor can show, you can leave the limiter off and let NVIDIA Reflex manage the queue instead. Just do not set the match cap below what your PC can do. That only throws frames away.

Should I set NVIDIA Reflex to On or On + Boost?

On + Boost is the right pick for most players. Reflex cuts the queue between your input and the frame on screen, and Boost keeps the graphics card clocked up so the delay stays low even in quiet rounds. If you are limited by your graphics card and Boost costs you a few frames, plain On still gives you most of the benefit. AMD players get the same idea from Anti-Lag 2.

Should anti-aliasing be MSAA 2x or None?

MSAA 2x is the sweet spot for most players. It smooths the crawling edges that make distant players hard to track, and it costs far less than MSAA 4x. None gives you the highest frame rate, but edges shimmer, which can hide movement at range. FXAA softens the whole picture instead. On a low-end PC, pick None. On anything mid-range or better, MSAA 2x is worth its small price.

Why is my FPS low in the menus and when I alt-tab?

Because the game caps it on purpose. Limit FPS In Menus and Limit FPS In Background are separate limiters under Video, then General, and they only apply outside a match. They keep your PC cool and quiet in the lobby and stop it roasting itself when you alt-tab. Raise their values if the low number bothers you. Your in-match frame rate is set by Limit FPS Always and is not affected by either one.

Where did the Raw Input Buffer setting go?

Riot removed it. In patch 11.06, in September 2025, the Raw Input Buffer toggle under General, then Mouse, was taken out of the menu, and the feature was switched on at all times because it is the more performant path. There is nothing to turn on and no supported way to turn it off. If the switch is missing from your menu, your client is up to date.