Valorant Patch 13.02 Best Settings (2026 Act 4 Guide)

Valorant Patch 13.02 dropped for Season 2026 Act 4 on August 13, and the usual setting sweet spots shifted. The patch reworked shader compilation for RTX 50-series and RX 9000 GPUs, broke a handful of legacy .cfg tweaks, and introduced a new anti-aliasing preset that costs more frames than you'd expect. If you copied a config from Act 3 or earlier, you're leaving performance on the table.

This guide covers the optimal graphics, video, and advanced settings for Patch 13.02 across current-gen hardware, plus the specific tweaks that matter after the August update. We'll also flag the settings that *don't* help anymore and the one new toggle pros are already turning off. If you want a settings file built for your exact GPU and CPU, run a free playbook at BetterFPS — it auto-updates whenever Riot patches the game.

What Changed in Patch 13.02 (Act 4)

Riot's August 13 patch notes didn't shout about performance, but the backend shader pipeline got a rewrite for GPUs with hardware ray-tracing cores. That means RTX 50-series (Blackwell) and RX 9000 (RDNA 4) cards now handle Material Quality and Texture Quality differently than RTX 40-series did. The result: Medium textures on an RTX 5080 can now match Low textures' frame rate at 1080p, a reversal from the 20–30 FPS penalty Medium used to carry on older drivers.

The second change: a new MSAA option called "Adaptive MSAA" sits between 2x and 4x. It sounds smart but benchmarks from ProSettings.net show it costs 60–80 FPS on high-refresh configs compared to plain MSAA Off, with almost no visual difference in a fast-paced match. Competitive players are skipping it. The third gotcha: the in-game FPS cap now has a "Display-Based" option that tries to sync with your monitor — it introduces micro-stutter on some 360 Hz panels, so manually capping at your refresh rate minus one (e.g. 359 for a 360 Hz display) remains safer.

Graphics Settings Tier List (Patch 13.02)

These are the settings that matter for frame rate and competitive clarity, ordered by impact. We tested on RTX 5080, RTX 5070, and RX 9070 XT to confirm behavior on current hardware.

Must Disable (High Cost, Low Benefit)

• **Anti-Aliasing**: Set to **Off** or **MSAA 2x** maximum. The new Adaptive MSAA costs ~70 FPS at 1080p competitive settings on an RTX 5080 (measured by ProSettings.net) and blurs agent outlines slightly. MSAA 4x is even worse. Most pros run None.
• **Anisotropic Filtering**: **4x** is the ceiling. 16x drops you 15–20 FPS on mid-range cards for textures you barely notice in gunfights. 4x keeps floor textures clean without the hit.
• **Improve Clarity**: **Off**. This sharpening filter added micro-stutter in Patch 13.01 and the August update didn't fix it. Use your monitor's sharpness or NVIDIA Freestyle if you want post-sharpening.
• **Bloom, Distortion, First Person Shadows**: All **Off**. Bloom makes flash bangs harder to see through, Distortion is a muzzle-flash effect that obscures enemies, and First Person Shadows render your own gun's shadow for zero competitive upside.

Safe to Leave Medium (Post-Patch Efficiency)

• **Material Quality**: **Medium** on RTX 50-series / RX 9000; **Low** on older GPUs. The shader rewrite in 13.02 means Medium now costs ~5 FPS instead of the old 25 FPS penalty on Blackwell cards. Older architectures still pay the full price.
• **Texture Quality**: **Medium** if you have 12 GB VRAM or more; **Low** for 8 GB cards. Valorant's texture streaming is efficient, but 8 GB GPUs (like the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB) will stutter on High textures when multiple smokes are active.
• **Detail Quality**: **Low**. The jump from Low to Medium adds background clutter (extra props, higher-poly railings) that can obscure long sightlines. No FPS cost, but worse clarity.
• **UI Quality**: **Medium**. This only affects menu sharpness and the buy-phase HUD — zero in-game performance difference. Low makes text blurry on 1440p displays.

NVIDIA vs AMD: Patch 13.02 Differences

RTX 50-series cards (5090, 5080, 5070 Ti, 5070) see the biggest uplift from the shader rewrite. Benchmarks from ProSettings.net put an RTX 5080 at 800 FPS average on 1080p Low and 360 FPS on 1080p High — both up roughly 10% from the same card's Patch 13.01 numbers. The 1% lows also tightened: competitive players chasing 500+ FPS minimums to match 540 Hz monitors now hit that floor reliably on a 5080 or 5090.

AMD's RX 9070 XT (16 GB GDDR6, RDNA 4) trails slightly at 780 FPS on 1080p Low and 700 FPS on 1080p High, measured by the same source. That's competitive with an RTX 5070 (800 FPS Low, 650 FPS High at 1440p), but the 1% lows are less stable — Dodge.gg's competitive benchmark showed the 5070 Ti holding 480 FPS 1% lows where the 9070 XT dipped to ~430 FPS in smoke-heavy scenarios. If you're on AMD, prioritize Low settings and disable Improve Clarity to keep frame times flat.

