Valorant is a CPU-bound game. Your GPU matters much less than most people think. The frame rate ceiling is set by how fast your CPU can process game state and render draw calls — and Windows has several behaviors that get in the way.
Valorant-specific issues
Vanguard anti-cheat runs at kernel level and communicates with the game process constantly. Any additional kernel-level interference (Game DVR, Xbox overlay, background UWP apps) increases the time Vanguard's polling takes, which shows up as micro-stutter.
The game is single-threaded for most logic. This means one core needs to run as fast as possible for as long as possible. Core parking, EcoQoS throttling, and power plan settings directly affect Valorant's 1% lows.
What to change
Disable Game DVR and Xbox Game Bar:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\GameBar
UseNexusForGameBarEnabled = 0
AutoGameModeEnabled = 0
HKCU\System\GameConfigStore
GameDVR_Enabled = 0
Per-process priority for VALORANT-Win64-Shipping.exe:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\VALORANT-Win64-Shipping.exe\PerfOptions
CpuPriorityClass = 3
IoPriority = 3
GpuPriority = 8
Power plan — Ultimate Performance:
powercfg /duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
powercfg /setactive <new-guid>
Disable Power Throttling (EcoQoS):
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerThrottling
PowerThrottlingOff = 1
MMCSS Games priority:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\Tasks\Games
Priority = 6
Scheduling Category = High
GPU Priority = 8
SFIO Priority = High
Result
One user in my Discord went from 120fps to 300fps in Valorant with these changes. Ping dropped from 30 to 13 at the same time (network stack changes help here too).
If you want all of this applied in one click with full revert support: https://terweb.lt/ — the tool is IzanagiOP, €10 lifetime.
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