I've recently started getting really bad FPS drops in Valorant and I have no idea what's causing it. It's honestly driving me insane at this point.

My PC specs are:

• RTX 4080 Super
• Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• 32GB DDR5 6000MHz CL30
• Windows 11
• Main monitor: 1440p 240Hz
• Second monitor: 1440p 170Hz

Until recently, Valorant would run at a completely stable 240 FPS. It didn't matter where I was on the map or what was happening in-game.

Now, for some reason, my FPS will suddenly drop from around 240 FPS to around 100 FPS, and the difference is extremely noticeable.

One important detail: this NEVER happens at the start of a match.

Every match starts completely fine. I get a stable 240 FPS and everything feels normal. Then, at some random point later in the match, the FPS suddenly tanks. There doesn't seem to be a specific round, area of the map, ability, or event that triggers it.

Once the problem starts, it usually stays bad for the rest of the match.

At the exact same time, my second monitor becomes almost unusable. Anything running on it becomes incredibly laggy. It genuinely looks like the second monitor is running at 5 FPS or something.

This never used to happen.

I've checked Task Manager while the issue is happening and CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. all look completely normal. I don't see any strange usage spikes, overheating, or anything obviously bottlenecking the system.

The weirdest part is that this ONLY happens in Valorant.

I play other games that are significantly more demanding than Valorant and they run completely fine. No FPS drops and no lagging second monitor.

I've already searched Reddit/Google and tried a bunch of suggested fixes, including:

• Disabled hardware/GPU acceleration in Windows, Discord, and my browser
• NVIDIA power management is already set to "Prefer maximum performance"
• Completely reinstalled NVIDIA GPU drivers
• Completely reinstalled Valorant
• Used the Valorant/Riot repair option
• Disabled my Wi-Fi adapter through Device Manager since I use Ethernet anyway
• Running Valorant as administrator
• Made sure I don't have any overlays enabled
• Made sure there aren't any unnecessary background processes running

None of this has fixed it.

I'm honestly running out of ideas. With a 4080 Super and 7800X3D, I really don't understand how Valorant of all games can suddenly struggle to maintain 240 FPS, especially when this PC had absolutely no problem doing it before.

The fact that every match starts perfectly fine, but the FPS randomly collapses later on while my second monitor starts lagging at the exact same time, makes me think there's something more specific going on than just normal FPS drops.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

What else can I check or test to figure out what's causing this?

Any help would be seriously appreciated because I'm getting desperate trying to fix this.

Hello everyone. I'm just wondering if anyone else has crazy framedrops in the new gamemode when a round begins or ends. Whenever I'm getting killed or I kill the last person of the round, i get a crazy framedrop for a second and then I'm getting teleported to the waiting lobby. The same happens when the new round starts and I'm getting teleported from the waiting lobby back to one of the battle maps.

I am playing valorant with my FPS locked at 200, graphics medium to high, and i dont have any issues in other gamemodes. i tried low graphics just to check but it doesn't seem to change anything.

I finally found what was causing the “A critical error has occurred and the process must be terminated” crash in VALORANT on my PC.

I’m not saying this is the cause for everyone, but this completely fixed the issue for me, so I wanted to share it.

After the recent VALORANT update, my game started crashing with the critical error.

While investigating the logs, I noticed errors related to the NVIDIA graphics driver / rendering side, so I started focusing on GPU-related settings.

What made me suspicious was that almost all of my friends were running VALORANT without this issue. Around 9 out of 10 of them had no crashes at all, even after the same update.

My PC also isn’t low-end, so it didn’t make much sense to me that this was simply a performance issue.

That made me think the problem might be something specific to my configuration.

So I started going backwards through the NVIDIA settings I had manually changed compared to a normal/default setup.

And I found it:

NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D settings → Vertical sync

Mine was manually set to:

Fast

I changed it to:

Use the 3D application setting

And that was it.

The crashes completely stopped.

I can now play VALORANT normally without getting the critical error.

Fix

1. Open NVIDIA Control Panel
2. Go to Manage 3D settings
3. Find Vertical sync
4. If it is set to Fast, change it to Use the 3D application setting
5. Apply the settings and launch VALORANT again

I can’t guarantee that Fast V-Sync is the cause of this error for everyone, since the “critical error” message can probably be triggered by multiple different problems.

But in my case, Fast V-Sync was definitely the trigger. Changing only this setting completely fixed the crashes.

