// LOADING VALMAUK
// LOADING VALMAUK
A full walkthrough of every Valorant settings tab — General, Crosshair, the Map/Minimap panel, HUD, Combat Report and network options — with recommended values and the exact tab each lives in.
By VALMAUK Staff
Most "best settings" lists obsess over sensitivity and stop there. This is the other guide — the one that walks you down the entire Valorant settings menu, panel by panel, and tells you what every toggle does and where to find it. We keep the sensitivity talk short on purpose (we have a dedicated pro sensitivity article for that) and instead focus on the dozens of options that quietly shape how readable, responsive and information-rich your game feels.
Valorant splits its options across tabs: General, Controls, Crosshair, Audio, Video and Stats/HUD-adjacent panels. We will move through the ones that actually affect your competitive experience. Treat the recommended values as a strong default, not law — the right config is the one you stop thinking about mid-round.
Patch note: Valorant's menus get reshuffled and renamed periodically. Option names and exact defaults here reflect the menu as of early 2026. If a label has moved, the underlying behaviour described below is what to look for.
The General tab holds your mouse and accessibility options. This is the single most performance- and feel-relevant tab outside of Video.
Two numbers matter: your mouse DPI (set in your mouse software) and your in-game Sensitivity. The product of the two is eDPI (DPI x Sensitivity), and eDPI is the number you should actually compare against other players because it normalises across hardware. Most Valorant pros land between roughly 200 and 400 eDPI — a common reference point is 800 DPI with an in-game sensitivity around 0.3 to 0.5. Keep Windows pointer speed at the default 6/11 notch so the OS applies no extra scaling.
We cover sensitivity, scoped sens, conversion from CS2 and pro values in depth in the separate VALMAUK pro settings & sensitivity guide. Here we only need you to set a sane starting eDPI and move on.
Found under the mouse options in General. Raw Input Buffer changes the API Valorant uses to pull mouse data, letting the game read inputs in batches more directly from the hardware rather than through the standard Windows message pipeline. The benefit scales with polling rate: high-polling mice (4000–8000 Hz) see meaningful smoothness and CPU-overhead improvements, while a standard 1000 Hz mouse sees more modest gains. If you run a high-polling-rate mouse, turn it On; if you notice any odd input behaviour on older hardware, it is safe to test it Off.
This option (it surfaces in General/Video depending on build) spreads rendering work across multiple CPU cores. It typically raises your average FPS, but the tradeoff is that it can slightly worsen your 1% and 0.1% lows and add a small amount of latency, because work is being handed off between threads. On a capable multi-core CPU most players leave it On for the higher average; if you are chasing the most consistent frametimes and your average FPS is already comfortably high, test it Off and watch your lows.
| Setting | Tab | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows pointer speed | OS (not in-game) | 6/11 (default) | Avoids extra OS-level acceleration/scaling |
| Mouse Sensitivity | General | ~0.3–0.5 @ 800 DPI | Puts you near the common ~200–400 eDPI pro band |
| Raw Input Buffer | General | On (esp. high-poll mice) | More direct input read; best with 4000–8000 Hz mice |
| Multithreaded Rendering | General/Video | On (capable CPU) | Higher average FPS; watch 1% lows |
The Crosshair tab is where you build your reticle. We keep this short because crosshair design deserves its own deep dive, but the durable advice is: a small, high-contrast crosshair with Outlines on, a thin Inner Line, no dynamic error/movement bloat, and a colour that pops against most maps (cyan, green or yellow). Turn off Center Dot unless you specifically like it. Save your build as a profile so you can iterate without losing it.
These live in the General tab under the map-related section, and they are wildly underrated. A well-tuned minimap turns peripheral glances into instant reads of where your team is and which way everyone is facing.
