△ Performance
Low FPS in PC games — How to boost framerate
Sudden drops in FPS — or a game running at half the FPS it should — almost always trace back to driver, power plan or background-app issues. Hardware rarely changes overnight.
- Time
- 30 min
- Difficulty
- medium
- Applies to
- Windows 11, Windows 10
- Updated
- May 25, 2026
Symptoms
- ▸FPS lower than benchmarks for the same hardware
- ▸Sudden drops to 30 FPS or below mid-game
- ▸Frametime spikes / micro-stutter
- ▸GPU usage below 90% but FPS still capped
Likely causes
- ▸Outdated or unstable GPU driver
- ▸Windows power plan set to Balanced — modern CPUs idle too low
- ▸Background apps (Chrome, Discord, OBS) competing for CPU/GPU
- ▸MSI Afterburner / RTSS frame-cap accidentally set
- ▸Game Mode misbehaving on certain drivers
How to fix it — step by step
- 01
Update or clean install GPU driver with DDU
Boot into Safe Mode, run Display Driver Uninstaller, then install the latest Game Ready (NVIDIA) or Adrenalin (AMD) driver. Resolves most overnight FPS drops.
- 02
Set Power Plan to Ultimate Performance
Run as admin:
powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61 - 03
Enable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling
Settings → System → Display → Graphics → Default graphics settings→ toggle on Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling. Reboot. - 04
Disable Windows Game Bar and Game DVR
Settings → Gaming → Captures→ turn off Record what happened. Game DVR background recording silently caps FPS. - 05
Close overlays
Discord overlay, NVIDIA GeForce Experience overlay, MSI Afterburner OSD, Steam overlay — disable them all and re-enable one at a time to find any that drop FPS.
- 06
Check CPU thermals
Use HWiNFO64. CPU package > 95 °C means thermal throttling. Reseat the cooler or check airflow.