I’m having a serious FPS issue in Valorant and I’m not sure what caused it anymore.
I have a Lenovo LOQ (i5 13th gen, RTX 3050 6GB Laptop GPU). I’ve been playing Valorant for about a year and I used to consistently get around 300 FPS.
About a month ago, I updated my BIOS because it kept popping up in Lenovo Vantage, and I was also experiencing an issue where my laptop would randomly shut off while playing Valorant. I’m not sure if the FPS drop started before or after the BIOS update, but after updating, my average FPS dropped to around 130 FPS.
Recently, I tried resetting my entire laptop hoping it would fix everything, but now my FPS is even worse at around 60 FPS average.
Here’s what I’ve checked/tried so far:
- Graphics settings in Valorant are all low
- V-Sync is off, fullscreen mode
- Lenovo Vantage is set to performance mode
- NVIDIA Control Panel settings are optimized for performance
- Latest GPU drivers installed
- Using IETS GT500 cooler, temps are fine (no overheating)
- Monitoring with HWiNFO, temperatures are normal
Weird issue:
I noticed PCIe lane errors (0–7) in HWiNFO while playing Valorant, but they disappear after restarting and come back again during gameplay.
What I suspect:
It might be that my system is detecting my RTX 3050 but not fully using it properly, or there’s some deeper driver/BIOS issue.
Important observation:
In Task Manager, only GPU 0 (integrated GPU) shows usage (~15–30%), and my RTX 3050 doesn’t seem to appear or get utilized in games.
I haven’t tried using DDU yet, but I’m planning to do a clean driver reinstall soon.
Has anyone experienced something similar or knows what could be causing this? Any help would be appreciated.