With the rise of newer more exciting games on the horizon, those insane graphics come with system requirements like you wouldn’t believe. Not all of us have the money to splash all over the latest upgrades, and even so, good luck finding one of those RTX 3900 Nvidia graphics cards in stock. Here’s a few options that may make things simpler for you.
Optimize your display
Frames per second (FPS) are everything these days, especially in first person shooter (FPS) games. Let’s just put aside the acronyms for a moment though, because it’s actually not that complicated. First off, you’ll want to check your monitor model to see if it supports a higher hertz setting. To do this, press the windows button + X on your PC, then go to Device Manager. Under the ‘Monitors’ tab you’ll find what your monitors are and you can look them up on the Interwebs.
If your monitor goes higher than 60Hz, then fantastic! If not, consider upgrading to 120Hz or 144hz if you can afford to. Anyway, you’ll want to head over to your desktop, right-click and go to ‘Display Settings’. Once in display settings, select the monitor you want to change by clicking on it if you have more than one, then scroll down to ‘Advanced display settings’. In there you’ll see an option to change your refresh rate, then select the highest one you see available.
Now when you load up a game now, you should see your FPS counter shoot up beyond what it was before. If you’re having any issues still, try toning down your graphics settings, or turning off V-Sync. If none of that works, perhaps something else is at play here.
Update your drivers
Nvidia and AMD are notorious for releasing new updates for your graphics drivers without much warning, so it’s good to check perhaps once a week if there’s something you need to download to keep issues at bay. Generally, you don’t need to update your hardware drivers unless you’re experiencing exceptional problems, but your graphics card is an exception for sure.
Nvidia for example has a program known as ‘GeForce Experience’ which will inform you of any updates you desperately need to download, and comes with other fancy features such as a gameplay recorder and optimization for supported games.
Shut down background programs
Especially if your random-access memory (RAM) is a little dated or generally just less than 16GB, your PC might find itself having a difficult time allocating resources to your hardware-hungry games. Open up Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc, and look through to see if any processes are using a significant amount of memory.
The ones you’re looking out for will be orange in color. The darker orange they are, the more memory they’re using. Click on those, and then ‘End task’ on the bottom right corner. Confirm, and you should see a slight improvement in performance.
While there are often many background processes you can end, be sure to look through your foreground programs to see if you can sacrifice any of those whilst gaming. You’d be surprised how much memory your browser may be hogging all for itself, especially if you have several tabs open.
Ethernet over Wi-Fi
If your game is lagging, stuttering, or constantly losing connection, it may not always be your hardware at fault. On the bottom right of your taskbar there should be some network settings you can look into, and if you’re connected to Wi-Fi, you may want to look into changing that to a wired connection straight to your router if possible.
Wi-Fi can be troublesome and unreliable despite its advantages over distance. Moreover, an ethernet cable generally provides a stronger connection to the Internet. If this is not an option, look into strengthening your Wi-Fi connection, or consider other options such as a broadband extender.
Use a gaming VPN
A virtual private network (VPN) is a great source of security across the Internet which encrypts our data so that internet service providers (ISPs) and hackers alike cannot find out what we’re Googling online. Principally when using a gaming VPN.
Some VPNs are capable of lowering your ping, and actually increase your Internet speeds even if connected to a server in another continent. They are multi-functional tools that protect you from online threats and allow access to geographically locked games and websites. Ever found a video on YouTube that isn’t accessible to your country? No longer a problem.
To try a gaming VPN, look no further than VPNsurfers and protect yourself online.
