How to Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming

If you’re a gamer, you know how important it is to have your system running at full capacity. Even a millisecond lag could mean ‘Game Over’. This article will tell you how to optimize Windows 10 for gaming.

A key factor that can slow down your gaming experience is using a sub-par recorder while playing. That’s why our special pick to optimize your PC for gaming on Windows 10 is Gecata by Movavi. This program can record gameplay in 4K and at up to 120 FPS with no performance loss. It’s easy to use and comes with a free trial version.

Running low on C drive space? This can not only make your gameplay sluggish, but also lead to other frustrating issues. To avoid them, make sure you have enough space on your C drive to keep your games running smoothly. However, to add space to your C drive, there has to be free space on your hard drive, known as unallocated space. Additionally, it has to be right next to C drive for Windows Disk Management to use it. If there’s another section between C drive and free space, you can’t expand the C drive directly into it.

That’s where a partition management tool like 4DDiG Partition Manager can help you. It will shuffle partitions around, creating contiguous space needed to expand your C drive without data loss. You also get the flexibility to resize, split, delete, or format your C drive and other partitions.

To expand your C drive using 4DDiG Partition Manager, follow the steps below:

1. First, download the tool and install it on your PC.

Download the tool

2. Next, open the program, choose Partition Management from the left window, and hit Extend/Shrink to allocate more space to C drive.

3. Drag the borders of your C drive in opposite directions to adjust its volume and press OK.

Every game has specific graphics settings that can help with optimizing your gaming experience. Here are three you should check in the game’s settings menu before playing.

1. Anti-aliasing: When a game uses aliasing, it fixes the small irregular and uneven lines around specific textures or objects. Think about the blurry lines you see when grass appears in most games. Every game has different levels of anti-aliasing – SSAA, TAA, MSAA, etc. – and you can usually tweak them in the game settings to allow for better performance.

2. Motion blur: To make things more realistic, games have movement blurs built in to emulate real life. Turning it off can often help you to save graphics power.

3. Vertical sync: Sometimes when you move quickly, the graphics card can’t keep up, and the screen seems to tear down the middle. Vertical Sync helps to solve this issue but adds some lag. One way to correct this is to use Adaptive VSync or Triple Buffering. You’ll use up more graphics card power, but you’ll find a healthy medium between the tears and the lag.

The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is crucial to your gaming experience and to your PC performance in games, but you need to keep your GPU drivers up to date to feel the benefit. What’s more, an outdated driver may result in bugs, glitches and system crashes, so we recommend you take this issue seriously and take care of your drivers.

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.

For example, depending on your GPU’s manufacturer, you can download either Radeon Software Adrenaline or GeForce Experience. Both programs check for auto-updates and suggest powerful optimization options. Additionally, GeForce Experience includes game capture and streaming software and provides special Game Ready drivers, designed by NVIDIA in collaboration with top game developing companies.

You can update your driver directly from the Windows properties, but the safest way to get the latest driver is to go directly to the manufacturer’s website, choose your GPU model, and check for updates.

If you don’t know your GPU specs, right-click on the Desktop, choose Display settings, then Advanced display settings and click Display adapter properties.

Here are some links to the most popular manufacturers’ driver updates:

• AMD drivers

• NVIDIA drivers

• Intel Graphics drivers

There are plenty of fancy visual effects in Windows 10 graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Nevertheless, those pretty background graphics, most of which are turned on by default, can affect the available processing power of your PC when a game is running in the foreground. So, one way to optimize Windows 10 for gaming performance is to sacrifice some, or even all, of those settings.

Once again, hit Windows key + I. Then, type “performance” and select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows. In the window that opens, choose Adjust for best performance. Then, go to the Advanced tab and verify that the setting is applied to Programs.

If you want to keep at least the minimum of graphics so that your interface doesn’t look so bleak, we recommend you keep at least these three options from the list checked:

• Show thumbnails instead of icons.

• Show window contents while dragging.

• Smooth edges of screen fonts.

Notifications in the middle of a game take up needed CPU power, and it can impair your field of vision while playing. Follow these steps to disable all notifications before playing:

1. Hit the Windows key or click the Windows icon on the bottom-left of your screen.

2. Type “Notifications” into the search bar and select Notifications and actions settings from the results.

3. When the new window opens, switch the toggle switch next to Get notifications from apps and other senders to Off. Your notifications are now off.

4. You can also scroll down and turn off notifications per application.

If you’re running an NVIDIA graphics card, there are settings specific to the card within the control panel. Here are some of the best Windows 10 settings for NVIDIA cards for gaming.

1. Ambient Occlusion: Turn it on a boost the level to 16x.

2. Anisotropic Filtering: Switch to Off.

3. DSR - Factors & Smoothing: Switch to Off.

4. Low Latency Mode: Turn on.

5. Power Management Mode: Change to Prefer Maximum Performance.

6. Threaded Optimization: Change to Auto.

AMD graphics cards also have a lot of settings. Some say they even rival competitor NVIDIA. Change these settings for Windows 10 gaming optimization.

1. Enable AMD’s Image Sharpening by clicking on Settings and then Graphics to find the setting. You can turn it on for individual games or globally.

2. Up your graphics performance by using overclocking. To do this, click the Performance tab, then Tuning, select Automatic, and finally GPU Overclocked.

3. If you’re running an AMD card, you don’t need MSI Afterburner for performance monitoring. Just hit Ctrl + Shift + O, and your stats will appear in-game.

