How to Fix Low Game FPS in Windows
Text Source: makeuseof.com #WINDOWS #FPS #GAME #LOW #FIX #HOW How to Fix Low Game FPS in Windows Part of the beauty of PC gaming is enjoying the best graphics the industry has to offer. But when you’re suffering from a low frame rate, it’s hard to enjoy a game at all. Whether your latest purchase isn’t running smoothly on your PC, or you suddenly find games struggling to perform, we’re here to help. Here’s how to fix low FPS issues in Windows and get back to high-quality gaming. First, let’s look at a few fundamental fixes you should perform. In many cases, when you wonder why your FPS is so low, these tweaks will make a big improvement. Drivers are special pieces of software that handle the interface between your software and hardware. Normal PC users don’t often need to worry about updating them but running out-of-date drivers can hamper gaming performance. Your drivers might be outdated and need updating, but how are you to know? Here's what you need to know and how to go about it. to make sure everything on your system is current. In particular, you should make sure the chipset and graphics drivers are up to date. To update your GPU driver, visit Nvidia’s driver page or AMD’s driver page, depending on what graphics card you have. If you play on integrated graphics, run Intel’s driver update tool (though remember that integrated graphics will severely limited gaming performance). Instead of downloading manually, Nvidia and Intel both offer software utilities that make downloading the latest drivers easy. You can download these on the driver pages above, which we recommend doing. In addition to letting you know when a new update is available, they give you access to more tweaks and features. When you’re playing a game, especially demanding modern titles, it’s a good idea to close other processes that you don’t need. This frees up resources that your computer can dedicate to the game. You can do this quickly by closing anything that’s open on your Taskbar. It’s worth checking the System Tray at the right side of the Taskbar for background processes, too. To dive a little deeper and see what’s using up resources, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager. Click More details if needed to expand it, then you can see what’s using resources on the Processes tab. Anything using a significant amount of the CPU, memory, or your GPU will likely harm game performance. Close those before you start your game. Most gamers have likely upgraded to a solid-state drive (SSD) by now. But in case you’re still using an HDD, you should make sure the disk is defragmented. If you use an SSD, you should not defragment, as doing so can shorten the life of your drive. To do this, type defrag into the Start Menu and click the Defragment and Optimize Drives entry. If it’s been a while since the drive was last defragged, you should do so. Windows 10 does this automatically, so you shouldn’t need to defrag manually. You can adjust the schedule if you like, though. Now that you’ve performed the basics, let’s take a look at some Windows settings you can adjust to enhance gaming performance Are you gaming on Windows 10? Use these tips to optimize Windows 10 for gaming and set it up for best performance. The power options in Windows let you change settings related to energy consumption with your machine. On the default plan, Windows tries to balance power consumption with performance. Sometimes, especially on laptops, this can lead to decreased performance in games. It’s a good idea to switch to the High performance plan. To do this, visit Settings → System → Power and click Additional power settings on the right side. This will lead you to the Power Options section of the Control Panel. Choose Show additional plans if necessary, then select the High performance option. Note that this will increase the power consumption of your computer. On a desktop, this isn’t really a problem besides perhaps a slightly higher energy bill. But laptops will see worse battery life. By default, Windows uses a lot of fancy visual effects around the OS. These make menus and other common elements look smother but use up a small bit of the resources. Since every little bit of performance helps, you can disable these effects. You likely won’t see much benefit from this unless you’re on a low-end PC, but it’s still worth a try. To disable visual effects in Windows, type performance into the Start menu and select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows. On the resulting menu’s Visual Effects tab, you’ll see a list of graphical features you can enable or disable. Click the Adjust for best performance button to disable all these effects, followed by OK. It will take a moment as Windows disables them. When it’s done, the interface won’t look as slick, but you won’t notice that when you’re playing a game anyway. Windows 10 includes a Game bar feature that allows you to record game clips, take screenshots, and even stream you
Text Source: makeuseof.com #WINDOWS #FPS #GAME #LOW #FIX #HOW How to Fix Low Game FPS in Windows Part of the beauty of PC gaming is enjoying the best graphics the industry has to offer. But when you’re suffering from a low frame rate, it’s hard to enjoy a game at all. Whether your latest purchase isn’t running smoothly on your PC, or you suddenly find games struggling to perform, we’re here to help. Here’s how to fix low FPS issues in Windows and get back to high-quality gaming. First, let’s look at a few fundamental fixes you should perform. In many cases, when you wonder why your FPS is so low, these tweaks will make a big improvement. Drivers are special pieces of software that handle the interface between your software and hardware. Normal PC users don’t often need to worry about updating them but running out-of-date drivers can hamper gaming performance. Your drivers might be outdated and need updating, but how are you to know? Here's what you need to know and how to go about it. to make sure everything on your system is current. In particular, you should make sure the chipset and graphics drivers are up to date. To update your GPU driver, visit Nvidia’s driver page or AMD’s driver page, depending on what graphics card you have. If you play on integrated graphics, run Intel’s driver update tool (though remember that integrated graphics will severely limited gaming performance). Instead of downloading manually, Nvidia and Intel both offer software utilities that make downloading the latest drivers easy. You can download these on the driver pages above, which we recommend doing. In addition to letting you know when a new update is available, they give you access to more tweaks and features. When you’re playing a game, especially demanding modern titles, it’s a good idea to close other processes that you don’t need. This frees up resources that your computer can dedicate to the game. You can do this quickly by closing anything that’s open on your Taskbar. It’s worth checking the System Tray at the right side of the Taskbar for background processes, too. To dive a little deeper and see what’s using up resources, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager. Click More details if needed to expand it, then you can see what’s using resources on the Processes tab. Anything using a significant amount of the CPU, memory, or your GPU will likely harm game performance. Close those before you start your game. Most gamers have likely upgraded to a solid-state drive (SSD) by now. But in case you’re still using an HDD, you should make sure the disk is defragmented. If you use an SSD, you should not defragment, as doing so can shorten the life of your drive. To do this, type defrag into the Start Menu and click the Defragment and Optimize Drives entry. If it’s been a while since the drive was last defragged, you should do so. Windows 10 does this automatically, so you shouldn’t need to defrag manually. You can adjust the schedule if you like, though. Now that you’ve performed the basics, let’s take a look at some Windows settings you can adjust to enhance gaming performance Are you gaming on Windows 10? Use these tips to optimize Windows 10 for gaming and set it up for best performance. The power options in Windows let you change settings related to energy consumption with your machine. On the default plan, Windows tries to balance power consumption with performance. Sometimes, especially on laptops, this can lead to decreased performance in games. It’s a good idea to switch to the High performance plan. To do this, visit Settings → System → Power and click Additional power settings on the right side. This will lead you to the Power Options section of the Control Panel. Choose Show additional plans if necessary, then select the High performance option. Note that this will increase the power consumption of your computer. On a desktop, this isn’t really a problem besides perhaps a slightly higher energy bill. But laptops will see worse battery life. By default, Windows uses a lot of fancy visual effects around the OS. These make menus and other common elements look smother but use up a small bit of the resources. Since every little bit of performance helps, you can disable these effects. You likely won’t see much benefit from this unless you’re on a low-end PC, but it’s still worth a try. To disable visual effects in Windows, type performance into the Start menu and select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows. On the resulting menu’s Visual Effects tab, you’ll see a list of graphical features you can enable or disable. Click the Adjust for best performance button to disable all these effects, followed by OK. It will take a moment as Windows disables them. When it’s done, the interface won’t look as slick, but you won’t notice that when you’re playing a game anyway. Windows 10 includes a Game bar feature that allows you to record game clips, take screenshots, and even stream you