Nothing beats the feeling of booting up anew gaming PC, but you should also make sure that you’re making the most of the power on hand. On its default setting, your gaming machine may not be giving you as much performance as you’d expect, but fear not, a few easy tweaks can bring out its best. Aside from installing thelatest graphics drivers, there are some surprisingly easy things you can do to improve your frames per second (FPS) in-game and overall performance.
Gaming PCs are an investment, and you want to verify you get your money’s worth and more. Below, I outline some simple tips and settings you’re able to toggle around with onWindows 10 or 11to maximize the potential of your hardware.
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1Turn on Game Mode
Easiest thing you can do
Windows' Game Mode is one of the easiest things you can do to improve settings. Telling Windows that you’re a gamer and getting the operating system to optimize performance for you in one. For this setting, you’ll need the latest version ofWindows 11(orWindows 10), but beyond that, it’s dead simple to turn on Game Mode. To turn on Game Mode, follow these steps:
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2Turn on Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling
Boost performance
With the right equipment (i.e. a new GPU and Windows 10 or 11) you can enable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling to reduce latency and improve performance. This is supported byboth AMD and Nvidia GPUsand gives you another way to boost performance.
There are two parts to this setting adjustment, but they’re easy to do. In this instance, I’m using Nvidia graphics, but similar steps are available for AMD:
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3Change your power settings
May hold back from maximum FPS
Windows naturally tries to minimize your power use, whether you’re gaming on a desktop or apowerful gaming laptop. This is useful if you want to keep your energy bills down, but it may be holding you back from maximum FPS and full enjoyment of your gaming machine. It’s easy enough to adjust though:
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4Turn on G-Sync
Will improve overall experience
If you have aG-Sync-compatible gaming monitorthen it’s worth checking that G-Sync is set up correctly. Though this isn’t necessarily going to give you a performance boost, it will improve your overall experience by giving you smoother and more eye-pleasing visuals.
To do this, right-click on the desktop, open the Nvidia Control Panel and find “Setup G-Sync” on the left-hand side menu. From there, you’re able to choose to enable G-Sync if it isn’t already enabled.
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5Ensure you’re running the right refresh rate
Another setting you’ll need to change
If you’re trying to maximize your FPS, then chances are you have a goodgaming monitorwith a fast refresh rate. But simply plugging one of these monitors in isn’t enough on its own to give you the best performance. Windows doesn’t always default to using the maximum refresh rate. So this is another setting you’ll need to manually change.
There are two ways to do this, the first is through Windows display settings:
Alternatively, use Nvidia’s Control Panel:
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6Turn on Ultra-Low Latency Mode
Accessible from the Nvidia Control Panel
To get the best performance, the games you’re playing ideally need to supportNvidia Reflex, but it’s also possible to give your system a boost and reduce latency with Nvidia’s Ultra-Low Latency Mode. This setting is accessible from the Nvidia Control Panel:
While you’re here, it also pays to tell the control panel to prefer maximum performance too. Scroll down a bit further, find “power management mode” and select “prefer maximum performance” from the drop-down.
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7Optimize games with GeForce Experience
A simple click
If you’re running an Nvidia graphics card, then it’s well worthdownloading GeForce Experienceif you don’t have it installed already. This tool not only gives you access to easy driver downloads and the ability to capture game footage withNvidia ShadowplayandAnsel, but it also lets you optimize performance in various ways.
Open GeForce experience, and you have the opportunity to scan your system for games, then simply click to optimize all games. You can also access these settings by clicking the cog, and then clicking to automatically optimize newly added games.
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8Experimental Features and tuning
Automatically overclock your graphics card
Within Nvidia GeForce Experience, click on the settings cog and click on the general settings. There you’ll see an option to “Enable experimental features.” Tick that, and you can then access various settings by pressing ALT+Z.
With the overlay option, you’ll find a button on the right marked “performance,” click that, and you’ll then have access to a sidebar with various performance monitoring settings. About halfway down there you’ll also find a setting marked “enable automatic tuning.” Ticking this allows Nvidia GeForce Experience to automatically overclock your graphics card to get even more performance out of it with just a couple of clicks. Click to activate it, accept the warning and then wait for the scan results.
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Another option here is to have a performance overlay with basic, advanced or latency displayed on your screen. This will allow you to see the fruits of your efforts in ticking all the different buttons to adjust the settings. The latency part of this performance monitoring is more useful whenusing Nvidia Reflex, but the basic and advanced ones will help keep an eye on your system while you game to ensure you’re getting the FPS you should be.
9Activate DLSS and Nvidia Reflex
Couple of extra settings
There are a couple of extra settings that you can activate in particular games. These includeNvidia Reflexwhich is designed to minimize latency, andDLSSwhich uses AI to improve FPS in clever ways. Unfortunately, not all games support these settings at the moment, but the number is increasing rapidly.
Deep Learning Super Sampling (aka DLSS)is the most useful of these two settings when it comes to improving your FPS. This takes the pressure off your graphics card by using AI to help upscale the image - meaning the graphics card can render a low-quality image initially.
This is akin to running your game at 1080p instead of 4K, even when you have a 4K screen, but then using DLSS to upscale the image to 4K, so you still see a 4K image but with the frames per second you’d get with 1080p. Or at least near to it anyway.
If the game supports it, the DLSS settings usually include performance, balanced and quality modes. Quality gives the best-looking image, while performance gives maximum FPS but might not be as good-looking. Nvidia has improved DLSS recently and is constantly working to make it even better and help developers roll it out to more games too.
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10Activate AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution
Don’t want to use a Nvidia card? No problem
If you don’t own an Nvidia graphics card, but instead use AMD, then that’s no problem. AMD has a system calledAMD FidelityFX Super Resolution. This is similar to Nvidia’s deep learning super sampling (DLSS) and is supported by a number of games.
You can see thelist of supported games hereand that list is always increasing.
