How to Improve Your Computer Gaming Performance
According to a study carried out in 2017, the PC gaming industry was approximated to be valued at $28.04 billion and is projected to hit $33.6 billion by 2020.
The industry has such huge revenues for a reason. A lot of gamers love the experience they get playing games with PCs. However, it can be discouraging when your PC fails to run the games you love due to poor system compatibility.
But fear not, you can improve your system’s gaming performance.
Improving your computer’s gaming performance can be a daunting job though, especially when you aren’t familiar with your PCs operating system, internal hardware and the total configuration of your computer.
Most game creators outline a group of the recommended and minimum system requirements which set out the type of hardware which is demanded by the game for it to work at its best level.
There is absolutely no way to bypass such requirements and this improving your computer for gaming guide will give you tips on how to turn your PC into one that can run a brand new game which requirements surpasses its compatibility.
What’s more? Recent research has shown that 60% of games being developed in 2019 are for PCs, which is higher than that of any other platform.
So, asides from meeting the requirements, most of your best games will be tailored for PCs only and you’ll need to have the best performance to enjoy the games.
You certainly cannot take a computer not built for gaming and try to run the newest and latest release or a blockbuster game with top-notch graphics and newest shader model, regardless of how much you want to pay the game.
So what do you do to ensure that your games run smoothly on your computer and how do you improve your gaming experience?
Below are some tips that you can take for improving your computer’s gaming experience. This recommendations and tips will help you get the most out of your software and hardware and get your games running as best as possible
These tips are useful for both those with the latest and best graphics card, SSD and CPU as well as those with an older PC that barely meets the average gaming requirements.
Let’s have a look at these tips:
1. Get to understand your Computer’s Hardware
The first thing you must do in order to improve your computer’s gaming performance is to ensure that your computer exceeds or meets the minimum PC requirements outlined.
Most publishers and developers make both the recommended and minimum system computer requirements available to assists gamers in knowing whether or not their system can handle the game.
However, this is not to say that computers that possess hardware lower than the minimum requirements would be unable to run the game, not so. A lot of times they would be able too, but you won’t get the best out of your gaming experience when the graphics keep stuttering every minute.
If you developed your own computer for gaming or at least picked the hardware that was installed, then you would definitely know what exactly your computer is working with.
However, if you are like a lot of people who randomly purchased a shelf gaming system, you probably won’t know the hardware configuration it uses.
Windows offers numerous methods for finding out the exact hardware that is installed and known by your operating system, but the method is a clunky and confusing one.
Luckily you can use certain websites and applications to help you know this quite easily. Here are some of them:
i). Belarc Advisor
Belarc Advisor is a Mac and Windows application that you can install and run in just 4 to 5 minutes. It offers you a sea of information about both the operating system and hardware installed on your system inclusive of the RAM, CPU, HDD, and graphics cards etc.
With this knowledge, you can then compare your systems capability with the published game minimum requirements, to know if your computer is able to run it easily.
ii). CanYouRunIt
This is a program created by System Requirements Lab and it offers you an easy one-click solution to help determine if your system is capable of running a particular game.
Even though there is actually more than a single click required during the installation of this software, it is very simple to use.
The program analyzes your systems operating system and hardware and compares it to the particular game’s minimum requirements and then gives you a score for each requirement.
2. Optimize the Settings of your Graphics Card and Update your Graphics Drivers Settings
One of your first jobs when trying to improve your computer’s gaming experience is to ensure that your graphics card are up to date with the latest drivers.
As the center of your gaming experience, it’s vital that you keep you constantly update your graphics card. If you fail to do so, you’ll discover it’s one of the most important aspects of your gaming experience.
Both AMD/ATI and Nvidia offer their own software for optimizing graphics card settings as well as managing the drivers of your graphics card. AMD Gaming and Nvidia both evolved respectively.
Their computer improvement recommendations and settings rest on the sea of knowledge they’ve acquired over the years for varying kinds of hardware configurations.
Possessing the newest drivers can assist to improve the experience of older games also. Optimizing the frame-rate of your graphics card is also a great avenue to focus on when you’re seeking for performance boosts.
There are numerous third-party applications that let you to tweak your systems graphics card settings as well as overclocking for performance improvement.
Some of these programs include MSI Afterburner and Gigabyte Guru. MSI Afterburner permits the overclocking of EGA Precision X and any GPU. Gigabyte OC Guru also does the same.
