Guides/Games
Marvel Rivals stutter and FPS drops: what to check
Marvel Rivals runs on Unreal Engine 5 with destructible maps and many effects at once, so team fights cost far more than an empty spawn room. Most stutter comes from shaders being built, a too-ambitious quality preset, or setup mistakes.
1. The first matches after an update#
After installing the game or a new graphics driver, the game builds shaders for your card. The first matches can hitch while that happens, especially when new heroes use their abilities for the first time. That settles. If it never settles, check the setup further down. Why shaders cause stutter.
2. Frame rate limit#
Set the frame rate limit in the display settings a little below what your PC holds in a busy team fight, not what it reaches in the spawn room. A frame rate that swings from 200 to 90 feels worse than a steady 140.
3. Upscaling and frame generation#
Use DLSS, FSR or XeSS in Quality mode: the game renders at a lower resolution and scales up, with little visible loss at 1440p. Frame generation raises the number on the FPS counter, but the input delay follows the real frame rate. For a competitive shooter, a higher real frame rate is worth more. How frame generation works.
4. The settings that cost the most#
Global Illumination and Reflection quality are the most expensive Unreal Engine 5 features. Lower them first; Shadows and Effects come next. Lowering texture quality only helps if you run out of video memory.
5. Low latency#
Turn on NVIDIA Reflex (or AMD Anti-Lag 2 where offered). It doesn't add FPS, but it shortens the delay between your input and the picture, especially when the graphics card is fully busy.
Check the setup first#
These cost frames in every game and show no error, so they're worth a minute before you touch any game setting:
- Monitor in the graphics card, not the motherboard: how to tell the ports apart.
- Refresh rate set to the monitor's maximum in Windows: how to check.
- RAM at its rated speed (XMP or EXPO on): check in 30 seconds.
- RAM in dual channel: how to check.
- Game on an SSD, not a hard drive: why it matters.
- Laptop: play plugged in, set Settings → System → Power & battery → Power mode to Best performance, and under Settings → System → Display → Graphics set the game to High performance so it runs on the dedicated graphics card.
Questions#
Why does Marvel Rivals stutter in team fights?
Should I use frame generation in Marvel Rivals?
Frametide's scan checks your PC for setup problems like this one and tells you how many it found (Basic, €12.99 once). Premium (€26.99 once) shows which ones and how to fix them. With Premium it can also set Marvel Rivals' own graphics settings as part of presets and measure FPS, 1% lows and stutters in the game.