This is easily in the category of “Quick Fix”. Sometimes your system just can’t handle a game, and there’s no time for more long-term solutions. Go into the game’s system settings and lower the resolution by one-tier. Then monitor your FPS until things smooth out.

This one has nothing to do with improving your PC’s performance in gaming, but is rather a tip for you to enhance your personal gaming performance. Mouse acceleration is a setting that makes your mouse move based not only on detection of physical movements but also on speed. This option actually makes your mouse movements less accurate, as it adds an extra parameter to the movement that you convey to the mouse. Given how crucial precision is for accurate aiming in first-person shooters, if you’re a fan of Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, or Overwatch type of games, you should definitely turn this off.

To do this, hit Windows key + I. Type “mouse pointer” in the search box. Choose Change the mouse pointer display or speed. In the window that opens, go to the Pointer Options tab and uncheck Enhance pointer precision.

Also, you may want to tweak the pointer speed slider to create a configuration that suits you best.

Upgrading your RAM won’t have as big of an effect as upgrading the processor or GPU. But it can give your hardware the added boost it needs to up your frame rate and improve your overall gaming experience.

Many games have the baseline RAM requirement of 8 GB, but that’s steadily increasing as newer titles have recommendations and requirements at 12 GB.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve, 16 GB will suffice for now. But if you want to run streaming services in the background like Twitch, Discord, and YouTube, you’ll need to update to 32 GB to handle running everything smoothly.

Basically, Nagle’s algorithm improves the efficiency of TCP/IP networks by creating bundles of data packets, thus reducing the number of packets that need to be sent over the network. That process affects your internet connection, making it less stable. Having this algorithm disabled on your PC may contribute to latency issues when playing games online.

Open your Windows Registry Editor by clicking Windows key + Q, typing “regedit” and clicking on the regedit file. Scroll down the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE menu to find the following path: “\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interface”. That’ll lead you to the menu that comprises folders with many numbers and letters. To access the correct file, match your IP address to the listed DhcpIPAddress in one of those folders.

To find your IP address, press Windows key + X and follow these steps: Control Panel – Network and Internet – Network and Sharing Center – Connections – Details – IPv4 Address.

Now you can track down the folder with the proper IP Address. Right-click on that folder and select New – DWORD (32-bit) Value. You’ll have to create two of those values: TcpAckFrequency and TCPNoDelay. Double-click on each of them and set both of their parameters to 1. The Nagle’s Algorithm is now disabled.

Overclocking your graphics cards means to push it beyond the specs displayed on the box. Many newer cards have an auto-function to do this in the control settings, but there are also ways to tinker with this manually. Just be sure to educate yourself about your graphics card as pushing the limit can cause it to overheat.

To overclock:

1. Review the standard or benchmark settings for your card.

2. Use a program like MSI Afterburner to increase the core clock on the card. Do this in 10MHz intervals and reset the benchmarks as you go.

3. Optionally, you can also increase the voltage and memory clock, but monitor the temperature of your card closely when doing this.

4. Play a game and check the performance.

This is one of the easy services to disable on Windows 10. These programs try to help you access data faster, but they ultimately add unnecessary operations that slow games down. Here’s how to disable them:

SysMain

• Press Win + R to open the Run prompt.

• Type msc and press Enter.

• Double-click on SysMain.

• Select Disabled from the drop-down list.

• Click OK.

Prefetch

• Press Win + R to open the Run prompt.

• Type “regedit >” and hit Enter.

• Click Yes.

• Go to PrefetchParameters in HKLM.

• Double-click the EnablePrefetcher REG_DWORD value.

• Set the Value as 0.

• Click OK.

Windows 10 has a lot of power-saving functions for laptops to help keep them alive for longer durations. This will affect the gaming experience dramatically as your RAM, graphics cards, and CPU won’t run at full capacity. To fix this, connect your laptop to its external power supply and be sure that your control settings allow full performance with it connected.

To change your power plan, click Windows key + I, type “power” in the search box, choose Power & sleep settings and then Additional power settings. If you don’t see a high-performance power plan on the left side of the screen, click Create a power plan and choose High performance.

Laptops are notorious for overheating as all the components are packed tightly within the chassis with little air circulation. When things overheat, the system slows down and so does gaming performance. Use these tips for prevention:

1. Always check and keep your fans cleaned.

2. For ventilation, try to elevate your laptop or use a desk designed for laptops.

3. Adjust your fan settings so they don’t overwork.

4. If you can, play on your laptop in a cool environment.

We covered this earlier for PCs, but your laptop may also have the capacity for GPU and RAM upgrades as well. Follow the same protocols, and if you’re inexperienced working with laptops, it’s best to let an experienced technician do the installation.

Laptops often come with a lot of background services running to prevent overheating and to optimize performance with smaller components. These services will easily hinder gaming performance if not shut down. Here are the steps:

1. Press the Windows + R and use the Run prompt.

2. Type “msconfig” in and click OK.

3. Choose the Services tab.

4. Check the Hide all Microsoft services box.

5. Select Disable all; then click the Apply and OK.

6. Select Restart on the dialog box that opens.

We hope this article has given you some ideas on how to make games run faster on Windows 10 and improve your gaming experience. Here are some of the key tips to use when optimizing your system:

• Change your game settings: You can possibly alter things like resolution, motion blur, and anti-aliasing.

• Upgrade your hardware: If your RAM, GPU, or CPU aren’t up to speed, it might be time to upgrade things for modern games and a better gaming experience.

• Tweak your graphics card settings: Modern graphics cards have their own settings you can adjust to optimize your system for gaming. Check your settings for Ambient Occlusion, Anisotropic Filtering, and DSR.