How to Increase FPS on Your Gaming Monitors

If you play competitive games on a PC, you will need to know how to increase fps. Low fps forces your screen to appear sluggish, thus affecting your gaming experience. Do you wonder where to start? We show you how to boost fps for all video games.

What is FPS?

FPS is also known as frames per second, burst rate, or update rate. It refers to how many times a series of frames are displayed on your screen in a second. So if your best gaming PC has a frame rate of 30 FPS, that would mean the screen will display 30 distinct images in succession each second.

The challenge with gaming on PC is that your computer is not designed for very fast performance, of course, compared to gaming consoles designed primarily for video games. So, it is likely, even when you have a high-end gaming PC, that you will experience some lag problems. The only way to avoid the inconvenience is by looking for ways to boost FPS.

Most gamers will tell you anything less than 60 fps will be slow when you play. You can boost your fps as high as your PC can do, even up to 200 fps for the best gaming performance. So, if you need better FPS and, thus, gaming results, we have compiled these methods you can follow to improve your gaming PC's frame rate.

How to Increase FPS on your Gaming PC

Before we see the various ways you can increase fps on any gaming PC, you might need to understand your monitor's refresh rate to guarantee the frame rate matches it. Your computer's refresh rate (expressed in Herts, Hz) refers to how many times your gaming monitor redraws the screen in a second, so you want your frame rate to match this. 

If your frame rate is higher than the refresh rate, you will not get smoother gameplay as the screen will not display all the frames produced. So, the first step when trying to boost FPS is to understand your refresh rate. You can check it as follows;

How to check your monitor's refresh rate

Step 1: From the Start Menu on your PC, click Settings.

Step 2: In the Settings menu, Open System, then Display.

Step 3: Head over to the Advanced Display Settings.

Step 4: In the Advanced display settings, scroll down to find your computer's Refresh Rate.

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Now that you know your refresh rate, it is easier to boost fps as you know how far to push it. But, before you attempt to improve fps, you will also need to understand the rate, so you don't push it higher than the refresh rate.

How to check your frame rate

Here is how to check fps on your gaming PC.

1. Checking fps in Steam games overlay. If you play Steam games, you can use their fps counter from the Steam menu. Open the Steam app, head over to Settings, then click In-Game, where you can access the In-game fps counter.

2. If you use an Nvidia GeForce graphics card, you can configure your in-game overlay to display your frame rate on the screen. To begin, open the Nvidia GeForce Experience App, then open Settings and In-Game Overlay. Click the HUD layout and follow the steps to configure your fps counter.

3. If you don't know how to check the frame rate in your video settings, you can use a free utility tool such as Fraps to count your fps.

Now that you know your refresh rate and frame rate, it is time to learn how to increase fps where applicable. These are the best methods to follow.

Method 1: Enable Game mode

If you use a Windows PC for gaming, it comes with the Game Mode. This mode deactivates processes running in the background, such as Windows updates, notifications, and more, thus allowing you to harvest all the computer's energy.

So, if you need to increase fps, deactivating background processes can guarantee a better gaming performance. Here is how to enable Game mode;

Step 1: Go to your PC's Start Menu and Open Settings.

Step 2: Once in the Settings menu, click Gaming.

Step 3: Then, scroll down to Game mode, and turn it on if it is off.

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With the game mode on, your frame rate can improve significantly when other programs are not draining our GPU. But understand that this mode can hamper your other operations, so you might need to access your notifications and updates manually.

Method 2: Lower your Screen Resolution

Even when you have a high-end gaming PC, screen resolution might slightly affect your fps cont. It does so because, with increased resolution, this higher number of pixels to be displayed puts added strain on the GPU. Then, when the GPU is strained, your gaming PC cannot sustain high fps. To solve the issue, you might need to lower your screen resolution as follows;

Step 1: Open the Start Menu on your computer and click settings.

Step 2: In settings, open the System menu, then Display Settings.

Step 3: If you find your screen resolution at the maximum level, choose a lower resolution setting and wait for your fps to improve. You can lower your resolution from 1080p to about 720p if you want to see better fps results.

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However, as you choose your lower resolution settings, make sure you find a good balance between the improved fps and clear graphics. Suffice to say; you may not benefit much from high fps if you cannot see what is going on in your video game.

Method 3: Adjust your Game's Video settings

While you can lower the screen resolution to increase fps, you can also access your graphics settings to lower the video quality to boost fps. Depending on the video games you play, you might find simple single-switch adjustments from low, medium, and high, while others require you to enter numerical figures.

Because this process is a bit complicated, we have come up with these pointers to guide your graphics settings adjustments.

1. Reduce the quality of shadows, textures, lighting, and reflections. However, understand that this might affect how your game characters appear, but it is an effective way to increase fps.

2. Adjust anti-aliasing. This feature helps smooth out edges for various features and characters in your game, and when at the default setting, it can demand more from your GPU, thus lowering FPS. Turn anti-aliasing off, then slowly increase it until you can tell the difference in how your graphics appear. While it will affect good graphics, it will help you increase fps for better gaming performance.