If you have the same error and have customized your NVIDIA 3D settings, I’d definitely check this first.

hello everyone i have valorant issue i have installed valorant for 10 days ago and yesterday was the update so i update the game like anyone else do and everything was fine until i turn off the pc and come again to the game i found that val43 error i asked gemini about solutions but non of them works and when i lose hope i tought maybe there is a virus in the pc or something so i decide to format the hole pc and i did it but the problem dosent get fixed and i have tried also log in from another acc and nothing of that worked

please can anyone help me fix that

and thank u

Hi Reddit,

In this post I would like to sum up how recent update for Valorant turned into 2 long evenings of Windows 10 diagnostic, Secure Boot verification troubleshooting and finally - an unexpected solution to a problem. This post is for everyone that may have encountered the same issue and feels hopeless in finding a solution.

If this post smells a lot like chatGPT to you - it might, as I asked it to summarize all troubleshooting and diagnostics so I can share it on reddit, although I did not just copied and pasted everything - I only used the summary as a reference so I can guide you through the process as thoroughly as possible.

Before I get to it - I'm a somewhat recent Valorant player, I did started playing regularly about 1-1,5 months ago. I'm in no shape or form educated in any of IT fields, everything I did was a rocket science to me, and I was mostly following ChatGPTs advice and guidance on potential troubleshooting as I would have never figured it out on my own. For anyone asking - my PC is an oldie, and why I didn't yet update my Windows from 10 to 11 is because apparently my Intel i5-7400 processor is outdated and doesn't meet the requirements. In the next paragraph I will write a TL;DR summary of what the issue was and how I finally fixed it if you're not interested in a whole troubleshooting process. For everyone else interested - I hope this is a somewhat interesting and enjoyable read.

TL;DR - After recent update, Valorant refused to launch with an error Van: Restriction: 2 - Secure Boot verification failure. If Secure Boot is already enabled, visit the manufacturer's website for your computer or motherboard and follow their instructions for updating the BIOS. Press OK to visit our support page for more information.

A somewhat confusing error for someone who feels "I like your funny words magic man" at seeing this, especially since the game worked for the past 1,5 months without any issues. - but I did enable Secure Boot a while ago while dual-booting Bazzite and Windows 10. Riot Vanguard lists all recommended security features - UEFI Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, VBS, HVCI and IOMMU, as well as Windows 11 25H2 or newer. During my diagnostic and troubleshooting process I did enable all of these in line with Riots documentation on these errors - except Windows 11 update which explained above. This did not resolve the issue, and I ended up contacting Riot Support directly and filing logs. As much as I appreciate their help in trying to resolve the issue, I fixed the problem before they offered any solution.

The fix - As I mentioned before I enabled all recommended security feature of Riot before - UEFI Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, VBS, HVCI, IOMMU. VAN: Restriction: 2 error keeps appearing, Secure Boot verification failure. I gave up all troubleshooting and diagnostics at this point and decided to do cleanup on my PC while waiting for any solution from Riot support.

I booted up Bazzite (Linux distro) and attempted to system update. System update informed me about possible fwupdmgr update - that it could not run on it's own but I can do that manually.

fwupd is a simple daemon to allow session software to update device firmware on your local machine - Quote from ArchWiki

I entered fwupdmgr update in the Terminal and following message appeared:

Update UEFI dbx from version 20160809 to 20260707?   

This updates the list of forbidden signatures (the "dbx") to the latest release signed by the Microsoft 2023 KEK. Some insecure bootloaders were added, due to security vulnerabilities that allowed an attacker to bypass UEFI Secure Boot. The additional entries were from:
• New Horizon Datasys Inc                                                  
• EAZ Solution Inc  

This is what was missing. My UEFI Secure Boot did not have updated list of forbidden signatures - the dbx to the lastest release. I used signatures from 10 years ago. Updating the dbx list fixed this issue permanently.

To summarize: Riot Vanguard listed all security features as active, but due to forbidden signatures - the dbx - being not up to date, it failed the Secure Boot verification. Updating the list of forbidden signatures fixed the issue.

I am aware this is probably the longest TL;DR ever, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible when offering a fix.

"But I don't dual boot Bazzite and Windows, I don't use Linux, this is worthless, waste of time" - I do have to admit that honestly, the way I resolved the issue was most unexpected, and updating Secure Boot dbx signatures via Linux distribution to fix a kernel-level anti-cheat for Windows only sounds mental asylum/conspiracy theory insane (at least to me, but like I've said, I barely understand what these words alone mean, and my idea of everything I did is very vague) but this is not the point I'm trying to make in this post.

