Frozen Tweaks

Optimize your PC for gaming. Frozen Tweaks gives you the tools to boost FPS, improve performance & unlock ultimate gameplay by removing bloat🚀

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

New here, so: I build Frozen Tweaks, a PC optimization tool for gamers.

But this account isn't a billboard.

It's where I post free tweaks: exact clicks, what each one fixes, and what it doesn't.

Mostly Fortnite and Valorant, since that's where most of you are, but anything that's currently running badly.

Follow if your PC stutters and you're done guessing.

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

"Turn off Game Mode for more FPS" is 2019 advice that never got retired.

It was genuinely broken on early Windows 10 builds. That's where the tip came from, and people have been copying each other ever since without retesting it.

On Windows 11 today, Game Mode does two things that are worth having:

- It stops Windows Update from installing drivers and restarting your machine mid match.
- It deprioritizes background threads so your game keeps the cores it asked for.

Measured on current builds it comes out neutral to slightly positive on 1% lows. The setups where turning it off actually wins are rare and hardware specific, and if you're in one of them you'll see it in your frame times, not in a YouTube thumbnail.

Xbox Game Bar is the one people are actually thinking of. Different feature, real overhead, and disabling that one is fine.

Don't take my word for it either. 60 seconds of the same route, on and off, compare the 1% lows. That's the whole method.

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

the rewired detail basically answers it. builds with no steam api still doing it, other new input system games doing it, rewired games fine. thats not steam api, thats how the new input system enumerates

steams overlay injects at process creation and hooks rawinput so it can catch shift tab. new input system polls rawinput, rewired doesnt the same way. and disabling the overlay per game only hides the ui, the dll still gets injected when steam starts the process

try the global one instead. steam settings, in game, untick enable the steam overlay entirely. that stops the injection rather than just hiding it. if that clears it youve found it, and its worth filing with unity because that combination is going to be hitting a lot of people who never work out why

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

that slider is a target rather than a hard cap, which is why lowering it doesnt do what youd expect. the engine treats it as a budget to aim for and then allocates past it anyway when it wants to

the setting that actually reduces what it needs is textures. drop those one notch and watch the number, thatll move it where the slider wont

whats the card and how much vram has it got

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

neither of them under load while its stuttering is the useful part, that rules both out. a 5090 and a 7800x3d arent what youre fighting here

settings independent plus low utilisation means somethings interrupting the frame rather than anything being too slow to draw it. in this beta thats mostly compilation, and a lot of people are reporting it hits hardest in gunfights and on flashes specifically

does it ease off at all over a session, or is match ten as rough as match one

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

cpu and gpu both staying low while it stutters is the tell. nothings working hard because everythings sat waiting on memory

9gb for the game plus windows taking about 4 leaves you almost nothing out of 16, so anything else open tips you over and windows starts trimming working sets to cope. that lands as a stall with idle looking usage numbers, exactly what youre seeing

watch committed memory in task manager while it happens. at or above your total confirms it. closing background stuff buys a little back but 16 is the real constraint there

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

the mw3 comparison on the same machine is the most useful number in that whole thread, because it takes your hardware out of the argument entirely

one thing worth adding if you havent already, watch gpu usage while youre at 180. a 5070 ti at 1440p pinned near 98 means the game is just heavier and thats that. sat in the 70s means youve gone cpu bound, and on 14th gen thats worth a proper look rather than a shrug

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

@spekta4life @Marksman lowered everything and it didnt move is the important bit. that rules the gpu out, so no settings change is getting you to 100 and you can stop burning time on the graphics menu

leaves cpu, ram speed or something running alongside it. whats the cpu, and is xmp on

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

the grenade and flash thing is coming up constantly, youre about the fourth person ive seen describe exactly that. its the game pulling the effect and its shader permutations in the moment you throw rather than having them ready

which is why its the animation that hitches specifically. the game thread stalls mid throw. gunplay stays fine because those assets went resident on your first shot

on a laptop 3080 id also make sure youre plugged in and on the performance profile. that stall gets worse when the cpu is dropping clocks between bursts

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

that result narrows it a lot actually. exe direct staying clean even with steam open means its not steam running, its the game noticing it was launched by steam

when steam starts it, steamapi init succeeds and the game runs its steamworks callback loop every frame. launch it yourself and that init fails, so the whole path gets skipped. same binary, different behaviour

testable too. put a steam_appid.txt next to the exe with the app id in it and launch directly. that makes init succeed without steam launching it. if the spike comes back its the callback loop, which is the games code rather than anything you can turn off

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

a fast drop that recovers to a solid 144 is a stall rather than the hardware running out. a 9800x3d holding a consistent 144 means youve got headroom sat there, so somethings interrupting you, not overloading you

thats compilation almost certainly. new season, empty cache, every new material compiling the first time it lands on screen

should thin out the more you play. the tell is whether it happens somewhere new each game or the same spot over and over. new places every time is compilation and it fades, same spot every time is something else

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

That stutter in the first 10 minutes of a new game isn't your PC dying.

