How to improve your FPS in League of Legends (2021)

Having a game that does not work properly is one of the most frustrating things for a gamer. League of Legends was designed to work on a variety of computers, including older machines, but may start running more smoothly than normal at times. In general, the first step in troubleshooting the problem is to select which FPS and ping numbers are not right.

Having trouble with the framerate in League of Legends? This guide offers you five different ways to improve your FPS in League of Legends.

Despite League of Legends being relatively resource-light, if your hardware is old, like an outdated processor or GPU, or if your system, in general, is old, you might be experiencing poor frame rates. You might also have a slow framerate while playing League of Legends even when your system is capable of running it.

The following guide will provide you with 7 tips on how to improve your FPS in League of Legends, no matter whether the problem is hardware-related or a software issue.

1. Change the game’s settings

You can adjust your game’s video settings via the graphics menu. First, the easy stuff. It’s essential to do this as soon as you start looking for ways to boost your FPS in any game. You can get a significant FPS boost by lowering the graphics settings if your hardware is outdated.

Start by selecting the “VIDEO” option when the game is booted up and pressing escape. If your game is only slowing down by 5-10 frames per second, it may be sufficient to simply lower a few settings by one or two degrees. You can, however, take measures to improve your frame rate by setting everything to “Very Low” (and turning off Anti-Aliasing and Wait for Vertical Sync) and hoping for the best.

League of Legends – Change the game’s settings

The first thing you should do if your FPS is low in League of Legends is to check your video settings and reduce them as necessary. Another way to increase FPS is to lower the resolution a game runs at.

Also, you can increase the resolution if your framerate is ultra-low so that your computer’s GPU can generate frames with a lower resolution.

You can also disable some of the HUD options in order to boost frames once enabled. During gameplay, you can view these by selecting the “INTERFACE” menu after hitting escape. Enabling HUD animations, showing your target’s frame on the attack, enabling line missile display, and showing your attack range won’t give you a noticeable boost, but at least it will give you a boost.

It is important to keep in mind that lowering your in-game graphics settings will also reduce the visual quality of the game-so ensure you can accept the tradeoff. Because League is not primarily a graphics-based game, you shouldn’t have a significant impact on the game’s performance by lowering the graphics settings and/or resolution.

CHANGING VIDEO SETTINGS

You can affect your FPS by choosing the video options in-game. The game will run faster if these settings are lower, but visual quality will decrease. Finding the right balance between performance and quality will require experimenting with these settings. For a starting point, chose the lowest value for each option. These can be accessed in-game by selecting VIDEO on the ESC key.

• Settings: Custom
• Shadows: No Shadow
• Frame Rate Cap: 60 FPS
• Anti-Aliasing: Unchecked
• Resolution: Match desktop resolution
• Character Quality: Very Low
• Environment Quality: Very Low
• Effects Quality: Very Low
• Wait for Vertical Sync: Unchecked

There are also interface options you can modify to reduce hardware stress.
These options can be accessed by pressing ESC in-game and selecting INTERFACE.

CHANGING INTERFACE OPTIONS

• Uncheck Enable HUD animations
• Uncheck Show Attack Range
• Uncheck Enable line missile display
• Uncheck Show Target Frame on attack

2. Make sure your video drivers are up to date

You can easily forget about updating your graphics card’s drivers when you aren’t a regular PC gamer. Most driver updates include bug fixes and performance optimizations, which means keeping your driver’s current is definitely a good idea.

Depending on the company you use, you’ll have to follow different processes for updating your driver. You can do this by hitting the Windows key and R to open the Run window. Type “dxdiag” to access a diagnostic system overview, then click the Display tab to determine what your graphics card makes and models.

To find the driver, just Google “video drivers” and the name of the graphics card manufacturer. AMD, NVIDIA or Intel generally make graphics cards. Install the programs from all three companies to ensure that your drivers are always up to date, and you’ll never again wonder whether the problem is your drivers.

3. Make a change outside the game

After you’ve manipulated your game’s video settings and updated your drivers, it might be necessary to make changes to League or Windows. Considering the magnitude of this move, you should take care not to damage your system, especially if you aren’t familiar with such adjustments.

You can take steps outside of the game to boost your FPS by setting League’s CPU priority in the Task Manager. You can change the priority of League’s .exe by right-clicking on it in Task Manager’s “processes” tab. This should boost your framerate immediately since each program runs more smoothly if the CPU is dedicated to it.