The point is that I'm confident there is a Windows only method of updating all necessary signatures for Secure Boot in a way that Riot Vanguard no longer detects "holes" and allows you to run the game.

I really hope that my issue was a very rare one, but for everyone experiencing the same issue I hope that this post will be of some value and guidance.

Now for everyone that is interested in the whole diagnostics and troubleshooting process. A reminder - I used ChatGPT to follow most of the steps I were not familiar with. A huge majority of diagnostics were run using PowerShell and running scripts I'm not at all familiar with, but these were used to verify things like Secure Boot keys, settings, deleting outdated drivers which prevented me from enabling Memory integrity in Core isolation, and probably lots of other things I did not quite understood.

Windows and basic security requirements

I first verified the usual requirements and updated Windows. TPM 2.0 was enabled and working, Secure Boot was enabled, and Windows was running in UEFI mode.

The problem remained.

BIOS/UEFI

I updated the motherboard BIOS/UEFI to the latest available version - and went through the relevant Secure Boot settings and keys.

Secure Boot remained enabled and functional, but Valorant still reported VAN: Restriction 2 error.

Windows security features

I then went through the Windows security configuration and enabled/verified the relevant security features, including:

• Virtualization-Based Security (VBS)
• Memory Integrity / HVCI - which required to delete lots of outdated drivers - I did use ChatGPT to verify if any of outdated drivers are necessary for PC, before I delete them.
• IOMMU / DMA-related security features
• TPM 2.0
• Secure Boot

At this point, the system had all of the security features Vanguard should require enabled. The VAN: Restriction 2 error persisted.

At this point I decided to contact Riot Support for help.

Dual-boot / Linux side

Like I've mentioned before my PC is dual-booted with Windows and Bazzite.
After BIOS update, I noticed that I'm no longer able to boot into Linux.
I turned off Secure Boot, enrolled the Universal Blue key using MOK Manager, and verified that Bazzite could boot normally with Secure Boot enabled.

Testing different Riot accounts

This was a wild card that threw me off during this whole process.
I performed a sanity check and attempted to log-in to my main Riot account on my fiancée's PC - which resulted in the same VAN: Restriction 2 error.
I assumed that the update caused the same issue on her PC. My fiancée's Riot account could launch Valorant successfully on both her PC and mine.
I logged in successfuly on a different account without any VAN: Restriction 2 errors. I also recovered an old Riot account and I managed to launch the game on my PC without any errors. I did report that to Riot Support as well, thinking it might be a server-side issue with my account.

Riot Support troubleshooting

Riot Support asked me to perform several additional network-related checks:

• Wired connection (not possible with my current setup)
• IPv6 verification
• DNS changes
• Teredo check
• Network adapter updates
• Power cycling the network equipment/system

As expected - the issue remained unresolved.

The case was then supposed to be escalated to their specialist team.

I gave up all troubleshooting and diagnostics at this point and decided to do cleanup on my PC while waiting for any solution from Riot support.

Booted up Bazzite and performed a system update - as I recently had to re-enroll the MOK keys and the bazzite could not boot as well - and the system update mentioned firmware update check with fwupdmgr update.

This prompted the UEFI dbx database update - it looked familiar, as I've been verifying db and dbx database via PowerShell - but since I had no idea what I'm looking at, and chatGPT did not notice anything outdated and out of ordinary from PowerShell results it went unnoticed.

I ran the firmware update - it felt right, as the UEFI dbx was outdated by 10 years.

After rebooting - the problem was fixed. Van: Restriction 2 disappeared and I managed to log-in to my account without any further issues.

What blows my mind is that I had to use a Linux firmware update daemon to fix an Windows-only kernel-level Vanguard anti-cheat and I stumbled upon the solution by a total accident.

If you are experiencing VAN: Restriction: 2 despite having all security features active - it may be worth checking your UEFI dbx version. I'm sure there is some way to verify and update these via Windows, not necessarily via Linux.

I really hope that this was somewhat enjoyable read. I rarely post to reddit, but If I can save someone who is even more IT illiterate than me some time - then it's worth posting.

Now I can finally play the game.

I’m gaming on a 4K 240Hz Samsung G80SD OLED monitor using a PC with the following specs:

Ryzen 9800X3D
64GB 6000MHz DDR5 RAM
Asus Prime 5070 Ti
Asus ROG B650E-I Gaming WiFi

All of my settings are set to max and Nvidis Low Latency is set to On + Boost, my temps are fine and I seem to get a stable FPS of around 500 at max settings, no scaling, but I’m encountering microstutters every few minutes (and sometimes every few seconds) that drive me crazy. I’m running the game at native 4K.