Map orientation has two main modes. Rotate spins the minimap to match the direction you are facing, so "up" on the map is always "forward" for you — most pros prefer this because it removes a mental translation step when reacting. Fixed keeps the map locked, and players who choose Fixed usually pair it with "Fixed Orientation: Based on Side" so the map always points the same way relative to your spawn. Try Rotate first; if you came from CS-style fixed radar habits, Based-on-Side Fixed may feel more natural.
Leave this Off. When it is On, the map constantly slides to keep your icon dead-center, which makes the whole minimap shift every time you move and is disorienting. With it Off, the map holds steady and only your icon moves within it — far easier to parse at a glance.
Minimap Size scales the whole element on your screen; a value around 1.0–1.1 (many players settle near 1.04) keeps it big enough to read without eating your view. Minimap Zoom controls how much of the map fits inside that box — pulling it to roughly 0.8 zooms out slightly so you can see more of the map and catch rotations and flanks earlier. The combination of a modest size bump and a slightly zoomed-out view gives the best situational awareness.
Minimap Vision Cones draw a cone on each ally icon showing which way they are looking — keep this On. It tells you instantly whether a teammate is watching a flank or staring at a wall, which is invaluable for trades and crossfires. Show Map Region Names should be set to Always so callout names (A Site, Mid, Heaven, etc.) are visible on the minimap, which speeds up comms and helps newer players learn the map.
| Minimap setting | Tab | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| Rotate / Fixed | General | Rotate (or Fixed: Based on Side) |
| Keep Player Centered | General | Off |
| Minimap Size | General | ~1.00–1.10 (≈1.04) |
| Minimap Zoom | General | ~0.8 (slightly zoomed out) |
| Minimap Vision Cones | General | On |
| Show Map Region Names | General | Always |
"Half the gunfights you "got caught" in were actually winnable — your minimap told you the flank was coming, you just had it tuned so badly you never glanced at it.
Valorant's HUD options control the in-match overlay: ability icons, the spike/round timer, ally health bars and the kill banner. Most players leave the HUD at defaults, with two worthwhile tweaks — keep ally health/ability info visible so you know who can use what before you commit to a push, and make sure your own ammo and ability charges are easy to glance at. Avoid hiding HUD elements for "cleaner" screenshots if it costs you live information.
After you die, the Combat Report shows exactly how the trade went — how much damage you dealt, which body parts you hit, and what killed you. It is the fastest in-client feedback loop you have. Leave it enabled and actually read it: consistent leg/body hits when you meant to headshot is a crosshair-placement problem, not a sensitivity one. Use the report to diagnose whether you are losing duels to aim, positioning or simply getting traded.
Valorant exposes a network buffering control and on-screen network stats. Network buffering smooths out the data flow between your client and the server to absorb jitter; the cost is responsiveness — more buffer means a steadier but slightly later-feeling game. Riot has documented buffer behaviour in terms of added frame delay, where the minimum setting adds the least delay and higher settings add progressively more to ride out unstable connections. If your connection is clean, prefer the lowest buffering for the most responsive feel; if you suffer from jitter or ping spikes, a higher buffer trades a little snappiness for far fewer rubber-bands.
Enable the network stat overlay (the netgraph) so you can see your RTT and jitter live. Riot has added graphs like Network RTT plus processing delays and an RTT jitter graph — watching these while you play tells you whether a "laggy" feeling is your machine (frametime) or your connection (jitter), which is the difference between changing a video setting and calling your ISP.
Rule of thumb: stutter that tracks your FPS counter is a graphics/CPU problem — head to the Video guide. Stutter that tracks your ping/jitter graph is a network problem — raise your buffer and stabilise your connection before touching graphics.
A complete Valorant config is mostly about information and consistency, not eye candy. Set a sane eDPI, enable Raw Input Buffer if your mouse benefits, tune the minimap so it actually feeds you reads, keep Combat Report on so you learn from every death, and use the network overlay to tell hardware problems apart from connection problems. Once those are dialled, the only tab left to optimise for raw frames is Video — covered in our companion guide, "Best Valorant Video Settings for Max FPS."