Discovering lower-than-expected frame rates, especially in Valorant?
Discovering lower-than-expected frame rates, especially in Valorant?
I assembled my current PC in September 2023, and as far back as I can recall,
I never reached the ideal FPS range for valorant on my setup compared to every benchmark I found online with similar specs (the CPU being especially relevant since the game is CPU-intensive). Interestingly, for other titles my system performs as expected without any problems. I only encounter this problem with valorant, which is the main game I play with friends.
After a couple of weeks of troubleshooting and some component upgrades, I noticed my performance issues have been resolved. It seems the problem might have stemmed from suboptimal settings or certain software, like my Logitech G Hub app and Radeon Relive Capture. After uninstalling unused apps and closing unnecessary tasks, I discovered that closing the Logitech G Hub app eliminated frame stutters during gameplay. Regarding AMD's replay capture, I experienced a significant improvement in FPS—losing only 50 compared to around 200 when using the alternative app (Outplayed). For better performance gains, I decided to replace my R5 5600 with one from a friend.
What's your CPU temperatures like? you could be thermal throttling. I'd make sure your temperatures aren't too high and check for thermal throttling in Ryzen Master or HWinfo64, run a Cinebench 23 test and compare it to other average scores for the processor, it's unlikely that it's an issue with your particular processor.
Another option would be to make sure your Windows power plan option is set to performance instead of balanced or power saver, this usually solves my issues with stuttering or FPS. I use process lasso and for whatever games I may have issues in I usually set the priority to high.
My temperatures are at 45c when idle and around 75c under load. I'm also worried about my thermals, but after reviewing many discussions here and on Reddit, I feel confident it shouldn't be a big problem.
I plan to consider the process lasso tip and keep an eye on whether my proc might be throttling.
The power plan setting I used before didn't influence my game's frame rate. I also attempted process lasso without success. Regarding temperatures, I considered undervolting the processor with Ryzen Master, but it seems to be unresponsive on my system (I was able to use the app a few months ago). I'm not sure if it's throttling, though—it doesn't exceed 80°C. I opted to run Cinebench 2024 to benchmark against other R5 5600 models, and I observed that on multi-core it lags about 100 points compared to the official source. Single Core: 81, Multi Core: 537 versus Single Core: 85, Multi Core: 642.
After a couple of weeks of troubleshooting and some hardware upgrades, I noticed my performance issues have largely been resolved. It seems the problem might have stemmed from suboptimal settings or certain software, like my Logitech G Hub app and Radeon Relive Capture. After attempting to uninstall unused applications and closing unnecessary processes, I discovered that closing the Logitech G Hub app eliminated frame stutters during gameplay. Regarding AMD's replay capture, I experienced a significant drop in FPS compared to using an alternative app (Outplayed); my performance fell from around 200 FPS in VALORANT's "The Range" to just 50 FPS.
To further enhance performance, I swapped my R5 5600 with a friend's R5 5600x, upgraded my cooler for better cooling, upgraded the RAM from 3200 MHz to 3600 MHz, and overclocked it to 4000 MHz CL18. These changes weren’t essential, but they certainly helped.
I moved from frequent FPS drops to maintaining a stable range of 100-150 FPS, and my maximum in "The Range" now consistently sits between 800-1000 FPS—far better than the 400-500 I had before. It’s frustrating to realize these issues have persisted since I set up my rig about six months ago, but at least I’ve fixed them now.