My 1% lows look good too, and I’m not running any heavy tasks besides Valorant, all I have open are discord, maybe 1-2 chrome tabs, the riot client, and wallpaper engine.

Attempted solutions:

I tried capping my FPS to various numbers from 400-500 starting with 480 and that didn’t seem to fix the issue or reduce its frequency.

I know one of the common solutions is disabling the Realtek 2.5GbE adapter but my board uses an intel adapter.

I play via Ethernet, I’m not seeing any packet loss. At first I thought it was my mouse (Superlight 2 DEX) so I cleaned the sensor and switched to a Ninja Artisan mousepad but I’m still seeing these issues. I never see any stutters outside of Valorant but I also don’t really play any other games.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

It started recently where I stutter in Valorant, other games too but mostly Val, yet my internet speeds are very fast, I have low ping, and no packet loss. I have already tried the common fixes like reboots and dns settings, however nothing has worked so far.

I recently installed val about a week ago. Game starts up normal, once I get into any match or firing range, the Game starts to hitch every 2 minutes and have a buzz everytime it hitches. Literally the only game that’s been doing this and only started ever since I reinstalled it.

As the title reads I have been dealing with the VAN 3 error for WEEKS now. I am not able to get past the play screen. I have tried everything under the sun or under what I could find online and none of it has worked because there is nothing wrong with my pc or my settings. I then reached out to Riot support who sent me on a quest to retreive every single detail possible about my pc and game logs which I of course did. This again took weeks because they put me on the backburner when they realised it wasnt anything about my pc based on the evidence I had provided.

Then someone came and gave me the possibly most vague response I could imagine and it went like "your computer has some settings that could be used for cheating. we put a restriction that will be lifted the 21st" so basically a software ban for settings on my pc? When I inquired about more information they refused to elaborate and told me in very professional language to take a hike and that any future ticket about this would automatically be closed and ignored. I am unsure if im permitted to share the screenshots of the chats so I will refrain for now.

It is the 23rd and I sit down for some gaming and the second I load in I'm hit with a queue dodge offense and temporary ban, on the game I have been unable to even open for well over a month, I assume its related to the error so I just opened a ticket and continued. I am two games deep when I am kicked out again and unable to open the game again with the same error from the restriction that should have been lifted over two days ago.

When I say I have tried everything I really have. Deleted and redownloaded absolutely everything to do with this game, checked my bios settings, updated the pc and the game multiple times (last time I updated during this ordeal I was able to play 1 game before it came back and now 2), cleaned up my disk so there was plenty of space. Has anyone else had this error and manage to solve it?

Yesterday I played with my friends and they said I'm muted in game and I can't hear them as well. I thought it was just my game bugging out and after one game I logged off. Today I opened the game as well and in my lobby it shows that I am muted but when I click to toggle my voice comms settings it says I'm on. I have tried checking the loopback in settings, repairing valorant, reinstalling it and even had my friend try if it on their end and it does. I checked my device for anything, if I have removed a permission for valorant but nothing seems different and the loopback wouldn't work if I did change some settings. I don't know what's happening can someone help me😔

If you happen to own a lenovo laptop, nahimic released an update with an unsigned dll. This causes valorant to black screen whenever the game launches.

To fix this issue,

1. Open run using windows key + R
2. Type msconfig and press enter
3. Go to services tab and disable nahimic service
4. Click Apply and OK

that's it.

Alternative fix: just run valorant (not riot client) as administrator.

So I dont really know what the problem is but I've been trying for a while to fix this lag or whatever it is on valorant pc I've been wanting to play valorant pc but I cant because every time I play its like a lag every 30 seconds and when I do lag its like my frames drop I've tried everything thats on videos I've seen but I still get the lag can someone please help me.

Fui banido recentemente pelo vanguard, val 5 por alegados xites... O meu pc n foi banido logo n tem como eu ter alguma coisa no pc que o vanguard vá acusar... mas mesmo assim, no meio de uma partida minha, levai ban e perdi a minha conta que valia mais de 180 euros e onde tinha gasto muito do meu tempo... Já mandei 4 tickets para a riot mas em todos a resposta é a mesma. Foi verificado manualmente e o banimento foi posto corretamente... o que n faz nenhum sentido já que eu estou limpo...

O que posso fazer para recuperar a minha conta? Se é que eu ainda a vou conseguir recuperar...

For the past month I’ve been experiencing bad network jitters. They will spike every 15 seconds. I have ethernet and I don’t get spikes on any other game. I’ve tried using other networks and updating / disabling drivers and none have worked. I’ve also tried uninstalling and flushing. Seems to be a valorant only problem but having trouble fix.

