I’ve been a PC gamer most of my life, starting before Intel, AMD, and Nvidia were the dominant forces in PC components. Whether I’ve built a gaming PC, picked up a prebuilt, or decided to chill out on the couch with a PC gaming handheld, picking the right components for your PC is only part of the equation. You still need an operating system to run your games on, and for most, that’s Windows. Out-of-the-box, Windows is a lot better than it used to be for gaming, but it’s still set up for general use, so there are a number of tweaks you can make for better performance. Whether it’s limiting background tasks or making sure your drivers are on the latest version, all of these tweaks together will enhance your PC gaming experience.
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5 Close background programs
If you don’t need it, it’s using up valuable resources
While you’re gaming, you want your PC to be allocating as many resources as it can to your game and to nothing else. The problem is that once you’ve started installing your peripherals, games, and other programs, Windows now has a ton of things running in the background. That’s going to chew up system resources, especially if your PC has fewer CPU cores. The fix is fairly simple, though, and that’s to turn off or even uninstall extra programs so they can’t run in the background.
These programs could control the lighting in your PC, like Corsair’s iCUE or NZXT CAM or even Asus’ Armoury Crate. If you bought a prebuilt PC or a laptop, there could be all manner of preinstalled bloat that you might not have realized is there. Unless you know your PC can run fine without them, it’s probably best to turn them off while gaming or make it so they can’t autorun at startup. Open up Task Manager, go to the Startup tab, and set any apps you don’t want running when you first turn on your computer to Disable. That way, they won’t be there using up your system resources when you decide to play a game.
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4 Enable Game Mode
It automatically shuts down Windows background tasks for more FPS
Windows 10 and 11 have an inbuilt feature called Game Mode that deactivates some Windows tasks while gaming, like notifications or Windows Update. When enabled, your PC will know when you open a game and allocate resources appropriately. It should be enabled by default on newer builds of the operating system, but it wasn’t always like that, so I’ve gotten into the habit of checking whenever I install a new system. To do so only takes a few clicks:
- Open the Settings app.
- Navigate to Gaming and then Game Mode.
- Ensure Game Mode is set to On.
Now, Windows will stop some things like Windows Update from running while you’re in a game and deprioritize other background tasks. That could be useful for a few more FPS while gaming, but there’s one situation you might not want it enabled. That’s if you’re livestreaming or recording your gameplay, because the background deprioritization can affect the software doing the recording. In that case, you’ll want Game Mode turned off.
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3 Disable mouse acceleration
You won’t get pinpoint accuracy in games without this
By default, Windows sets up your mouse for smooth movement and efficient moving of the cursor around the desktop. That means mouse acceleration is usually on by default, as it moves the cursor further if you move your hand faster. This can be useful in games as well if you want to turn really fast, but most of the time it hurts your accuracy as you have to adjust for it. It’s much easier to turn it off so that your crosshair moves solely based on how far you move your mouse.
To turn it off, open up the Settings app, and navigate to Bluetooth & devices, then Mouse. Click on Additional mouse settings, then on Pointer Options from the popup. Make sure the checkbox next to Enhance pointer precision is empty, and click on Ok. This will turn off mouse acceleration, and while you’re here, your mouse cursor is most accurate when the slider between Slow and Fast is in the middle position.
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2 Adjust power settings
You want the most performance available
Windows has a ton of features hidden in registry keys and old dialogs, ready to be re-enabled with a little bit of work. One of these is the Ultimate Performance power plan, which maximizes your PC’s performance by limiting how much it can throttle down. This hidden setting adds more options over the High Performance plan and can improve performance on some hardware configurations. Basically, it stops your CPU from clocking down, your hard drives from sleeping, and a few other things.
Users of newer hardware, such as AMD’s Ryzen 5000 or 7000 series CPUs or Intel’s last few generations, should stick with the Windows Balanced Power Profile, as it contains the optimized settings for these processors.
It’s usually hidden on most Windows installations, but you can get it to show in the Power Plan menu by pasting the code below into an Admin Terminal:
powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
Then, you can access the power menu by opening the Start menu, searching for Power Plan, and selecting Select a Power Plan. When the window opens, you’ll see Ultimate Performance as one of the options in the list, and you can select it and close the window. Depending on your hardware, it might not make that much of a difference, and you’ll want to make sure you have adequate cooling on your CPU.
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1 Keep your GPU drivers up to date
They bring optimizations for new games and old
The most important component in your PC for gaming is the graphics card, which not only displays your games but does all the calculations to make them work at their best. It’s crucial that the graphics driver is kept up to date for peak performance, and also to ensure bug fixes and optimizations for the latest titles are available. Whether you’ve got an integrated or dedicated graphics card, updating the drivers is one of the best things you can do to ensure performance. Click on the link below for your GPU manufacturer to download the latest driver package:
Also, it’s worth using Nvidia’s GeForce Experience or AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition (depending on your GPU maker) to receive push notifications for new driver updates so you know exactly when a new update is ready for installation. I prefer to keep automatic updates turned off, as that gives me a chance to check forums or Reddit for any issues before deciding to update.
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PC gaming is good fun; don’t let Windows stand in your way
With a few minor tweaks, Windows won’t get in the way of your gaming experience. These tips will work on any hardware, and on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, so all you have to worry about is which game to play. With so many games available on the PC, that’s a hard decision, so we wish you luck!
#tweaks #Windows #gaming
source: https://www.xda-developers.com/5-tweaks-i-always-make-to-windows-for-pc-gaming/
