How to Increase FPS on Windows 11 (2026 Guide)
7 min read
If your frame rate feels lower than your hardware should deliver, the culprit is usually Windows itself — background processes, conservative power settings, and default features that trade performance for battery life or telemetry. Here is a safe, ordered checklist that actually moves your FPS, with no random registry scripts.
Work through these in order. The early steps are the highest-impact and lowest-risk; the later ones squeeze out the last few frames. Every change below is reversible.
- 1Update your GPU drivers
Install the latest driver directly from NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel rather than relying on Windows Update. New drivers routinely add per-game optimizations worth real frames, and a clean driver install fixes stutter that no tweak can.
- 2Turn on Windows Game Mode
Settings → Gaming → Game Mode → On. This tells Windows to prioritize your game's CPU and GPU time and hold back background work while you play.
- 3Set a High Performance power plan
Control Panel → Power Options → High Performance (or Ultimate Performance). The default Balanced plan down-clocks your CPU aggressively, which shows up as inconsistent frame times.
- 4Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling
Settings → System → Display → Graphics → Change default graphics settings. It lets the GPU manage its own memory scheduling and can reduce latency on supported hardware.
- 5Kill background apps and startup bloat
Settings → Apps → Startup, and Task Manager → Startup apps. Disable launchers, updaters, and overlays you don't need. Every background process is CPU time and RAM your game isn't getting.
- 6Match your monitor's refresh rate
Settings → System → Display → Advanced display, and set the refresh rate to your panel's maximum. A 144 Hz monitor left at 60 Hz is a very common, invisible bottleneck.
SurgeFPSRather not do this by hand? SurgeFPS runs this entire FPS checklist in one click — Game Mode, power plan, GPU scheduling and background cleanup — and undoes any of it just as fast if a game misbehaves.
Download freeDeeper tweaks that add frames
Once the basics are in place, these system-level changes reduce overhead and latency further. They matter most on mid-range and older machines where CPU headroom is tight:
- Disable memory-integrity / VBS (Virtualization-Based Security) if you don't need it — it has a real CPU cost in games.
- Disable CPU core parking so cores stay ready instead of ramping up mid-frame.
- Raise the system timer resolution for smoother frame pacing while a game is running.
- Trim telemetry and background services that wake up during play.
- Clear shader caches and temp files that can cause hitching after driver updates.
The catch with doing this by hand
These tweaks work, but applying them manually means editing the registry, digging through Services, and remembering exactly what you changed so you can undo it if a game misbehaves. That's where most "optimize Windows for gaming" guides go wrong — they change things without telling you what, why, or how to revert.
SurgeFPS does the whole checklist above in one click and keeps every change reversible. It can create a Windows System Restore Point before it touches anything, explains the expected impact of each tweak on FPS and input latency, and lets you undo any of it instantly. It's free to download, with basic tweaks on the free tier.