Competitive Config: 300+ FPS Target

If you're playing ranked or scrims and need stable high FPS for a 240–360 Hz monitor, this is the baseline config that pros settled on within 48 hours of Patch 13.02 going live. It assumes a mid-to-high-end GPU (RTX 5070 / RX 9070 XT tier or better).

1. **Display Mode**: Fullscreen (not Windowed Fullscreen — it adds 1–2 frames of latency).
2. **Resolution**: Native 1080p. Dropping to 900p or lower stretched barely gains FPS on modern GPUs and makes crosshair placement harder at range.
3. **Frame Rate Limit**: Set to your monitor refresh minus 1 (e.g. 239 for 240 Hz, 359 for 360 Hz). Avoid "Display-Based" — it micro-stutters.
4. **Material Quality**: Medium (RTX 50 / RX 9000), Low (older).
5. **Texture Quality**: Medium if 12+ GB VRAM, else Low.
6. **Detail Quality**: Low.
7. **UI Quality**: Medium.
8. **Anisotropic Filtering**: 4x.
9. **Anti-Aliasing**: MSAA 2x if you have FPS headroom and want smoother edges on abilities; Off if chasing max FPS.
10. **Improve Clarity**: Off.
11. **Bloom, Distortion, First Person Shadows**: All Off.
12. **Vignette, VSync, Anti-Aliasing (FXAA)**: Off.
13. **NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency**: On + Boost (NVIDIA only).

On an RTX 5070 Ti, this config delivers 590 FPS average with 480 FPS 1% lows in competitive matches (measured by Dodge.gg). An RTX 5090 pushes that to 800 FPS average, 650 FPS 1% lows — overkill for current monitors but future-proof for 540 Hz panels. RX 9070 XT users should expect ~700 FPS at 1080p High with this setup, dropping to ~550 FPS when multiple smokes are active due to AMD's less aggressive culling.

CPU and RAM: The Hidden Bottleneck in 2026

Valorant is one of the lightest games for GPU load, which means high-refresh-rate players (360 Hz+) often hit a CPU limit before maxing out their graphics card. If you're running an RTX 5080 but stuck at 400 FPS when you expected 600+, check per-core CPU usage in Task Manager (Performance → CPU → right-click → Change graph to Logical processors). Look for 1–2 cores pinned near 100% — that's the tell. Total CPU usage % is meaningless here because Valorant only hammers a couple of threads.

The best gaming CPUs for Valorant right now are AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D (3D V-Cache, socket AM5) and Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K (Arrow Lake, LGA1851). Clock speed and cache matter more than core count — a 16-core CPU with mediocre per-core performance will lose to an 8-core chip with higher clocks and better IPC. If you're shopping, prioritize single-thread benchmarks over multi-core scores.

RAM speed also moves the needle. DDR5-6000 CL30 (AMD) or DDR5-6400 CL32 (Intel) is the current sweet spot — loose timings or slow speed (DDR5-4800) can cost 40–60 FPS in CPU-bound scenarios. Capacity: 32 GB is recommended for 2026, though Valorant itself only needs ~6 GB. The extra headroom prevents background apps (Discord, browser, streaming software) from forcing Windows to page to disk, which causes frame-time spikes.

NVIDIA Control Panel Tweaks (Still Relevant)

These driver-level settings stack with in-game options. Open NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings → Program Settings → Add Valorant (VALORANT-Win64-Shipping.exe).

• **Low Latency Mode**: Ultra. This is separate from in-game Reflex — enabling both is optimal.
• **Power Management Mode**: Prefer Maximum Performance. Prevents the GPU from downclocking between rounds.
• **Texture Filtering - Quality**: Performance. Trades negligible texture sharpness for ~5 FPS.
• **Vertical Sync**: Off (in both Control Panel and in-game).
• **Threaded Optimization**: On. Valorant's multi-threading improved in Patch 13.02; this helps.
• **Shader Cache Size**: Set to Unlimited if you have spare SSD space. Faster map loads.

AMD users: open AMD Software → Gaming → Valorant → Graphics. Set **Radeon Anti-Lag**: Off (conflicts with Vanguard), **Radeon Boost**: Off, **Radeon Image Sharpening**: 80% if you disabled Improve Clarity in-game. The rest leave at default.

Valorant Patch 13.02 didn't overhaul graphics the way a new map or agent does, but the under-the-hood shader and anti-aliasing changes mean your old config might be outdated. The tldr: turn off Adaptive MSAA, bump Material Quality to Medium if you're on RTX 50-series or RX 9000, and manually cap your FPS instead of trusting Display-Based. If you want settings that auto-adjust when Riot patches again, generate a free playbook for your GPU — it regenerates every time the game updates, so you're never running stale configs.

Frequently asked questions