Also, we have utility software like GPU-Z that offer detailed hardware settings and specifications of your system’s graphics card and Fraps (Fraps is a graphics utility which assists in providing information on frame-rate).
3. Ensure your Laptop is Clean and Free of Dust
If you’re seeking to have the best gaming experience on your computer then you must have a proactive attitude towards its physical maintenance.
Dirt and dust are the arch-enemies of optimal performance, as they will decrease airflow which results in your system getting too hot.
A. How to keep your System Cool and Prevent PC Overheating
When your PC overheats due to dirt and dust, it may cause unexpected shutdowns, hardware damage and may even lead to lost data.
Fear not though, because you’ll see how to know the temperature of your computer and the simplest way to maintain a cool temperature for your PC.
Keep in mind that when your system heat builds up, the GPU, processor and all other components start to slow down. This ruins the effectiveness of your computer for gaming.
The most efficient method of dealing with this is to get rid of the dust. However, this is not a very easy job. Most likely the compartments filled with dust are probably sealed and opening them will certainly void the warranty.
The trick is to use very particular cleaning methods. You’re to blow off the dust on your keyboards, screen and in the CPU, you can use a little fan to blow off the dust from the tricky areas and a brush for your keyboards. Basically, aim for all areas with vents.
Ensure that there are no particles of food stuck to your keyboards as over time this will cause the keys to getting stuck.
4. Â Shutdown Irrelevant Processes and Clean your Startup
You will agree with me that the longer you have your PC, the more applications you will download and install on your PC.
This isn’t a bad thing, but these applications have processes and tasks that run in the background even when the program is not running.
These background tasks take up a significant percentage of your system’s resources. If you want to enjoy gaming on your PC, you will need to get rid of some of these unnecessary processes.
When gaming, you need to close any application that is open. Such application can be Windows Excel application or web browser. As far as you are not using the application, you will need to close them before starting the game.
It is advisable to reboot your PC before starting a game; this will close any tasks lingering at the background which may be running even after you close the program.
Rebooting your PC will reset it to the startup configuration. If after rebooting your system, you don’t notice any changes, you can follow the tips below to improve your gaming:
Stop Unnecessary Processes in Windows Task Manager
If rebooting doesn’t boost your PCs performance, you can clean all of the irrelevant starts up processes and programs that are always running when your system is on.
This is one of the fastest ways of boosting the performance of your PC. To start this process, you will need to go to the Windows Task Manager, there you will be able to see the applications that are running and taking up a lot of RAM and CPU resources.
To start the Task Manager, you can right click on the taskbar and select “Start Task Manager” when it is open you can then go to the “Processes” tab.
The processes tab will let you see all the programs and processes running in the background. Most often, the fact that a lot of processes are running doesn’t mean that a lot of memory is being used; this is because most of these applications have a small CPU footprint.
In order to see the applications or processes that are consuming your resources, you can sort by Memory and CPU. If all you want to do is to instantly boost your PCs performance, you can do that by ending the processes from the task manager.
After you do this, your Memory and CPU will be cleared up immediately. But doing this will not prevent the background tasks from restarting themselves when you restart your PC.
Cleanup Startup Programs
If you do not want the processes and programs to restart every time you put on your PC, you will need to change some of your system configurations. To do this, follow the following steps:
1. Press the windows key +R key to bring up the run command window
2. Enter “msconfig” and click “ok” Â this will bring up the system configuration window.
3. Click on the “Services” tab, this will enable you to see all the programs and services that can be set to run whenever you start your Windows.
If you wish to stop every third-party process or application from running when you start the system, then:
4. Click on “Hide all Microsoft services
5. Click on” Disable All”
Once you do this, the background processes will stop running. If however, you wish to allow some programs to keep running in the background, you can go through each listing and manually disable the processes you wish to disable.
When you complete the entire process, you will need to reboot your system to effect the changes.
If however, you wish to leave the startup process the way they are, there are other alternatives to boosting the performance of your PC for gaming.
One of these alternatives is using a third-party application. Below are some applications that you can use to free up system resources for gaming:
a). CCleaner
This is an application that enables you to easily clean up your Windows registry keys and leftover entries from uninstalled applications.
You can also use it to clean of memory dumps, temporary files and any other file that can slow down your PC performance.
b). Razer Game Booster
Razer Game Booster is a program, that can help you manage the resources of your computer by enabling you to optimize and configure your PC settings to be based on the type of game you play.
