How to boost FPS on Windows 10 and 11

25 October 2026 · ~8 min read

Search "increase FPS windows 10" or "boost FPS windows 11" and you'll get the same recycled list everywhere: disable this, enable that, no explanation of how much it actually moves the number, or whether it moves FPS at all versus just smoothing out stutters. Here's every real way to optimize FPS, ranked honestly by how much it actually helps, which ones only help your 1% lows rather than your average FPS, and which popular tips are myths that do nothing or actively hurt.

This guide is one part of our full PC optimization checklist for gaming. To properly optimize a PC for gaming, you need to work through every real lever once: optimize background processes, optimize GPU driver settings, optimize CPU and device affinity, optimize RAM and storage, optimize your network, and optimize your display settings, each in the order that actually moves the needle on a real PC, not six separate half-remembered tips picked at random. Whichever topic brought you to this specific guide, the full PC optimization checklist is the fastest, most reliable way to optimize the rest of your PC too.

What actually raises your average FPS

1. GPU drivers

The single biggest lever for most people, and the most skipped. NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel all ship per-game optimization profiles in their driver updates, sometimes worth a genuinely large FPS gain in a specific title the moment it's patched in. Check for an update before touching anything else on this page. Once it's updated, the driver's own control panel has real levers too - see our NVIDIA Control Panel settings guide for what actually helps there.

2. In-game settings, not Windows settings

Render resolution, shadow quality, and view distance routinely account for a bigger FPS swing than every Windows-level tweak on this page combined. If your CPU is the bottleneck rather than your GPU, this changes which settings actually help - see our CPU core affinity guide for how to tell which one you're actually hitting.

3. Power plan

Windows' default Balanced plan deliberately throttles CPU clocks to save power, which costs real FPS under sustained load. Switching to High Performance, or a true Ultimate Performance plan, removes that ceiling. The honest tradeoff: more heat, more power draw, and on a laptop running unplugged, noticeably worse battery life. It can also work against you on a single-core-bound older game - keeping every core spun up and ready spreads the CPU's shared thermal budget across all of them instead of concentrating it, which can lower the peak boost clock the one active core reaches. Worth a real before/after check, not a blanket "always apply" tweak.

4. Background process cleanup

Game launchers, overlay apps, and browser tabs each take a real slice of CPU and GPU time away from your game, especially on a weaker CPU. The honest ceiling: this mostly helps 1% lows and stutter, not your average FPS number, since most of these apps idle quietly rather than genuinely compete once your game is the focused window.

What helps consistency more than the FPS number itself

Windows Game Mode

Mainly stops Windows Update and driver installs from running mid-session and nudges scheduling priority toward your game. Real gains are usually small, and it won't turn a 60fps game into 100fps, but there's no real downside to leaving it on.

Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS)

Barely moves average FPS in real 2026 benchmarking - the genuine gain is smoother 1% lows and a small latency improvement, mainly in CPU-bottlenecked scenarios. Full breakdown, including the real downsides, in our dedicated HAGS guide.

Per-game CPU core mapping

Doesn't create extra CPU power, it stops a stray driver interrupt from landing on your game's render thread's core and stealing milliseconds right when it matters. More consistent 1% lows, not usually a higher average. What's evidence-backed versus folklore here, in the core affinity guide.

Power plan: an easy real lever outside the game entirely

Windows' power plan choice affects 1% lows and frame-time consistency the same way HAGS does - a genuine lever sitting outside both your game and your GPU driver, full breakdown in our power plan settings guide, including what Ultimate Performance actually changes.

Does storage speed matter for FPS?

Not for your rendered frame rate directly, but for a specific, real symptom: textures or assets popping in late, or a brief freeze the first time a new area loads data off disk. An SSD (especially NVMe) moves that data fast enough that this rarely shows up at all; a mechanical HDD can genuinely stutter during a sudden streaming spike on an open-world game, even on a PC with FPS to spare everywhere else. Worth ruling out before chasing a CPU or GPU explanation for a stutter that's actually your drive.

What doesn't actually help

Disabling CPU idle states (C-States) for "extra FPS" is a myth on any CPU from roughly the last decade, and can actively cap your Turbo Boost/Precision Boost clocks instead of raising them - full breakdown in our C-States guide. Turning off your antivirus "for performance" is both rarely a measurable FPS gain and a genuine security risk, never worth the tradeoff. And a one-click optimizer that promises a universal FPS boost from registry tweaks alone, with no explanation of what changed, is almost always overselling a small or nonexistent real gain.

How to check any of this actually worked

Apply one change at a time, measure before and after against a game you're actually running, and check 1% lows alongside the average FPS, not just the average - a spike-y, stuttery game can still average fine on paper. This is exactly what GoldCore's own Tweak Verification Lab automates: a real baseline, the tweak applied, a second measurement in the same session, both numbers reported honestly instead of implying more confidence than one real test earns.

Frequently asked