Valorant — best graphics settings (2026)

Typical impact 0-5% · 2% fps cost

In Valorant, we recommend Texture Quality at High (2% fps cost).

Controls the maximum mipmap resolution loaded for surface textures. Higher levels stream larger texture maps (2K/4K) from disk into VRAM via the texture streaming pool. The GPU samples these during fragment shading using the currently bound sampler state. The FPS cost is minimal when VRAM is sufficient because texture fetch latency is hidden by the cache hierarchy, but exceeding VRAM capacity triggers page-faulting and hitching as textures are swapped between system RAM and VRAM.

In Valorant: Valorant's maps use relatively low-resolution texture art by design, so the gap between Low and High is visually small. In UE4's texture streaming system, High loads 2K texture maps for surfaces like Ascent stone and Haven floors, while Low drops to 1K or below. With only 2 GB VRAM needed at High even at 1080p, there's no practical reason to lower this unless you're on a GPU with less than 2 GB VRAM — hitching from texture streaming eviction is the only real risk.

Typical impact 8-25% · 3% fps cost

In Valorant, we recommend Shadow Quality at Medium (3% fps cost).

Controls shadow map resolution, filtering method, and cascade count for dynamic shadows. The engine renders the scene from each light source perspective into depth-only shadow map textures. Higher settings increase shadow map resolution (1024 to 4096 texels), add more cascaded shadow map splits for the directional light (improving near-field resolution), and enable softer PCF or PCSS filtering which requires more depth comparison samples per pixel during the lighting pass.

In Valorant: Valorant offers shadow map rendering for agent and prop shadows at Low, Medium, and High, or Off entirely. Higher settings increase shadow map resolution and cascade count in UE4's cascaded shadow map system, adding expensive depth-only render passes. Off eliminates all dynamic shadow rendering — agents are still fully visible but cast no shadows. The FPS difference between Off and High is the largest single-setting gap in Valorant, typically 10–20%. Competitive players run Off or Low since shadows provide minimal positional information at the ranges most gunfights occur.

Typical impact 3-15% · 3% fps cost

In Valorant, we recommend Effect Quality at High (3% fps cost).

Controls the visual fidelity of gameplay effects including explosions, weapon impacts, ability VFX, and environmental interactions. Higher settings increase particle emitter counts per effect, use higher-resolution flipbook or mesh particles instead of simple sprites, enable GPU particle simulation via compute shaders, and add dynamic lighting from effects (each explosion spawning a temporary point light). The cost is highly variable — intense combat with multiple overlapping effects can produce 4-8x overdraw from layered transparent particles.

In Valorant: Controls particle system density and GPU simulation complexity for all in-game ability and weapon effects — Jett's smoke clouds, KAY/O's suppression pulse, Sage's wall shards, and gunfire muzzle flashes. High increases per-emitter particle counts and enables additional overlay passes. Low reduces particle counts and uses simpler billboard sprites. The FPS cost is highly variable: in a standard duel it's negligible, but in a multi-ability team fight on Icebox with overlapping smokes and explosions, High can spike frame times noticeably. Low to Medium is the practical competitive choice.

Typical impact 2-15% · 4% fps cost

In Valorant, we recommend Anti-Aliasing at MSAA 2x (4% fps cost).

Smooths jagged edges (aliasing) on geometric boundaries. FXAA is a single-pass edge-detection blur — cheap but softens the image. TAA accumulates multiple frames using motion vectors, sampling sub-pixel jitter offsets to reconstruct smoother edges — moderate cost with potential ghosting. SMAA uses pattern-matching edge detection with a more intelligent blend. MSAA runs the rasterizer at 2x/4x the sample count, evaluating coverage for each triangle edge — expensive because it multiplies ROP work and render target memory, but produces sharp geometry edges without blur.

In Valorant: The most visually impactful image quality setting in Valorant. FXAA applies a cheap edge-blur pass — low cost but softens fine details like agent outlines and thin railings. MSAA 2x and 4x run UE4's rasterizer at 2x and 4x sample counts respectively, producing sharp geometric edges without TAA ghosting — at the cost of 8–15% FPS for 4x. Most competitive players use MSAA 2x or FXAA; Off is viable at 1440p and above where pixel density reduces aliasing naturally.

