Amongst all operating systems, Windows 10 ranks at the top for a gamer since it is a favorite of most of them. When Microsoft came up with Windows 10, they optimized the operating system and made it like a match made in heaven to adapt to the games played by gamers. But why is Windows 10 the best when it comes to gaming?
Windows 10 offers better game performance and faster frame rates. It serves as a base for the best graphic drivers on the market, which is crucial when it comes to gaming. It supports all kinds of games, not just the new and advanced ones, but the good oldies and retro ones support Xbox streaming with the Game DVR feature. Its best feature is the game mode, a unique optimization that speeds up the pace of your PC.
Sure, it comes with the best of features, but you can maximize the gaming experience by learning a few tricks to optimize your PC for gaming. This way, your game can run faster, and the experience would get better! Below are 8 ways by which you can boost your PC and optimize your gaming experience.
1. Keeping your Drivers Updated
There are drivers in your PC that help its functions run smoothly and at its best. GPU or the Graphics Processing Unit is one such driver. It is essential for a user to have a brilliant gaming experience that they have their GPU updated to their latest version available in the market. It gives you the best of what the gaming has to offer, and having an outdated driver can cause various issues that can affect this experience.
Some of these issues include resulting in bugs, glitches, and system crashes in the middle of operations being run on the PC. Your saved progress on a game, too, can be lost if a driver produces a glitch in the midst of a game. Although Windows 10 doesn’t update your GPU drivers automatically, manufacturers often create special software in the form of GPU control panels that make regular checks for updates and notify you if a new update is available. Don’t ignore these notifications, as the updating process takes little time and can save you plenty of trouble during gaming. The safest way to get a driver is by visiting the manufacturer’s website, choose your GPU model, and check for updates.
2. Disable Some Mouse Settings
Some PC users prefer to have a mouse pointer that is fast and clicks faster. Changing the settings may not optimize your PC but can certainly enhance your gaming performance. Mouse acceleration is a setting that makes your mouse move based not only on the detection of physical movements but also on speed. Change these settings makes the movements less accurate.
3. Using Game mode
Windows 10 has a game mode that can be optimized for gaming using a tool that’s built into the system. Game Mode appeared in the most recent releases of the OS and is designed to improve the gaming experience by dedicating more system resources to games. It also prevents other programs, such as Windows Update, from hogging system resources while you’re playing.
4. Managing your Active Hours
Windows 10 has a bad habit of rebooting and installing updates in the middle of any ongoing operation without so much as an intimation. It can be quite upsetting to see all your work go into waste, especially if you’re a competitive gamer, and your unplanned exit may affect your teammates or ranking.
The downloading of updates on the background limits your connection speeds and takes up working memory on your PC. Windows’ aggressive updating without asking permission is the way it is because, in earlier versions, users wouldn’t update their own volition. So their systems were regularly exposed to cyber threats.
Another thing you can do is set your active hours. Here, you can mention your gaming and working schedule in Windows and prevent the OS from downloading updates during those times. Windows will then use your non-active hours to update and restart your system.
5. Install Direct X12
For serious gamers, Direct X12 is a must-have on the Windows 10. What is it, you ask? DirectX is the application the game uses to communicate with your computer and tell it what to do. DirectX 12 is a great improvement over its predecessor, DirectX 11, introducing the ability of graphics cards to draw resources from more than one core of a PC’s CPU, increasing frame rates, enhancing graphical effects, and lowering power consumption. Tests have shown an 85-300% difference in gaming performance between version 11 and version 12.
6. Manage Steam Auto-Updates
This issue is similar to its bad habits of updating and installing the recent updates. Updating in the background eats up your PC’s memory and can slow down gaming processes. These updates, not just the ones that you are currently playing but also those that you have never played.
7. Shift to an SSD
Most games load their games on an HDD as a backup to continue in the future. However, choosing an SDD over an HDD is a far better solution. It does not help improve gaming performance, but it can help you reduce loading times significantly. SDDs can indeed be quite expensive, and it may seem that loading times is not such an important issue to invest your money in. But while it is probably not the first thing to think about when speeding up your laptop, it is not the last either. Most games today take more disk space, so those wanting to explore the latest games can make this switch at the earliest.
8. Change your Visual Effect Settings
Windows 10 has plenty of facial visual effects in its graphical user interfaces or GUI. Those background graphics, most of which are turned on by default, can affect the optimization powers of your PC. So, one way to optimize Windows 10 for gaming performance is to sacrifice some, or even all, of those settings.
Conclusion
Now that you have all the tricks in your kitty, it is time to use them and begin a whole new level of gaming experience. These are small but efficient tricks that can help you not only maximize how you play your game but also help you run your PC smoothly. Go on and begin playing!
