Any true PC gamer knows that frame rates make a huge impact on online gaming but also on overall game-time satisfaction. The faster your game the smoother your gameplay and the faster you’ll be able to shoot down an enemy.
In this post I wanted to share some quick tips for speeding up your computer while you play your games – both online and offline.
1. Disable Anti-Virus Programs
Antivirus programs are very well known for hogging system resources, especially when they have some sort of firewall or active scanner up and running. I have even seen computers where Norton was taking over 50% of the system processes!
The first thing I do before playing any game is to disable my antivirus program (I use a very low-key antivirus to start with, but turn it off nonetheless). Most of Anti-virus programs can be disabled right via the settings panel. But if you are super hardcore you can shut it down completely via the task manager.
2. Turn Off Skype, AIM & Windows Messenger
Skype, AIM, Windows Messanger and other messaging programs can use up quite a bit of your system resources and slow things down. But also, I have had problems where I receive a skype call in the middle of my online game and it makes the game crash or it messes up the mic.
No need to message if you are playing a game – that’s what steam is for. So shut them off!
3. Close Useless Crap Via The Task Manager
Most people install tons of crap onto their computers, such as “iTunes”, “Office”, ‘Adobe” products and whatever else you are into. If you hit alt+control+delete on your keyboard you can then open up your task manager and close down some useless processes to speed things up.
Once you have the Windows Task Manager open, click on the second tab “Processes”. Here you can read the names and descriptions of all the processes running on your computer. If you find any processes such as skype, firefox, adobe, itunes…etc that you won’t need while you are gaming, you can right click on them and hit “end process”.
Stopping processes that you don’t need for your games will help free up some CPU and Ram for your game.
IMPORTANT: Be very careful because you don’t want to end any core Windows processes. But, if you happen to do so, you can hit the restart button on your computer and it should boot up fine.
4. Overclock Your System
For those a bit more advanced you may want to overclock your hardware to give it an extra boost of speed. Overclocking is basically running a computer component (such as your CPU, RAM and Graphics Card) at a higher clock rate than specified by the manufacturer. For example, running your AMD Phenom II 955 at 3.8ghz instead of the default 3.2 ghz or your 1333 mhz RAM at 1600 mhz.
By sending a bit more voltage to your CPU, RAM and/or GPU you can speed up your games substantially. But be careful because overclocking your system not only voids any warranty on your Hardware, but it can also cause crashes or burn out your components if not done correctly.
If you want to try overclocking your hardware I suggest you do a search for how to overclock your specific hardware as many people have probably already done it and can help you overclock yours at a stable level. Otherwise you’ll have to go into the BIOS and test out different settings yourself before achieving a stable Overclock (you’ll probably have to do this anyway, as it is highly unlikely you will find someone with your exact PC configuration – RAM, MOBO, CPU, GPU).
I currently overclock only my CPU (i don’t bother with my RAM or GPU cause they are pre-overclocked by the manufacturer), but it gives me a nice little boost from 3,2 ghz to 4.0 ghz to speed up Call Of Duty.
5. Use The AMD Fusion Utility For Desktops
I recently started using a new program called the “Fusion Utility For Desktops” which is created by AMD and it comes with a gaming setting that when you click will automatically shut down all the useless processes for you. It is so hardcore it even changes your Windows 7 aero effects to the basic look to make things even faster. I strongly suggest it if you are really intense about gaming or if your computer sucks and is super slow.
Just be careful because it is a bit advanced and it can be a bit difficult for some people to get their computer back to “normal”.
Personally, I have been using this program everyday (since the beta release) and have had no issues. Works great for me.
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