Swapping out old hardware for better, faster components is a surefire way to improve gaming graphics. But despite what stereotypes may lead you to believe, not everyone who prefers PC gaming to consoles has an infinite supply of cash to drop on the latest graphics cards. Well, I'm here to clue you in on a little secret: You can greatly enhance the frame rates of your favorite PC gaming titles without spending a dime on new hardware. Don't get me wrong, processor and are often sound investments. But if your PC's performance is getting a bit sluggish on newer titles, try these tips before you run to the store to. Your wallet will be happy you did.
Clean out the Windows prefetch folder to improve performance if you’re using Windows XP. If you’re a Firefox user, check out my ultimate guide to making Firefox faster. Reduce the number of fonts that your computer has to load up on startup. Is your computer slow to shutdown or hanging during shutdown? Read the article for fixes.
Upgrade graphics drivers One of the single most important things a gamer can do to ensure the best gaming performance is to install the latest drivers for his or her graphics card. If you’re a gamer, we’re going to assume you’ve got either an NVIDIA GeForce or AMD Radeon-based graphics card. If so, both NVIDIA and AMD offer the latest drivers for their GPUs on their respective websites: NVIDIA - AMD - Do not rely on the disc that came with your graphics card or the drivers that may be offered by Windows Update. NVIDIA and AMD are constantly updating drivers to enhance performance, fix graphical anomalies, and improve game compatibility.
That last point is especially important if you like to grab the latest games as soon as they hit store shelves. If you’re running a game that just came out with an outdated set of graphics drivers that are many months old, you’re likely leaving a ton of performance on the table—if the game even runs properly in the first place. The reference drivers offered on NVIDIA’s and AMD’s websites will be compatible with virtually every consumer-class graphics card based on one of the company’s GPUs. The reference drivers always incorporate the latest bug fixes and performance enhancements and should be updated regularly. At the very least, upgrade to the latest drivers whenever you pick up a new game, especially if it’s unstable or you see strange graphical glitches.
Tweak graphics driver settings The gaming settings in AMD's Catalyst Control Center. After downloading and installing the latest drivers though, there are a few settings worth tweaking that will improve game performance. Please note, however, that some of the settings may have an adverse effect on image quality.
That’s typically how it goes; reducing the image quality level increases a game’s performance. In your graphics driver’s control panel, there will be a group of settings strictly associated with 3D gaming. Look in the Manage 3D Settings menu in NVIDIA’s GeForce drivers and in the Gaming section of AMD’s Catalyst driver suite. In these menus, you’ll see a group of options related to texture filtering (which sharpens and cleans up mapped textured), antialiasing (which reduces jaggies on hard edges), Vertical Sync (or V-Sync), ambient occlusion, tessellation, and a handful of others. All of these settings can have an impact on game performance.
Reducing the amount/level of texture filtering will increase game performance, for example. Antialiasing should usually be set to application-controlled, but reducing the AA level will also increase performance. V-Sync should usually be left enabled to prevent screen-tearing artifacts, but in some games disabling V-Sync may increase performance too.
If you’d like to learn more about what each of the settings listed in AMD’s and NVIDIA’s control panels do, stay tuned to PCWorld—we’ve got an article already in the works that will explain them all. In the meantime, if you’ve got a game that would benefit from a higher frame rate, it’s worth experimenting with the settings mentioned above to find the best balance of image quality and frame rate speeds. Free up CPU and memory resources The startup tab in the Windows 8 task manager. Disabling unnecessary startup items is also a quick and easy way to free up CPU and memory resources on a system, which may help improve—or at least normalize—the performance of your games, especially on older or underpowered systems.
Any application that launches automatically with Windows consumes memory and potentially CPU resources. Disabling these unnecessary applications frees up those CPU and memory resources for other applications, such as your games. Windows has a built-in tool to disable startup items—MSCONFIG on Windows 7 or the Startup section in Task Manger on Windows 8—but we’ve found to be one of the easiest to use, and it looks and works the same on every Windows-based system. Regardless of which tool you use, run a Google search if you’re unsure which items on the startup list can be safely disabled or deleted; just look for the file name to find out what it does and if you need it. Odds are, most items can be safely removed, save for any antivirus and antimalware apps or ones that run scheduled tasks, such as a backup tool. Do you really need Steam or Spotify starting up when your PC does and consume precious resources? 