How to Fix Low FPS in GamesFree fixes first — hardware diagnosis only if they don't work

1. Free Fixes to Try First (In This Order)

Do these before opening Task Manager, before downloading Afterburner, before considering any hardware purchase. They cost nothing and each one has a real chance of being the fix.

If any of these fix your problem, you're done. If FPS is still low after all six, the next step is figuring out what's actually the bottleneck — and that requires the Afterburner overlay.

2. The MSI Afterburner Diagnostic

Task Manager isn't accurate enough for gaming diagnosis — it updates too slowly and doesn't show VRAM usage. The right tool is MSI Afterburner with RivaTuner Statistics Server — both install together from the same download. After installing, open Afterburner, go to Settings → Monitoring, and enable GPU Usage, CPU Usage, GPU Temperature, VRAM Usage, and Frametime to show in the on-screen display. Then launch your game, play a demanding scene for at least 10–15 minutes (five minutes isn't long enough to see thermal throttling develop), and read the numbers.

Three scenarios cover most situations:

GPU at 95–100%, CPU below 70% is a GPU bottleneck. The graphics card is doing everything it can and still can't produce the frame rate you want. Software fixes won't change this — lowering graphical settings will buy you FPS, but the card is the ceiling. If you want higher FPS without lowering quality, and temperatures check out clean, you need a better GPU. That's the honest conclusion.

CPU at 90–100%, GPU below 65% is a CPU bottleneck. The processor can't prepare frames fast enough for the GPU to render them, so the GPU sits partially idle. This is more common in CPU-intensive games — competitive titles like CS2 at very high frame rates, simulation games, and open-world titles like GTA or RDR2. Check temperatures before concluding the CPU needs replacing; thermal throttling looks identical to a genuine performance bottleneck in the overlay.

Both below 80% with FPS still low is the trickiest scenario, and I've hit it myself — usually when a game's VRAM limit crept up with an update and I hadn't noticed. Check VRAM usage: if it's sitting at or near your card's ceiling (7.9 GB on an 8 GB card, for example), the GPU is spilling overflow to system RAM, which produces stutters that don't look like typical GPU throttling. If VRAM is fine and both numbers are still below 80%, check temperatures next — this pattern is almost always thermal throttling presenting as a performance ceiling. The temperature section covers this.

3. The Temperature Check

Thermal throttling is one of the most under-diagnosed causes of low FPS because the symptom — reduced performance — looks exactly the same as a genuine hardware bottleneck. The difference is that throttling gets worse over a gaming session as the system heats up, while a true bottleneck is consistent from the start.

Download HWMonitor and run it alongside a gaming session. Check the maximum temperature values — not the current ones — after 20–30 minutes of play.

NVIDIA GPUs typically start throttling between 83–87°C. AMD GPUs throttle between 80–85°C. CPUs throttle at 95–100°C. If you're hitting these numbers, the hardware is protecting itself by reducing clock speeds — and that's where your FPS went.

4. XMP / EXPO — The Free FPS Boost Most Gamers Miss

I've told probably a dozen people about this after they asked why their "new RAM" didn't feel any faster. By default, most motherboards run RAM at its base JEDEC speed — which for a DDR5-6000 kit is 4800 MHz. You're paying for 6000 MHz and running 4800 MHz because no one told you to enable XMP (Intel) or EXPO (AMD) in the BIOS. That speed difference translates to roughly 10–15% less CPU throughput in games, particularly in esports titles where CPU performance matters most.

To enable it: reboot and press Delete or F2 as the PC starts to enter the BIOS. Look for a setting labelled XMP, EXPO, or DOCP (some ASUS boards use DOCP for the same thing). Enable the highest rated profile — it should match the speed printed on your RAM packaging. Save and exit. The PC will reboot with RAM running at its rated speed. You don't need to reinstall anything or touch any game settings.

Check before buying anything. It's the fastest free FPS gain available on most gaming systems.

5. FPS by Game Type — Why the Problem Differs

Not all low FPS has the same root cause. What's limiting performance in CS2 at 240 FPS is completely different from what's limiting performance in Cyberpunk 2077 at 35 FPS. Knowing which category your games fall into points you to the right fix.

