Learn all the ways on how to optimize windows 10 for gaming to boost up your game-play and performance like never before.
Windows 10 is one of the most favourite platform for the professional PC gamers. It offers an extensive and flexible options and gadgets support to take the gaming to the next level. Every gamer plays on a different windows version as per their choice but now almost everyone is switching to the Windows 10 for gaming as it gives many optimization options for gaming.
Microsoft suspends the support for Windows 7 and now after it’s support suspension, Windows 10’s got huge popularity for it’s new powerful and extensive features. It’s amazingly beautiful and attractive graphics, and it’s powerful gaming features attracted the gamers to turn out to this Windows 10 platform.
As most of the gamers are switching to the Windoes, you need to make sure to have an optimized PC for gaming performance. How to improve one’s performance? In this article we’ls hare all the working methods to optimize Windows 10 for gaming. In order to get most out of your Windows 10, optimize your PC by following the some of the working methods to maximize gaming performance.
How to Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming to Maximize Performance
All of the best methods that you can perform to enhance your Windows 10 gaming device. Follow the listed recommended steps to take your gameplay to the next level like never before.
- Optimize Windows 10 With Game Mode
- Disable Windows Auto-Updates
- Disable Steam Auto-Updates
- Keep Your GPU Drivers Up to Date
- User Maximum High Performance Power Plan
- Disable Nagle’s Algorithm
- Install DirectX 12
- Tweaking Windows 10 Visual Effects
With these simple 7 steps you can really boost up your gameplay to an ultimate level. Jump into the depth of each step of how to optimized windows 10 to speed up the game. Make sure you follow all the steps with focus properly.
1. Optimize Windows 10 With Game Mode
One of the good thing in Windows 10 is that it offers a dedicated feature for gamers to switch to Game Mode while playing. Once it’s activated, it’ll boost up the games automatcically by offering the best gaming experience without facing an issue.
To enable the Game Mode, you just need to navigate to Start Menu >> Settings. As you’re in the settings Window, search for the Game Mode from the search box given on the upper right corner. Select and click on the Control Game Mode for Optimizations. Click on the Game Mode and get all the automatic gaming optimized experience for awesome feature.
Unfotunately, this Game Mode feature doesn’t come up with all the Windows 10 versions. You have to check it in the Settings for Game Mode either your version supported for Game Mode or not. Switching on the Game Mode stops the Windows updates to gain the FPS (Frame Per Second) for enhanced gaming experience.
2. Disable Windows Auto Updates
One of the most hectic thing is Windows updates while playing the game and windows starts to install the updates and end up booting the machine without any prior alert. It can be really problematic as it can hurt the gamer rankings badly or can make your team lose in the game.
Windows updates also slows down the internet speed as it keeps on downloading the updates in the background and consumes so much data. Auto downloading downgrades the game performance as it slows down the internet connection which results int he game lag.
So, to overcome this problem, just turn off the Automatic Windows Updates or you can schedule to a specific date and time to keep your device up to date without getting affected while playing the game. We would highly recommend to set up an update time instead of turning off completely, so system can update for the new patches and other security updates.
Set up the active hours when Windows shouldn’t update the machine. You can select maximum of 18 active hours and the remaining 6 hours will be allocated to the Windows Updates and installation. To set up active hours, go to Start Menu > Settings > Update & Security and click Change Active Hours and choose the hours when you don’t want the Windows to start the updates as per your feasibility.
Additionally, make sure to turn off automatic reboot. To do so, navigate to Windows Update > Advanced Options and turn on the ‘We’ll show a reminder when we’re going to restart‘. It will pop up an alert box before rebooting the machine, which can even be delayed to the next time.
3. Disable Steam Auto Updates
Steam update is not any different than the Windows updates but it only updates the games. Steam keeps on updating the games automatically including all the games you haven’t played for long ago. These steam background updates drain up the computer memory and slows down the gaming performance.
To disable Steam automatic updates open up the Steam client and go to Steam > Settings > Downloads and un-tick the Allow downloads during the gameplay option.
Sometimes, bugs may occur for some games after an update, if you face a similar issue, you can roll back the game to the older version from the Steam settings. To roll back an affected game, select Properties and go to Betas tab. Choose the working version of the game from the drop down menu.
Update the games manually to make sure everything is going accordingly and you can easily find out if the problem caused by an update.
Also, disable Steam for the games which you haven’t used. You can right click on every game one by one and select Properties. Go to updates tab and from the drop down menu, choose Only update game when I launch it.
4. Keep Your GPU Drivers Up to Date
GPU or Graphical Processing Unit is one of the most important part when it comes to better gaming performance. Every gaming PC comes up with a GPU installed in it. It’s really important to keep the GPU drives up to date for it’s enhanced performance settings. With every new update, performance gets better and also fixes up the bugs and glitches.