Typical impact 3-8% · 3% fps cost

In Valorant, we recommend Material Quality at High (3% fps cost).

Determines the sophistication of the physically-based rendering (PBR) material model. Higher settings enable full multi-layer materials with clear-coat, anisotropic specular, and subsurface scattering approximations in the BRDF evaluation. Lower settings fall back to a simplified single-lobe Cook-Torrance model with fewer texture fetches per material. This impacts fragment shader instruction count and texture bandwidth during the G-buffer fill and deferred lighting resolve passes.

In Valorant: Governs the PBR material complexity for surface shading across all maps. High enables full multi-sample specular and additional detail normal map fetches on surfaces like Icebox metal panels and Pearl marble floors. Low simplifies the BRDF to a single-lobe model. In Valorant's relatively simple shading environment, the ALU saving from Low to High is around 3–6% FPS — noticeable on very low-end GPUs but negligible on anything GTX 1060 and above.

Typical impact 0-3% · 1% fps cost

In Valorant, we recommend Bloom at On (1% fps cost).

Produces a glow around bright light sources by extracting pixels above a brightness threshold and blurring them back into the scene. The implementation uses a bright-pass filter, followed by progressive downsampling with Gaussian blur at each mip level (4-6 levels), then re-compositing the blurred mips into the original image. The multi-pass nature means multiple fullscreen reads/writes, but each successive pass operates on a smaller buffer. Total cost is modest due to separable Gaussian implementation.

In Valorant: Adds glow to ability effects (Phoenix flash, Breach fault). Most pros disable for clearer visibility during ability-heavy fights.

Typical impact 0-3% · 1% fps cost

In Valorant, we recommend Distortion at On (1% fps cost).

Enables screen distortion effects from in-game sources like heat haze, explosions, ability impacts, and refractive particles. The engine renders distortion-causing objects into a separate UV-offset buffer, then applies those offsets when sampling the scene color buffer during compositing. The cost is one additional fullscreen pass. The base overhead is minimal, but heavy distortion from many overlapping sources can increase bandwidth pressure.

In Valorant: When On, heat shimmer from Viper's poison cloud and certain explosion effects render a UV-offset buffer that warps the scene behind them. In Valorant this is subtle but can genuinely obscure visibility through Viper's wall at range, making it harder to read agent positions in the distortion zone. Disabling removes the extra compositing pass. The FPS saving is minimal (1–2%), but the competitive visibility benefit of turning it Off is real.

Typical impact 0% · no measurable cost

In Valorant, we recommend V-Sync at On (no measurable cost).

Synchronizes the GPU's framebuffer swap with the monitor's vertical blanking interval to prevent screen tearing. When enabled, the GPU holds the completed frame until the monitor signals it is ready. If the GPU cannot maintain the refresh rate, VSync forces the frame to wait for the next blanking interval, causing framerate to drop to a fraction (e.g., 60fps to 30fps on a 60Hz display). This introduces up to one full frame of input latency. Triple buffering mitigates the fractional drop but adds more latency.

In Valorant: When On, the GPU holds frames to the monitor's refresh interval, capping output at 60/144/240 Hz and adding up to one full frame of input latency — unacceptable for a game where peeking duels are decided by single frames. Valorant's engine already exposes a separate FPS cap slider; use that instead of VSync. Keep VSync Off and set your FPS limit to slightly below your monitor refresh rate or use a hardware limiter to reduce tearing without the latency penalty.

Typical impact -30-80% · no measurable cost

In Valorant, the recommended preset leaves NVIDIA DLSS off — little visual loss for the frames it returns.

Deep Learning Super Sampling — NVIDIA's AI-based temporal upscaling that runs on dedicated Tensor Core hardware. The engine renders at a lower internal resolution and feeds the reduced-resolution frame, motion vectors, and depth buffer to a neural network that reconstructs a high-resolution output. DLSS 3+ adds optical flow-based frame generation on Ada/Blackwell architectures. The FPS gain comes from rendering fewer pixels — Quality mode renders ~67% of native pixels, Performance ~50%, Ultra Performance ~33%.