League of Legends is a popular multiplayer online battle arena game that is developed by Riot games and is available for the Windows and MacOS platform. In this game, players will control a champion, and battle against the opposing team with the main goal of destroying their Nexus. Although this is a solid performing game there are instances when certain issues can occur which we will be addressing today. In this latest installment of our troubleshooting series we will tackle the League of Legends FPS drop issue.
How To Fix League Of Legends FPS Drop
Before performing any of the recommended troubleshooting steps listed below it’s best to restart your computer first. This action refreshes the operating system and remove any corrupt temporary data that could be causing the problem.
There are several factors that can cause this particular problem ranging from an overlay issue to configuration errors. Listed below are the recommended troubleshooting steps you need to do to fix this problem.
Try setting the FPS cap
This game has a setting which allows you to set its FPS cap. Choosing a custom value might fix this issue.
- Open League of Legend
- Enter a Custom game and once you are in, access the options by pressing the Esc button.
- Select the Video tab present at the left side of the screen and scroll down to find Frame Rate Cap box.
- Change the setting to 60 FPS.
- After saving the changes, click on the Game tab present at the left side of the options window. Locate Movement Protection under “Gameplay” and make sure the option is unchecked.
- Press Okay to save changes and exit.
- Restart your game.
Check if the League of Legends FPS drop issue still occurs.
Disable overlays
An overlay is a feature that allows you to access certain third party software while you are playing the game. While this might enhance the gaming experience there’s a chance that it is what’s causing this problem.
If you are using the Discord overlay then try to disable this.
- Launch Discord and open its User Settings.
- Select the option Overlay from the left navigation tab and uncheck the option Enable in-game overlay.
- Restart your computer.
Check if the League of Legends FPS drop issue still occurs.
Disable overclocking
Overclocking is a process that makes the processor or graphics card perform at a much higher speed thus resulting in a better performance. The tradeoff on this is that it usually generates more heat and if you don’t have a good cooling system then you will most likely experience some issues on your computer.
In case you have overclocked your system then try to eliminate this as a possible cause of the problem by disabling the overclock.
Set the power options to maximum
windows 10 has a power setting that allows it to run in balanced mode or high power mode. When playing games such as League of Legends it’s always a good ideato make sure that the computer is set to use the high power mode.
- Press Windows + R and type “control panel” in the box and press Enter.
- In the control panel, select Large icons and click on Power Options.
- In the Power Options, select Maximum performance using the window at the right-side. Save changes and exit.
Check if the League of Legends FPS drop issue still occurs.
Change full screen optimizations
- Go to the Installation folder of League of Legends. Type ‘.exe’ in the search dialogue box and press Enter.
- There will be different executables which will be returned in the results. Right-click on the first one and select Properties.
- Select the Compatibility tab from the top and check the option Disable full-screen optimization.
- Select Change high DPI settings.
- Check the option Override high DPI scaling behavior with the second option chosen as Application. Save changes and exit.
- Repeat these steps for all executables of League of Legends in the results.
- Save changes and exit.
- Restart your computer.
Check if the League of Legends FPS drop issue still occurs.
Update graphics driver
In case the above steps fails to fix the problem then you should make sure that your graphics drivers are updated.
If you have an NVIDIA graphics card then follow the steps listed below.
- Press Win+R (Windows logo key and R key) at the same time to invoke the Run box.
- Type msconfig and click OK. Then the System Configurations will open.
- When System Configuration opens, click the Boot tab. Under Boot options, check Safe boot then click OK.
- When you’re prompted to restart your computer to apply these changes, click Restart then you will boot into Safe Mode.
- Go to your local hard disk by clicking on This PC then Local Disk C. You should be able to see the NVIDIA folder right there. Right-click on it and choose Delete.
- Click Start and type Run. Select Run, the Run dialog box will appear.
- Type “devmgmt.msc” in the run box and click the OK button which should open the Device Manager Window.
- Expand the “Display Adapters” field. This will list all network adapters that the machine has installed. Right click on the Nvidia adapter you want to uninstall and select “Uninstall”.
- Click “OK” when prompted to uninstall the device. This will remove the adapter from the list and uninstall the driver.
- Press Win+R (Windows logo key and R key) at the same time to invoke the Run box.
- Type msconfig and click OK. Then the System Configurations will open.
- When System Configuration opens, click the Boot tab. Under Boot options, uncheck Safe boot then click OK.
- When you’re prompted to restart your computer to apply these changes, click Restart.
- Download the latest NVIDIA driver for your computer from here https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx.
- Run the setup file and follow the instructions which appear on screen. Choose the Custom installation option and check all the boxes in the custom install options windows. Also check the box which states “perform clean install”.
- Restart your computer
If you have an AMD graphics card then follow the steps listed below.
- Download the AMD Cleanup Utility from here https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-601.
- Locate the file where it was saved and double-click on the “AMDCleanupUtility.exe’ file.
- A dialogue box should appear stating AMD Cleanup Utility has detected the system is not in safe mode and provide an option to reboot the system to run the Utility in safe mode:
- Click “Yes” the system will be rebooted and AMD Cleanup Utility will run in safe mode.
- The next dialogue box provides a warning message stating that the AMD Cleanup Utility will remove all AMD driver and application components.
- Click “OK” to continue
- After clicking “OK” the Utility will be minimized to the notification area (system tray) and the progress will be displayed as a tool tip.
- The cleanup process will continue to run in the background. To check the progress, hover the mouse over the AMD icon in the notification area.
- Once the cleanup process is finished, a message is displayed stating it has successfully completed. Click “View Report” to see the list of components that were uninstalled, otherwise click “Finish” to exit the Utility.
- Reboot your computer.
Check if the League of Legends FPS drop issue still occurs.