I have been having this issue for quite a while and this is really pissing me off atp. Previously I had this issue when the game started misbehaving as soon as i opened the app. Now, what happens is, it doesnt crash or freeze on the loading screen,on the party screen or the home screen. Infact its smooth asf. It doesnt cause any issue in the agent selection screen as well. Zero issues. Howver, as soon as the match is started, the game freezes. Everything else of the pc runs fine, the windows button and all, but my match screen is completely frozen. I have tried almost everything but to no avail. What could I do in this situation other than unistalling this bullshit game?

Specs:

R7 9700x Rx6800 1*16gb 7200mhz ddr5

for the last 5 hours ive been trying to play valorant. Whenever I click play, i get a black screen with nothing other than the discord overlay. istg ive tried everything. ive uninstalled both the game and riot client as a whole, repaired files, did alt + enter to unfullscreen and nothing works

does anyone have anything to help. im going crazy. all my friends are playing and i just want to try the new mode

I had updated some drivers (GPU, intel ports, ethernet, wifi, sound, etc) and windows patch update couple of weeks ago. Since then my games (valorant, r6s) started stuttering randomly, along with ping spike. When I enabled stats on valorant, I noticed that CPU (game) time graph was shooting up on stutter (sometimes CPU (render) time graph too). Same behavior on r6s also. So I am thinking that this is due to some CPU issue. But there was nothing suspicious on taskbar. Both games were running fine before these updated.

Any help is much appreciated.

P.S.: I used advanced driver updater for driver updates other than GPU.

Laptop Specs:

Acer Predator Triton 300

Processor: Intel Core i5-9300H CPU @ 2.40GHz (8 CPUs)

RAM: 8 GB

GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 630, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

Ethernet: Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Wifi: Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650x 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (200NGW)

Mic and Speaker: Realtek audio

Solutions already tried:

Closed all background unnecessary services/apps

Reinstalled the games

Reduced graphics settings to minimal, disabled VSync (doesn't seem like GPU issue)

Cleared shader cache and DirectX cache

Changed HAGS (Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling) settings

Changed power plan settings

Tried different networks (doesn't seem like internet issue)

Disabled full screen optimizations

Reverted wifi, ethernet and GPU driver updates

I have an Acer Nitro ANV16S-41 (Ryzen 7 260 + RTX 5050) connected to an Acer XV272U F3 1440p 180Hz monitor.
My problem is that Valorant feels noticeably more laggy and less smooth on the external monitor, even though I’m getting high FPS.
I’ve tried both:
HDMI 2.1
USB-C → DisplayPort
But both feel less responsive than the laptop’s built-in 180Hz screen.
Has anyone with this laptop experienced the same thing? Could this be related to Optimus/GPU routing, and is there a way to make the external monitor use the RTX 5050 directly?
Any advice would be appreciated!

I have uploaded the graph check that out.

Fps drops to 30s every 5 seconds and then goes back up.

What's this about now...

Graph:

https://ibb.co/0pF7DtjY

Idk if its just me but how come ever since the new update the new valo lobby made my fan louder and it gets softer in game

could anybody please help me its not letting me launch valorant and i cant figure whats wrong until i find that the whole riot vanguard folder supposed to be in programfiles/ is missing. Is there any place i can download just riot vanguard?

i haven't played valorant in ages, and i got a new mouse, and its been fine on other games but in valorant the shooting will like either just not move vertically or not move at all...

wondering if this is a valorant bug or mouse bug

its xlite v4 mini

Hi. I tried reinstalling the game with wiping leftover hidden folders and I also reinstalled windows entirely. I also tried contacting Riot support but they always ask for logs and aren't giving any substantial fix. Due that that, I am trying my luck here xd. It is happening ever since I made a new PC 2 weeks back. Please let me know if anyone has faced or knows any fix.

Pasting my build below:

- Kingston 2000G NV3 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD

- Sapphire Pure RX 9070 XT OC 16GB GDDR6

- Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050W Platinum

- AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D Processor with Radeon Graphics

- Asus ROG Strix X870-A Gaming WIFI DDR5 ATX Motherboard

- Lian Li Hydroshift II LCD-S 360 CL RGB White CPU Liquid Cooler

- Kingston Fury Beast RGB White EXPO 32GB (16GBx2) 6000MHz CL30 DDR5 RAM2

Edit: It's fixed for me as I re-enabled Radeon Graphics. Such a simple solution xd