In Windows 10, for most of the gaming devices, drivers are updated automatically but it’s not the same case when it comes to the GPU as every graphic card manufacturer develop their own device software with specific configuration options and to adjust the settings accordingly. Keep an eye over the GPU update whenever a new version rolls out for the sake of an optimized gameplay experience. and doesn’t require to install or update the drivers manually.
Some of the GPU like NVIDIA GeForce comes up with Game Capture and Streaming softwares for online game streaming as it offers the ready to play game softwares and drivers. These drivers can also be updated from the Windows properties or you can update the official website. To know your GPU model and it’s specs, Right Click on the desktop and select Display Settings. Click on Advanced Display Settings and click Display Adapter Properties.
Following are the top GPU manufacturers that offer the high performance dedicated gaming GPUs.
- NVIDIA GeForce
- AMD Raedon
- Intel Graphics
5. Switch to Maximum High Performance Power Plan
Another way to improve the Windows 10 gaming performance is by switching power plan to maximum high performance. High performance power plan is designed to control and manage all the power configurations. You can get much more high performance on a desktop PC gaming setup than you can get on a gaming laptop, as on the laptops battery might drain up too fast if you go with maximum high performance. High performance power plan can be configured to any required scale even up to the maximum high performance scale. This will consume more energy while offers the best performance you can experience with it.
In order to create a custom power plan, simply go to Windows > Settings and select Power & Sleep Settings. You can search in the upper right search bar for power and select the Power & Sleep Settings. Move to the Addditional Power Settings and click on Create a power plan to set up for maximum High Performance option. Name anything to your plan and that’s all.
6. Disable Nagle’s Algorithm
Nagle’s algorithm is another tweak to optimize windows 10 for gaming which improves the efficiency of data transmission over the network that reduces the number of data packets which ultimately speeds up the internet connection and gives smoother gameplay.
With the speedy internet, it may has some consequences like the latency issues for gaming online. To get over this issue, you need to disable Nagle’s algorithm for better performance.
In order to turn off the Nagle’s algorithm, follow the below given steps. It might look a bit complex, but with proper focus it’s really simple.
- To disable, go to Start Menu and type regedit in the search box. Open up the Regedit. Rededit is the Windows Feature Registry that contains all the Windows features.
- To speed up this step, just copy the following file path in the address bar to jump directly to Nagle’s folder.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces
- You will see the tree of folders on the left pane of the Window with different names including numbers. To find out the our specific file which we needed, make sure to match IP address with the DhcpIPAddress in the one these listed files. To check your IP address, just go to Start and type cmd, now in the Command Prompt window, type ipconfig and hit enter. It will display your network information including the IP address. IP address will be as IPv4. Note that IP and match it with the listed files in Windows Registry.
- Once you have found the required specific file that contains the your IP address, right click on that folder and click New and select DWORD (32 bit) Value.
- Make two DWORD values, one named as TcpAckFrequency and the other one as TCPNoDelay.
- After creating the values, double click on each of these and set the parameter values to 1.
All done. You have successfully disabled the Nagle’s algorithm. If you wanted to roll back the changes, you can simply change back the values to 0 for both of these.
7. Install DirectX 12
DirectX is a compulsory driver to run the games and achieve optimum performance. It’s required driver for the Windows operating system to play the games that communicates with the machine and tells how to work with the specific games. DirectX 12 is an updated version of it with all the improvements and upgrades. DirectX balances the GPU with multiple GPU cores and increases the frame rate which offers best graphic performance as well.
DirectX 12 have been tested for the improvements of up to 300% than it’s predecessors in gaming performance. To avail this high gaming performance through DirectX 12, game needs to be developed using this new DirectX version too. Now a days almost every new game is compatible with it.
To make sure you’re running a latest updated version of DirectX, press the Windows Key + R and type dxdiag and hit OK. It’ll open up the DirectX Diagnostic tool. You will be able to see the current version of DirectX on your computer. If it’s not the latest DirectX 12, update it instantly to get benefit and improved gaming experience.
8. Tweaking Windows 10 Visual Effects
Windows visual effects may affect gaming performance. Windows 10 offers high quality display which makes it amazingly attractive and user friendly. When it comes to gaming, GUI (Graphical User Interface) can suck the power and can make the system slower with a rise in temperature.
Sometimes, these GUI tweaks of Windows conflicts with gaming interface. To reduce this visual effects conflict, so the low gaming performance won’t get affected. Using these configurations you can optimize Windows 10 for gaming.
To tweak with visual effects, go to Windows > Settings and in the search bar type Performance. Select Adjust Appearance and Performance of Windows option from the populated results. Next, choose Adjust for Best Performance and hit Apply. Move to the Advanced tab and in this tab make sure to select Adjust for Best Performance for programs too.
These are all the working ways to improve and optimize windows 10 for gaming experience. You just optimized your machine for all the required gaming configurations to offer the best gameplay. These 8 optimization tweaks will just blow up your mind with an amazing smoother gaming.
You can even boost up your gaming performance by upgrading your hardware like moving to a new powerful GPU, CPU, RAM and other additional accessories.