If you want to change video settings not present in-game, you can adjust League’s configuration file, which is located in its installation folder. In order to set Inking to 0, set EnableGrassSwaying to 0, or set PerPixelPointLighting to 0, for example, you can change “EnableGrassSwaying” to 0. Changes to the configuration file can dramatically affect frame rates, but there are too many options to dig deep into each one, so browse it and make changes at your own risk.

Your driver may need to be updated if it doesn’t work, but if your system is relatively modern and League should run much better, you should try repairing the client from scratch.

A similar problem may occur if League’s game files are corrupted from the date you first installed the game. In most cases, this is an easy fix. After running the game launcher, click on the settings cog then select “Initiate Full Repair.” This process could take five minutes. You can expect the resolution time to vary depending on how many corrupted files you have and how powerful your system is.

Another very simple fix is to make sure that no unnecessary programs are running when you are playing League – especially resource-intensive ones. Some of the most resource-intensive programs are browsers, which can sometimes experience memory leaks, hogging as much as half a gig of memory at a time. If you’re playing, make sure you do not have any programs running that you do not need.

4. Disable Or Remove Possible Unwanted Programs

You may want to check what programs start automatically after Windows starts before removing any software, since a lot of software tends to do that. It is recommended to clean boot Windows in order to disable non-essential programs. Here are the instructions for doing so:

• Press [Windows Key] + R
• Type msconfig into the text bar at the bottom of the menu
• Click on the Services tab
• Ensure that Hide all Microsoft services is selected so you don’t accidentally disable a critical process.
• Disable all buttons by clicking on them.
• Click on the Startup tab
• Disable all buttons by clicking on them.
• Click on the Apply button
• Select “OK” from the drop-down menu.
• Restart your computer

5. Uninstall resource-intensive applications

A clean boot can improve the performance of your computer after it has been loaded with resource-hogging programs. Use Programs and Features to clean up any unwanted applications that are installed by Windows XP (Add or Remove Programs). Using this method will allow the game to use more system resources. You may have to remove malicious applications in a different manner if you cannot find the applications that use these resources or if these applications cannot be uninstalled themselves.

Scans should be performed for potentially unwanted programs and malware.
Unfortunately, browsing the Internet can lead to computers accumulating several unwanted programs, some of which may be potentially harmful. Software like this runs in the background, using your computer’s resources without letting you know about it.

6. Invest In a New GPU

Then here comes the easy ones. Then you may have run out of options, and you need to spring for a new GPU if you are still experiencing sub-optimal frames per second in-game.

Graphics cards aren’t the only component of your computer that determines the quality of your gaming experience, but they are certainly an important part of the equation. It doesn’t matter how many tweaks your GPU needs or how much you pray to your deity, if you’re running on a decade-old GPU, nothing will fix it.

However, do not worry. Although you may be on a limited budget, there are still plenty of video cards out there that will let you perform League of Legends at a high framerate. In our Cheap GPU Buyer’s Guide, you can find the most affordable graphics cards currently available.

You should check your motherboard and power supply compatibility before you choose a new GPU, though, because if something is not in line with your motherboard and power supply, you may need to return it and reorder.

7. Get a Whole New Computer

That’s too bad. You might have started digging into upgrading your graphics card—that’s awesome. Yet… then you realized that you’d be using one of the oldest motherboards available, which will not interface properly with any GPU at the time. That’s okay, we’re just going to get you a new motherboard too. Because your power supply cannot handle the new motherboard and graphics card, you are going to need a new power supply… and hey… did you just see a really great deal on hard drives when you were looking for a graphics card?

There is no going back now. We need to get a whole new setup and you know it. However, you will ultimately save tons of money if you build your own laptop. You can run League of Legends even on a $300 PC build without any problem. Check out our article on League of Legends Gaming PCs for some more choices.

Conslusion 

To fix low FPS issues in League of Legends, you have quite a few options at your disposal. Due to League of Legends’ relatively low system requirements, I suspect one of the three options you have mentioned above will answer your problem. It may still be advisable to stick with options four and five if your system doesn’t have good hardware. It shouldn’t cost a ton of money to buy a new GPU or entirely new system needed to run LOL since it is not incredibly demanding.