Question Getting lower than expected FPS, particularly in Valorant ?

[Yosef Marcera]

I put together my current PC back in September 2023, and as far as I can remember, I never hit the proper FPS margin on valorant with my system compared to literally every benchmark I could find on YouTube with the same specs (the CPU in particular, being that the game is CPU bound). Weirdly enough, when it comes to other games, my system puts out the expected performance with no sweat. I only face this issue with valorant, which is pretty much the main game I enjoy with my friends.

My System:
CPU - Ryzen 5 5600
COOLER - Noctua NH-L9
GPU - Sapphire RX 6600 8GB
RAM - Corsair 32GB 3200Mhz
MB - Gigabyte A520i AC
NVME - Crucial P3 Plus 1TB
SATA - Crucial BX500 1TB
PSU - FlexGuru 500w 80+ Gold
CASE - ZZAW A1 Plus

1080P 165HZ

Looking at my game recordings, I get about a 150–250 fps during heavy gunfights, and 300–500 fps only when there's barely anything going on. Based on the benchmarks I see online, I am not supposed to go anywhere below 300 fps, with an average of about 450–500 fps. I've tried reinstalling the game, reinstalling Windows, and following every optimization guide online to no avail. I also experience big frame stutters every once in a while, which bothers me and affects my experience. Could this just be an issue with my particular processor?

 

[piagraffy]

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.

 

[Yosef Marcera]

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 temps are 45c idle and about 75c under load. I am actually also concerned about my thermals, but after reading a bunch of threads both here and on reddit, I'm convinced it shouldn't be much of an issue.

I will take the process lasso tip into consideration, and will also monitor if my proc may actually be throttling.

 

[Yosef Marcera]

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.

The power plan option was one of the measures I've taken previously and has had no effect on my game's fps. I also tried using process lasso and this still has not made any difference.

When it comes to temps, I wanted to try and undervolt the processor using Ryzen Master but apparently it somehow refuses to work on my system anymore (I have been able to use the app a couple months back). I doubt that its throttling, though. It does not reach over 80c.

I decided to use Cinebench 2024 to compare the scores to other R5 5600s, and I come to notice that on multi core it gets about 100pts lower compared to the 5600 in the source I found online. Single Core: 81, Multi Core: 537 compared to Single Core: 85, Multi Core: 642

 

[Yosef Marcera]

After 2 or so weeks of troubleshooting and some component upgrades, I seem to have fixed my issues with performance. The cause may have just been poorly optimized or issues with certain software, such as my Logitech G Hub app and Radeon Relive Capture. For some reason, after trying to uninstall unused apps and closing unnecessary tasks, I came to find that with the Logitech G Hub app closed, I don't experience any frame stutters any more during gameplay. As for AMD's replay capture, I lose more FPS compared to using an alternative app (Outplayed); I went from losing around 200 FPS on VALORANT's "The Range" to losing only 50 FPS.

For the sake of maximizing performance improvements, I went ahead and swapped my R5 5600 to my friend's R5 5600x, replaced my cooler with a more capable and beefier one, upgraded from a 3200 MHz ram kit to a 3600 MHz one, and overclocked it to 4000 MHz CL18. These weren't necessary; maybe I just wanted a reason to spend more on my PC 😆

I went from experiencing FPS dips down to the 100-150 range to rarely going anywhere below 250 FPS during gameplay. My max FPS in "The Range" is in a consistent spot where barely anything is rendered; I now get 800-1000 FPS compared to a meager 400-500 prior to making any changes. It sucks to think that I have been blindly experiencing these issues ever since I built this rig around 6 months ago, but at least I have now solved them.