Having problems with a low framerate in League of Legends? In this guide, we’ve given you five different ways that you can increase your FPS in LOL.
League of Legends isn’t the most resource intensive game on the market by a stretch, but if your processor or GPU are outdated, or your system is just old in general, you might be getting low FPS in League of Legends. Or, maybe your system is more than capable of running League of Legends, but you’re still getting a low framerate when playing.
So, whether your problem is a hardware problem, or a software problem, in this guide, we’ve put together a list of five ways that you can increase your FPS in League of Legends.
1. Change In-Game Settings
First up, the easy stuff—adjusting your in-game video settings from the graphics menu. This should really be the first step you take when you’re trying to get an FPS boost in any game. Lowering settings in the graphics menu can give you a significant FPS boost if you’re running on outdated hardware.
To start, hit escape when you’ve got the game booted up and select the “VIDEO” option. If you’re only struggling with 5-10 FPS of slowdown, you might just want to adjust a few settings, and only lower them by one or two degrees. But if your frame rate in League is unbearably low—like, under 20 frames per second—your best bet is to just set everything to “Very Low” (and disable Anti-Aliasing and Wait for Vertical Sync) and hope for the best.
You can also lower the game’s resolution if you’re getting a super low framerate as your system’s GPU will have an easier time churning out lower resolution frames.
There are also some minor HUD options that can give you a frame rate boost once disabled. You can check these out by hitting escape when you’ve got the game booted up and selecting the “INTERFACE” menu. Unchecking “Enable HUD animations,” “Show Target Frame On Attack,” “Enable Line Missile Display,” and “Show Attack Range” could give you enough of a boost to make the changes to your HUD worthwhile.
Just remember, adjusting your in-game graphics settings will also lower the visual fidelity of the game—so make sure it’s a trade-off you can live with. The good news is that, since League isn’t really a graphics-based game, lowering the graphics settings and/or resolution shouldn’t have a big impact on how well you do in the game.
2. Ensure That Your Video Drivers Are Up to Date
If you aren’t a regular PC gamer, it can be easy enough to forget to keep your graphics card’s drivers up to date. These drivers almost always include integral bug fixes and system optimizations, though, so keeping them current is definitely in your best interest.
What steps you take to update your drivers depends on what brand of GPU you have. To find out, hit the Windows key and R to open the “run” box, then type “dxdiag.” A diagnostic system overview will pop up, and once it’s finished loading, you can click the display tab to find the make and model of your graphics card.
From there, it’s as simple as Googling “video drivers” and the name of the company that makes your graphics card—usually AMD, NVIDIA or Intel (integrated graphics). All three companies have programs that will quietly run in the background of your computer and ensure that your drivers are always up to date, so get that installed and then never again wonder if your drivers are the problem.
3. Make Changes Outside the Game
If you’ve tried altering in-game video settings and updating your drivers, it may be time to consider making alterations to Windows or League itself. This is a big move, so if you aren’t familiar with making adjustments like this, take care to ensure that you don’t do any permanent damage to your system.
The simplest thing you can do outside of the game to give yourself an FPS boost is to use the Task Manager to set the CPU priority of League. In the “processes” tab of Task Manager, you can right-click on League’s .exe and set the game’s priority to high or real-time. This should give you an immediate FPS boost, as devoting more of the CPU’s power to one program generally makes it run more smoothly.
You can also adjust the configuration file—located in League’s installation folder—to change video settings that aren’t present in-game. For example, you can change “EnableGrassSwaying” from 1 to 0, set Inking to 0, and set PerPixelPointLighting to 0. These changes can have a huge impact on your frame rate, but there are too many options to adjust in the configuration file to dig into each one, so peruse it and make changes at your own peril.
Less commonly, League’s game files may have become corrupted since you first installed the game. Fortunately, this is an easy fix: Once you run the game launcher, click on the settings cog in the top-right corner of the window and select “Initiate Full Repair.” This could take five minutes, or it could take half an hour—it all depends on how many files are corrupt and how powerful your system is.
Another very simple fix is to ensure that no extraneous programs are running when you’re trying to play League—especially anything that’s resource intensive. One of the biggest culprits of resource hogging are browsers, which can occasionally experience memory leaks, hogging up to half a gig of memory at a time. Make sure you aren’t running any programs that you don’t need when you’re trying to play.
4. Invest In a New GPU
Here come the no-brainers. Okay, if you’ve tried everything else on this list and you’re still suffering from sub-optimal frames per second in-game, it may be time to bite the bullet and invest in a new GPU.
Your graphics card isn’t the only piece of hardware in your computer that determines how well you can run a video game, but it’s definitely a vital component of that equation. If you’re running on a decade old GPU, no amount of fiddling with settings or praying to your deity of choice will fix your frame rate.
But fret not. Even if you are on a tight budget, there are plenty of video card options out there that will allow you to run League of Legends at a higher framerate. Check out our Budget Video Card Buyer’s Guide for a list of the best cheap GPU options currently available.
When you do pick out a new GPU, though, make sure that it’s compatible with your motherboard and power supply and that it fits in your case, or you’ll have to return it and reorder a different option.
5. Get a Whole New Computer
Uh-oh. So maybe you started digging into a new graphics card—that’s awesome. But… then you realized that your motherboard is so darn old, no GPU on the market will interface properly with it. No problem, you’ll just get a new motherboard too. Except… the new motherboard and the new card have more power draw than your power supply can handle, so you’re gonna have to get a new PSU, too… and hey, didn’t you see a really great sale on hard drives while you were looking for a graphics card?
You can’t put it off any longer. It’s time to get a whole new rig and you know it. There’s no need to worry, though—you can save a ton of money by building your own computer. And, even a $300 PC build will be able to run League of Legends with no problems. You can check out our guide on Gaming PC’s for League of Legends for a couple more build options, too.
You can also opt for a pre-built gaming PC (but you’ll pay a little more), or a budget gaming laptop (under $500), too, for low-cost options that you won’t have to assemble.
Ultimately, you have quite a few different options to use in order to fix low FPS problems in League of Legends. My guess is that, since League of Legends is not a very demanding game, one of the first three options will solve your problem. However, if you’re currently playing on an older system that didn’t have great hardware to begin with, you may need to look into options four and five. Fortunately, getting a new GPU—or a new system entirely—that will adequately run LOL shouldn’t cost you a ton of money due to the non-demanding nature of the game.