While PC gaming depends majorly on how well you play, your skills can be hindered if you don't have a good PC. Enhance your experience even more by checking out these tips, tricks and upgrade options. Here are 10 simple ways to optimize your gaming performance.
‘Patch’work
With graphics in video games improving by the day, major game publishers are working with either Nvidia or AMD to offer specialized graphic patches to users. These specialised driver patches offer better graphics while also boosting game performance. So, keep your respective game drivers up to date. For example, the Witcher 3 GeForce Game Ready Driver from Nvidia.
Taming of the GPU
GPU overclocking was once considered a risky affair, but gone are the days when slightly overclock a GPU required you to go into the BIOS and cross your fingers hoping to get it right. Today, most modern GPU’s can be tweaked easily and come with headroom to allow overclocking. Currently, the most popular GPU overclocking software is MSI Afterburner, since it works with most graphic cards, even from different manufacturers. You can also try similar software from Asus, Gigabyte or Sapphire.
Memory game (cheapest and easiest for PCs, even laptops)..
If you are running 4GB or less RAM on your PC or laptop, upgrade now. Currently, RAM prices are the lowest they have been in recent years. This means it’s the right time to upgrade to a 8GB or a 16GB RAM. Do check your motherboard compatibility before buying.
Solid not hard..
If you’re a gamer, SSDs are your best friends. While these drives won’t increase framerates etc, but they’ll largely reduce game load times. Solid State Drives will take about a third of the loading time taken by regular HDDs.
If you can’t take the heat..
If you’re reading this, you were probably waiting for us to mention cooling. Heating is inevitable, but it’s not like you can’t do anything about it. If you’re gaming on a PC, invest in cabinet fans and aftermarket coolers for processors to get the best out of your processors.
If you’re a laptop gamer, invest in laptop coolers for the same. Also, keep cleaning your system from time to time as dust hinders performance.
Keep it lean, keep it mean..
Ensure you Windows/OS installation is lean and stripped off any unnecessary extras that might be hogging space and adding overhead to registry, cache, etc. Repeat after us, ‘No Bloat!’
Find hacks, don’t be one..
In the large catalogue of PC games, you’ll often come across those that don’t allow you to tweak the settings. But where there is will, there is a way. Most often, you’ll find hacks and tweaks available online that will allow you to change the mouse, keyboard, gamepad settings and more. Never, ever, forget to keep a backup though. Tweaking your OS for gaming is also a good option to improve performance. Head over to our forums to get answers for specific questions related to gaming performance: http://www.digit.in/forum/gamerz/
Tuned to perfection..
Dive deep into GPU driver tools to tweak specific settings. Nvidia’s GeForce Experience and AMD’s Gaming Evolved applications allow you to fine tune settings, allowing you to troubleshoot and improve performance related to AA modes, filtering, textures, etc. These can go a long way in improving image quality or squeezing out more frames without any substantial hit to the overall experience.
Tools of the trade..
Gaming mouse, keyboards and mouse mats may cost more than regular PC peripherals, but once you start using them, you will know the difference. It may not make you a better gamer overnight, but hey, practice makes perfect, and good hardware helps. If that’s not enough, when it comes to showing off in front of friends, there’s nothing better than gaming hardware.
Multiplayer gaming and QoS..
Wired connections are always better for gaming, because you don’t have to worry about someone else hogging your bandwidth while you’re on a gaming marathon. If you’re using a router though, configuring the QoS settings is a good idea. This ensures that even if someone else connects to the router when you’re gaming, they don’t eat up all the bandwidth.
Sometimes you can reduce ping to a remote gaming server by using a VPN which might route your packets via a shorter path to the server. Try out multiple services to figure out which one's the best for a certain game.