It's shader compilation. The game is building shaders for your exact GPU and driver version the first time it needs each one, and every new shader costs you a frame while it's being built.

What actually helps:

- Let the game finish its shader pre-compile step on first launch. Don't skip it. Skipping it is why the stutter shows up mid match instead.
- Raise your shader cache size. NVIDIA Control Panel, 3D Settings, Shader Cache Size, set it to 100GB or Unlimited. The default is small and it evicts entries you're about to need again.
- Stop clearing your shader cache "to fix stutter". You're forcing the game to rebuild everything from scratch.

Worth knowing: every driver update invalidates the cache. Your first session after updating will stutter again. That's expected, not a problem you need to fix.

What doesn't help: any registry tweak claiming to solve shader stutter. There isn't one.

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

the one nobody ever mentions is wifi power saving. windows parks the adapter between packets and waking it back up costs you a spike, which is exactly the intermittent kind of lag rather than constant bad ping

device manager, your wifi adapter, properties, power management, untick allow the computer to turn this off. then in advanced set any power saving property to maximum performance

and if youre on 2.4 get on 5ghz. worth doing all of that before anyone tells you to run a cable

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

the 1080p bit matters a lot here. a 3080 at 1080p puts you firmly cpu bound on a 10700k, and cpu bound is exactly where frametime variance lives, so youre measuring the right thing rather than chasing the average like most people do

the one people skip is capping below your average instead of near your peak. average 200, cap at 160. that leaves the cpu enough headroom to absorb a spike without it becoming a dropped frame, and the graph flattens even though the number went down

whats your 1% low sitting at against the average right now

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

everything on basic and still hitting a hard 100 is the giveaway. if lowering settings doesnt move the number youre not gpu limited, so the 7900xt isnt what youre fighting

on a 5800x3d thats worth checking rather than assuming. what does gpu usage read while youre at 100? sat in the 60s means cpu bound, pinned at 98 means somethings capping you and its worth hunting the limiter down instead

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

the cpu getting hammered while flashes go off is what a few other people are reporting too, so youre not alone on that one. its not the flash being expensive to draw, its the game pulling the effect and its shader permutations in on demand, and that lands cpu side

which is why a 5700x notices it more than a newer chip would. worth knowing turning settings down wont touch it either, the cost isnt in rendering the thing

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

firing being the trigger is the useful part. muzzle flash, tracers and impact effects are all separate things and each compiles the first time it shows up, which lands as a hitch mid fight rather than a dip in the average

on a 4080 the effects themselves shouldnt be expensive, so its almost certainly still compiling. does it improve across a session or is it identical every match? improving means compilation and itll settle. identical every time means the cache is getting thrown away between runs

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

@Abdullah30Khan @UnionChairs @InfinityWard multiple people getting it at the same time is the strongest evidence there is for server side, so yeah. nothing either of you can do at that point which is the frustrating part

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

those two things arent actually in conflict. it lowers your ping by routing you better, but it does it with a filter driver sitting in your network stack, so every packet takes an extra trip through the cpu on the way in and out

better average ping, worse jitter and higher dpc latency locally. cs2 cares about consistency more than the raw number, so the 12ms you gained can easily cost you more than it saves

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

worth splitting it before you chase it any further. launch the exe directly while steam is still open in the background. if the spike comes back then its steam running at all rather than the launch path, and thats a completely different problem

if it stays clean then its something about how steam starts it, and the per game controller toggle isnt the only one. steam settings, controller, theres global switches for xbox playstation switch and generic support. those make the client enumerate and poll hid on its own no matter what the per game setting says

[Frozen Tweaks @frozentweaks]

@Aleditxz @FortniteStatus @Fortnite everyone in the lobby going at the same time is the answer, that rules your pc out completely. your machine cant make other peoples clients stutter

thats the server tick falling behind, so theres genuinely nothing on your end to fix. annoying but at least you can stop chasing it