Maybe you’ve heard about Valorant before. The game was released in June 2020, but it’s recently been receiving more attention as the player base is growing at a faster rate than ever before. Players are finding themselves frustrated with lagging out or, even worse, having to deal with ping spikes that completely ruin their experience. While there are many possible causes for these issues, not all of them have easy fixes.
It’s a common issue in Valorant, that players face high ping spikes or lag which causes the game to be unplayable. An increase in ping is often caused by a bad internet connection from your ISP (internet service provider) or from your computer itself.
If you experience this issue with your internet, see if these instructions can help you fix it:
To begin with, let us assume that the problem lies on the server-side and not with a client-side problem. If either of them are indeed responsible for this issue, please also read through our other article about how to fix lag in Valorant.
First of all, try restarting your modem and/or router. This solves most cases on its own.
If the issue still persists, contact your ISP to see if they are experiencing server issues or maintenance. They might not be aware of it. Sometimes, servers are overloaded because too many people are playing Valorant at once, which can cause severe lag and ping spikes for everyone else who wants to play.
If everything is fine on their side, consider changing your internet channel. You can do this by changing your wireless channel in the router settings. It is best done with a tool like Wifi Analyzer, but you can also try all available channels, one after another. Make sure that there’s no other network nearby that uses the same channel as you!
A common reason why players experience high ping even though their ISP is fine is because of their computer. Sometimes, programs that you or your children downloaded can cause this problem. Since not every user is an expert in programming, they don’t always pick up on malware and viruses very quickly. Additionally, it might be the case that your processor does not support certain features like SSE4, which can make game servers think you are running high-end software even though you aren’t.
Luckily, there’s a simple fix for this. First of all, make sure you have all Windows Updates installed. If your computer is running the latest version of the OS and programs, it means that your processor supports SSE4 or whatever feature is required by Valorant.
Next up, try limiting your framerate to 60 FPS . This limits how many packets can be sent from your computer to the server every second. As a result, the server will no longer think that your computer is using high-end software even though it isn’t. There are hundreds of guides on how to limit framerate in most games.
Occasionally, players complain about being kicked from servers because their speedtest results were too high – faster than 100 Mbps. This is a false positive for the server, since it doesn’t know that you are using a speedtest to check your internet connection. Unfortunately, there’s no known fix for this yet, but the developers will hopefully implement an update in the future to prevent this from happening.
Other possible fixes:
1) Check your bandwidth limitations
One reason why players might experience or latency issues is because they simply don’t have the internet bandwidth to play properly. It can be easy to blame lag on something else, but if your latency is greater than 100 milliseconds then you’re very likely dealing with bandwidth problems or inconsistent wired connections. Bandwidth caps are actually quite common, so make sure that you’ve done everything possible before you start blaming other factors for your issues.
Also read: When Can You Surrender in VALORANT?
2) Keep up-to-date drivers
If you’ve ever dealt with driver issues in the past, there’s a good chance that they were causing some sort of problem with one of your computer’s hardware components. If Valorant isn’t working well then it makes sense to check whether or not your drivers are an issue, as this could very well be the problem. You should never have to deal with lag because your drivers are out of date.
3) Turn off Steam’s in-game overlay
Valorant is a game that was released early on in its development and, as such, it hasn’t been optimized for high-performance yet. One possible reason why you’re experiencing latencies or ping spikes could be because of Steam’s in-game overlay feature; having this turned on has been known to cause problems like these. Luckily enough, turning this feature off is easy and it only takes a few seconds before everything will be running smoothly again.
4) Use an Ethernet cord if possible
Some players might use wireless internet because it’s easier to connect – but that doesn’t mean that you should. Wireless internet simply can’t handle the bandwidth requirements of high-performance games like Valorant, so it is recommended that you use an Ethernet cord instead in order to improve your latency and ping. The vast majority of wireless routers are actually incapable of supporting online gaming without experiencing problems like these.
5) Change your game mode
Valorant has different game modes for a reason; some players might experience more lag when they’re playing one particular mode over another. This could be because there are too many players or because that particular game mode requires more processing power than another does.
Try switching to another game mode in order to improve your latency and ping before you start blaming other factors for your issues. It is recommended that you play in the Solo game mode if this is an issue, as this requires less processing power than both Multiplayer and Battle Royale do.
Also read: What Does “NT” Mean in VALORANT?
Conclusion
Latency and ping spikes can be frustrating problems to deal with, especially when they’re preventing you from enjoying a game that you’ve paid for. Thankfully, there are several potential fixes that you can try in order to improve your experience. We suggest starting with the ones that we’ve listed above; if none of them work then feel free to move on to the next step.
Keep in mind that some of these solutions might not work for everyone, so it’s important that you try as many as possible until you find one that does the job. If all else fails, remember that you can always reach out to the developers or other players in order to get help.