Competitive Esports (CS2, Valorant, Fortnite)

These games are primarily CPU-bound at high frame rates. The graphics card is rarely the limit when you're trying to hit 240+ FPS — the CPU is. Enabling XMP/EXPO is the first thing to check here, because RAM running below its rated speed costs real frames in CPU-intensive titles. After that, closing background apps (particularly Discord video calls and browser windows) is the second-biggest lever. A GPU upgrade will have minimal effect on CS2 at 1080p if your CPU is already the ceiling. I've run CS2 on a rig where dropping settings made essentially no difference to the frame counter — the GPU overlay showed 55–60% the whole time. The CPU was the ceiling, not the card.

AAA Single-Player Games (Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Alan Wake 2)

These are GPU-bound. The graphics card is rendering physically-based materials, volumetric lighting, and high-resolution shadow maps at every frame. A GPU upgrade produces direct, proportional FPS gains here. Dropping shadow quality and disabling ray tracing are the two in-game settings that reclaim the most performance without destroying the visual experience — both of these hit the GPU directly. If the Afterburner overlay shows GPU at 95%+ and temperatures are fine, the card is simply the bottleneck and the only real fix is a better one.

Open-World Games with Large Streaming Areas (GTA VI, Microsoft Flight Simulator)

The half-second stutter you get when entering a new area in these games isn't an FPS problem in the traditional sense — it's a storage and RAM problem. The engine is streaming new geometry, textures, and audio assets from disk into memory as you move through the world. On a mechanical HDD, this is a genuine bottleneck: the drive simply can't feed data fast enough. On an NVMe SSD, those load-in pauses disappear. Similarly, if you're running 8 or 16 GB of RAM and the game's asset cache keeps spilling over, adding RAM to 32 GB cuts those area-load pauses noticeably — in practice, going from 8 GB to 32 GB in heavy streaming games drops those pauses from noticeable half-second hitches to sub-100ms, and most players stop noticing them entirely. This is a narrower fix than a GPU upgrade — it won't move your average frame rate — but if stutters rather than low average FPS are your specific complaint, this is where to look.

6. When Hardware Upgrade Is Actually Needed

If you've been through all the software fixes, enabled XMP, checked temperatures, and the Afterburner overlay is still pointing at a hardware ceiling, then it's a hardware problem. Here's what the numbers mean:

GPU at 95–99% consistently with no thermal throttle — the card is the limit. A GPU upgrade will directly increase FPS in the games you play. Read the GPU upgrade guide to understand compatibility, PSU requirements, and what to check before buying.

CPU at 90–99% in the specific games you play, GPU below 65% — the processor is the bottleneck. Confirm this is consistent across multiple sessions and not caused by a single background process spiking. A CPU upgrade carries hidden costs (new motherboard, potentially new RAM generation) — the CPU upgrade guide covers when it's actually worth it and what the real cost looks like.

RAM consistently above 85% during gameplay — adding RAM will reduce stuttering. Going from 8 GB to 16 GB typically drops in-game RAM utilisation from around 90% to 50–60% and eliminates the texture-streaming hitches that come with running out of memory. The RAM upgrade guide covers what to buy and how to confirm compatibility before you order.

If you're not sure which upgrade to prioritise first, the PC upgrade for gaming guide covers the priority logic in detail — including how resolution affects which component becomes the bottleneck first.

Common Mistakes

These come up repeatedly. Each one costs real money or real time.

Buying a GPU when the real problem is a driver

A GPU driver regression after a Windows update is one of the most common causes of sudden, severe FPS drops — and it looks identical to a failing GPU. Before concluding your card is too weak, update the driver and retest. If the update made things worse, use Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) in safe mode to clean the old driver entirely, then install the previous stable release from the NVIDIA or AMD driver archive.

Upgrading hardware when the PC is thermally throttling

A GPU running at 87°C will clock itself down to protect from damage. This shows up as low FPS that gets progressively worse as the gaming session goes on. I've seen people buy new GPUs after deciding their current one was "too slow," when the card was simply full of dust and running at 70% of its rated speed because of it. Clean the system and retest temperatures before spending anything.

Skipping XMP/EXPO and then buying faster RAM

Buying a second RAM kit when the existing kit is already capable but running at JEDEC speeds is a waste. Check CPU-Z (free at cpuid.com) — if the Memory tab shows a frequency significantly below your kit's rated speed, enabling XMP/EXPO in the BIOS is the fix, not new hardware.

Diagnosing with Task Manager instead of Afterburner

Task Manager updates every second or two, which is far too slow to catch frame-level bottlenecks in games. It also doesn't show VRAM usage at all. People look at a GPU sitting at 65% in Task Manager and conclude the GPU isn't the problem — but Afterburner at the same moment might show 95% utilisation and VRAM at its limit. Use Afterburner for gaming diagnosis.