How to Increase FPS in Any PC Game (Complete Guide)

I still remember the exact moment I almost returned my graphics card. I'd just installed a "budget beast" GPU everyone on forums was raving about, booted up Warzone, and got 45 FPS on a card that was supposed to handle it easily. I sat there thinking I got scammed by a reseller.

Turns out the card was fine. My game settings were the problem, plus a background app I didn't even know was running was quietly eating my GPU for breakfast.

That was four or five years ago, and since then I've optimized probably 30+ PCs for friends, family, and randoms from a local Discord server who just wanted more frames without spending another rupee or dollar on hardware. Some of these fixes take two minutes. A few of them completely surprised me the first time I found them.

This isn't a "buy a better GPU" article. This is what to actually do before you spend money on anything.

Why your FPS is lower than it should be

Before jumping into fixes, it helps to understand where FPS actually comes from. Your frame rate is basically a relay race between your CPU, your GPU, and your RAM. If any one of them is slow, or if software is getting in the way, the whole chain slows down — even if the other two parts are powerful.

Most people assume low FPS always means "weak graphics card." In my experience, that's true maybe half the time. The other half is a mix of bad settings, background processes, outdated drivers, or a CPU that's choking the GPU (this is called bottlenecking, and it happens more than people realize).

Step 1: Update your GPU drivers properly

This sounds boring and obvious, but I'd guess it fixes more FPS problems than anything else on this list.

Don't just rely on Windows Update. Go straight to the source:

NVIDIA — use the NVIDIA App (it replaced GeForce Experience) or download drivers directly from nvidia.com
AMD — use AMD Adrenalin software
Intel Arc — use Intel's Arc Control app

Here's the part people skip: do a clean install, not just an update. Most driver installers have a checkbox or option for "clean installation" that removes old driver leftovers. I've seen games gain 10-15 FPS just from clearing out driver junk that built up over multiple updates.

Step 2: Stop maxing out every setting

I get it, "Ultra" sounds cooler than "Medium." But Ultra settings are often designed for future hardware, not what most people are running today.

Here's what I do with literally every new game I install:

Set everything to Medium first and note the FPS
Bump up texture quality — this one rarely hurts performance much and makes a big visual difference
Leave shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion lower — these are the biggest FPS killers for the least visual payoff
Turn off motion blur and film grain — pure preference, but they cost some performance for effects most people don't even like
Cap or match your frame rate to your monitor's refresh rate — going way past it just heats up your PC for no visible benefit

When I did this on Cyberpunk 2077 a while back, I went from 38 FPS on High settings to 71 FPS on a custom mix, and honestly could barely tell the visual difference during actual gameplay.

Step 3: Check what's running in the background

This one genuinely surprised me the first time. I had Chrome open with about 15 tabs, Discord running with a screen-share overlay, and Spotify streaming, all while wondering why my FPS was inconsistent.

Quick check:

Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc)
Sort by GPU or CPU usage
Close anything you don't need, browsers are usually the biggest silent offenders

Also worth checking: some apps auto-launch on startup and quietly sit in your system tray using resources. Steam, Epic Games launcher, and various RGB lighting software (looking at you, iCUE and Synapse) are common culprits. You don't have to uninstall them, just close them before gaming sessions if you don't need them.

Step 4: Turn on Game Mode and check power settings

Windows has a built-in Game Mode that prioritizes system resources toward your active game. Go to Settings > Gaming > Game Mode and make sure it's on.

Also check your power plan. If your laptop or PC is set to "Balanced" or "Power Saver," you're literally leaving performance on the table. Switch to High Performance or Best Performance in Windows power settings, especially on laptops where this makes a night-and-day difference.

For laptop gamers specifically — make sure your laptop is actually plugged in while gaming. I know that sounds obvious, but I've had multiple people message me confused about low FPS, and the laptop was running on battery the whole time, which throttles performance hard on most machines.

Step 5: Check your CPU isn't the bottleneck

If you upgraded your GPU but barely saw any FPS improvement, your CPU might be the actual limit. This happened to a friend who paired an RTX 4070 with a five-year-old i5 processor and wondered why his frame rate barely moved.

Quick way to check: open Task Manager during gameplay and watch both CPU and GPU usage. If your GPU usage is sitting low (like 50-60%) while your CPU is maxed near 100%, that's your bottleneck. In that case, no graphics card upgrade will fully fix your FPS you'd need a CPU upgrade instead.

Step 6: Clean install and check your temps

Overheating throttles performance, and dust buildup is one of the most overlooked causes of random FPS drops.

Use a free tool like HWMonitor or MSI Afterburner to check your GPU and CPU temperatures while gaming. If you're consistently above 80-85°C, that's worth addressing either with better airflow, cleaning out dust, or reapplying thermal paste if your PC is a few years old.

I once fixed a friend's random FPS stutters just by opening his case and realizing there was a literal layer of dust coating his GPU fan. Fifteen minutes with a can of compressed air and the stuttering completely disappeared.

Real example: my own troubleshooting session

Going back to that Warzone situation I mentioned earlier — here's exactly what fixed it, in order:

Clean installed my GPU driver (small bump, maybe 5 FPS)
Switched from Ultra to a custom Medium-High mix (jumped from 45 to about 65 FPS)
Closed Chrome, which had 20+ tabs open in the background (another 10 FPS)
Turned on Game Mode and switched my power plan to High Performance (final push to about 85 FPS)

Same hardware the whole time. Just fixing software and settings took me from "is my GPU broken" to genuinely happy with performance.

Common mistakes people make

Assuming it's always a hardware problem. Before spending money, rule out software issues first. It's free and usually faster than waiting for a new part to ship.

Ignoring monitor refresh rate. If your monitor is 60Hz, chasing 150+ FPS in-game does nothing visible. you're just heating up your PC for numbers you can't see.

Downloading random "FPS booster" software. A lot of these are either useless or borderline sketchy, bundling extra junk software with the install. Stick to official tools from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, or Windows itself.

Never checking temps. People troubleshoot everything except the actual thermal health of their PC, which is often the real root cause of inconsistent performance.

Overlooking storage. If your game is installed on an old traditional hard drive instead of an SSD, you might get FPS drops during texture loading, especially in open-world games. Moving the game to an SSD, even a cheap SATA one, usually smooths this out noticeably.

Final thoughts

Most FPS problems aren't actually hardware problems, at least not at first. They're settings, background clutter, outdated drivers, or a PC that just needs a good cleaning and a proper power plan. I've walked enough people through this exact troubleshooting process to know that hardware upgrades should usually be your last step, not your first.

Start with the free fixes. Update your drivers properly, adjust your settings instead of maxing everything out, close background apps, and check your temps. If you go through all of that and you're still not getting the performance you want, that's when it makes sense to start looking at actual hardware upgrades and at that point, at least you'll know exactly what's holding you back instead of guessing.