This will enable the games to run at optimal performance. This amazing application also has other thrilling features like Frame rates, HDD defrags and screenshot capture.
c). MSI Afterburner
This application is a graphics card overclocking utility. It is free to download and run and it can be used with any type of graphics card.
It is a known fact that overclocking can be very tricky, but Afterburner makes it very simple for you and will help you boost your system’s speed,
5. Defrag your Hard-Drive
Note that the information in this section is not applicable to solid state drives.
The hard-disk-drive is a major culprit that can be responsible for the slowness of your PC especially due to disk fragmentation.
When your hard-disk storage space gets to about 90 to 95 percent, there is every tendency that your PC will become slow.
This is due to virtual memory that acts as a temporary space for you hard-disk-drive that is allocated to the operating system as the extra memory or RAM for the CPU to use.
Even though virtual memory from your hard-disk-drive is slower than RAM, it is necessary when running applications that consume memory to run a routine general clean-up of your PC.
This includes cleaning out programs that are not in use, temporary Internet files, and temporary Windows files. This is the best and easiest way to free up memory space without having to back up to cloud storage or buying an extra hard-drive.
Disk fragmentation always occurs when you used your PC to install applications, surf the web and even save documents. The traditional hard-drive of a PC stores data on physical discs that spin and with time the data becomes scattered across the disk platters.
This will result in difficulty in reading the disk fast. When you defrag your HDD, the internal data on the disk platters will be reorganized and moved close together, this will increase read time.
Defragging can be done with applications like Auslogics Disk Defrag and Defraggler.
You can also use the windows disk defragmenter tool to defrag the HDD. All you need to do is to click on the start menu, type in defrag in the search bar and after that, you can analyze or defrag from the window that pops up.
6. Upgrade Hardware
Another way to increase the performance of your PC for gaming is to upgrade hardware. This is usually the last resort when you have tried other methods and the performance of your PC does not improve.
Most of the pieces of the hardware of your PC with the exception of the Motherboard and CPU can be swapped or upgraded to make it faster. You can upgrade hardware like the graphics card, RAM and hard-drive to improve the gaming performance of your PC.
Below are some hard drive upgrade options you can try:
1). Upgrade your Hard Drive to a Solid State Drive
Solid state drives are not as expensive as they used to be in time past, so more people have access to them. Games installed on solid-state drivers will boost up startup and load times.
The only downside of this is that if your primary drive or operating system is a traditional hard drive disk, you may encounter some problems with the operating system when after the upgrade.
2). Upgrade your Graphics Card or Add Multi-Graphics Card Setup
Another upgrade that will improve the gaming performance of your PC is upgrading of the graphics card. Upgrading the graphics card of your PC will boost the animation and rendering of graphics and it will also facilitate high-resolution graphics, smooth movements, and high frame-rate.
If the Motherboard of your PC had many PC express slots, you can add multiple graphics card to it with the aid of AMD Crossfire and Nvidia. Adding one or two or three extra graphics card will greatly boost the performance.
But for this to be possible, the cards must be identical. With time and constant use, the effectiveness of the cards can diminish. The older cards will function less efficiently than the newer graphics card.
3). Add or upgrade RAM
If there are available RAM slots on your PC, you can install new DIMMS which will get rid of stuttering while playing games and this will improve the gaming performance of your PC.
Stuttering happens when you RAM is a little below or meets the minimum recommended requirements for RAM especially since the necessary background processes and games will compete for the same resources.
To boost the performance of your PC for gaming, you can increase the speed of your RAM. You can do this by overclocking or by buying a new and faster RAM. It is, however, important to note that it is better to have a RAM that is slower than one that is very slow.
This means that if your game stutters with 4GB of a slow RAM on your PC, it will still stutter if you have 4GB of faster RAM.
To stop the stuttering of the RAM, you can upgrade to 8GB of slower RAM. This update will automatically improve the gaming performance of your PC.
Conclusion
One of the most annoying things when using your personal computer for gaming is poor graphics or stuttering visuals. And to prevent this there are various things you need to do to your computer to ensure you have the gaming experience the developer intended.
Furthermore, in modern time’s games has become very complex and takes a lot of computer resources. So what makes a computer able to handle certain games and other computers have issues running the same game?
Basically, it’s the user that determines what his/her computer can handle, and that’s you. You do not have to purchase a maxed-out computer to have the best gaming experience the virtual world expects you too.
All you need to do is improve your computer’s performance using the following steps listed above such as upgrading your graphics drivers, defragmenting your hard drive, upgrading your RAM and ensuring your laptop is completely dirt free.