Valorant is a highly optimized game designed to run on a wide variety of hardware. However, if you are playing with all the graphical settings set to “High,” you are sacrificing crucial frames per second (FPS) for pretty shadows.
The best video settings for Valorant require turning all graphical quality settings to “Low” and disabling visual clutter like Bloom and Distortion. You must also enable NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency to ensure your mouse clicks register as fast as possible.
Even if you have the Best Monitor for Valorant, your game will feel sluggish if your PC isn’t outputting enough frames. Here is exactly how to optimize your video settings for maximum competitive advantage.
1. General Video Settings
Open your settings menu and navigate to the Video > General tab.
- Display Mode: Fullscreen (Crucial! Windowed Fullscreen introduces input lag).
- Resolution: Your monitor’s native resolution (e.g., 1920×1080).
- Limit FPS on Battery: On
- Limit FPS in Menus: On (Set to 60)
- Limit FPS in Background: On (Set to 30)
- Limit FPS Always: Off (You want your PC to push as many frames as possible during gameplay).
- NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: On + Boost (This is the most important setting on this page. It forces your CPU and GPU to sync perfectly, eliminating input delay).
2. Graphics Quality Settings
Navigate to the Video > Graphics Quality tab. In a tactical shooter, visual clutter gets you killed. You want the game to look as clean and flat as possible so enemy player models stand out against the background.
- Multithreaded Rendering: On (Massively improves CPU performance).
- Material Quality: Low
- Texture Quality: Low
- Detail Quality: Low
- UI Quality: Low
- Vignette: Off (This adds a dark shadow around the edges of your screen. Turn it off).
- VSync: Off (VSync caps your framerate and introduces massive input lag).
- Anti-Aliasing: MSAA 4x (Turning this up slightly smooths out jagged edges on player models at long distances).
- Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
- Improve Clarity: Off
- Experimental Sharpening: Off
- Bloom: Off (This makes weapon flashes blinding. Turn it off).
- Distortion: Off
- Cast Shadows: Off (This only turns off shadows on your own character model, which is useless. Enemy shadows will still render).
(Once your video settings are dialed in, make sure your mouse isn’t holding you back. Read our guide to the Best Mouse Sensitivity for Valorant).
3. Enemy Highlight Color
By default, enemy outlines in Valorant are set to Red. Depending on the map, Red can blend into the background (especially on maps with brick or clay textures like Ascent).
Navigate to the General tab and find Enemy Highlight Color. Change this to Yellow (Deuteranopia). Yellow is the brightest, most unnatural color in the game’s color palette. An enemy glowing bright neon yellow will instantly catch your eye faster than a red outline.
(Is your keyboard loud enough to bleed into your microphone? Read our guide to the 5 Best Linear Switches for Gaming to find quieter options).
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my game feel laggy even with high FPS?
If your game says you are getting 300 FPS but it feels choppy, your monitor’s refresh rate might not be set correctly in Windows. Right-click your desktop, go to Display Settings > Advanced Display Settings, and ensure the “Refresh Rate” dropdown is set to the highest possible number (e.g., 144Hz or 240Hz).
Does turning settings to Low give me an advantage?
Yes. Aside from increasing your FPS, turning settings like “Detail Quality” to Low actually removes visual clutter from the map. For example, on High settings, there might be vines or leaves hanging from a wall. On Low settings, those leaves disappear, giving you a cleaner line of sight to the enemy.