3. Adjust some graphical settings like motion blur and lens flare to make it easier for your GPU to perform at the highest level.

4. Reduce your draw distance, so your GPU does not have to process images far from your immediate environment. Doing so will help you get more fps, thus better performance mode.

5. Try turning off Vsync. The feature synchronizes your refresh rate and frame rate, and though helpful for your graphics, it tends to lower fps dramatically. Try turning Vsync off and see if your fps will improve. If you notice too much tearing, you need to turn it back on and try other methods for increasing fps.

Method 4: Remove Idle Programs

When you install too many programs on your PC, you will likely forget some, and they can affect your PC's performance. In addition, most installed programs tend to have various activities running in the background, demanding more energy from your GPU. As a result, you will notice lag screen performance when you start playing games.

Therefore, it is imperative to uninstall most programs you do not use to restore GPU power. You can manually uninstall these programs from your PC's settings menu as follows:

Step 1: Open your computer's Start menu, then go to Settings.

Step 2: In Settings, open Apps.

Step 3: Assess all the apps you no longer use and uninstall them, as shown below.

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After uninstalling the apps manually, you can use a bloatware remover to remove any idle programs left. Luckily, bloatware remover displays all unnecessary programs still running on your PC and allows you to move them to trash.

Additionally, a bloatware remover helps you deal with installed programs you don't use regularly but still want to keep running. A good antivirus or bloatware remover allows you to put the programs to sleep.

Method 5: Upgrade or Boost Wi-Fi

One of the easiest methods to influence performance is by boosting your Wi-Fi. When you have a slow internet connection, your computer will struggle to load images and video. So, while this method has will not necessarily increase fps, it is a worthy consideration when you want to improve how fast your game loads.

Method 6: Update your Graphics Card Drivers

When you want to increase fps significantly, you may need to head to your graphics card manufacturer's website and update the drivers. This AVG guide shows how to update a graphics driver for better fps and gaming experience.

Method 6: Upgrade your Graphics Card

When you want better gaming performance, you can also consider upgrading the graphics card on your PC. However, this is only good when you have gaming monitors and is not easily applicable if you use a laptop.

Suppose you had to lower your screen resolution to increase fps. If that did not eliminate your low fps, the next thing you can do is upgrade your graphics card. You can choose the best graphics card manufacturers such as MSI, Nvidia, and Intel HD graphics cards.

Method 7: Change your Battery Settings

If you have already upgraded your graphics card and improved other performance and gaming settings and still have low fps, you can try to improve it by adjusting battery settings. This method is important because, as your computer seeks to stay cool, it can often turn down performance to prevent overheating, which means you can lose game speed.

To change your battery settings;

Step 1: Press the Windows + R kes on your keyboard to open a dialogue box.

Step 2: Type powercfg.cpl into the Run box and enter. Doing so will take you to your PC's Power Options.

Step 3: n the Power options panel, scroll down to select Create a Power Plan.

Step 4: You will notice three different plans, Balanced, Power saver, and high-performance. Select High Performance. With this, your PC will not attempt to save battery levels, and though it will increase fps and performance, it will also drain the battery very fast.

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When gaming, it is imperative to keep a laptop plugged in so it won't shut down mid-game.

Method 8: Improve Performance Settings

Improving your gaming PC's performance settings can also increase fps and boost your gaming experience. To do so;

Step 1: From the Start Menu, type Control panel and open it.

Step 2: From the Control panel, open Settings, then Advanced System Settings.

Step 3: From the pop-up window, click Advanced, then open the performance settings.

Step 4: Finally, select Adjust for Best Performance as shown below, and save the changes.

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Method 9: Defrag your Local Disk

Another way to increase fps is by defragging your Local disk. Defragmentation is a process that reorganizes stored data to improve your PC's performance. Your data may be stored in odd places on your computer, and thus, it will take a lot of time for your PC to fetch the data when you need it. This will require more energy from the processor, which will lead to low fps.

To defrag your hard drive;

Step 1: Press Windows + E on your keyboard.

Step 2: Go to This PC, and on the right side, right-click on Local Disc.

Step 3: Select Properties, then Tools, and select the Optimize and Defragment Drive section.

Step 4: Under Optimize and Defragment drive, click the Optimize button. Doing so will bring a list of all your hard drives, and you can then optimize each.

image source: avg.com

Alternatively, you can also access the Defragment and Optimization Drives app from the Start Menu by typing defrag. Then, when the app opens, you can pick the hard drives you want to optimize under the list.

Method 10: Overclock your Graphics Card

Often, your PC will start to appear slow when the GPU is struggling. You can overclock your graphics card to increase fps, but you will need to understand how far you can push it to prevent damaging it.

While overclocking the graphics card, ensure you have the best measures to cool your PC as it can overheat rather quickly. For best results, it is ideal to increase the GPU speed slowly so you can observe how your PC performs.