Optimize For Gaming Professional And An

There are a number of third-party applications that allow for the tweaking of graphics card settings and overclocking for performance boosts.

Optimize For Gaming Professional And An

Former Lifewire writer Michael Klappenbach is an IT professional and an expert on games and gaming equipment.

Optimizing your PC for gaming can be a daunting task especially if you are not familiar with the internal hardware, operating system and overall configuration of your PC.

Most game developers publish a set of minimum and recommended system requirements that outline what type of hardware is required for the game to run at an acceptable level.

You cant make a 10-year-old PC run the latest new release or big-budget blockbuster with the high-end graphics and latest shader model no matter how much tuning and optimization you do.

So why arent your games running smoothly when your gaming rig meets or even exceeds the minimum and recommended system requirements.

The steps that follow will take you through some basic tips and recommendations for optimizing your PC for gaming so that you can get the most out of the hardware and get your games running smoothly again.

Most developers or publishers make both the minimum and recommended system requirements available to help gamers out in determining if their rig can handle the game.

Thats not to say that PCs that have hardware below the minimum requirements cant run the game, many times they can but the fact is youre most likely not going to get the most out of your gaming experience if the graphics are stuttering every few seconds.

If you built your own gaming PC or at least selected the hardware installed then you probably know exactly what your PC is running, but if you are like many and bought an off the shelf gaming PC you may not know the exact hardware configuration.

Windows provides various methods for seeing what hardware is installed and recognized by the operating system, but it is rather clunky and not straight forward.

Luckily there are a few applications and websites that can help you determine this fairly quickly.

It provides a wealth of information about both the hardware and operating system installed on your PC including the CPU, RAM, graphics cards, HDD and much more.

This information can then be used to compare against a games published system requirements to determine if your PC is capable of running it.

While theres really more than one click required due to a small application installation, it is rather easy to use.

CanYouRunIt analyzes your PC hardware and operating system comparing it to the selected games system requirements and provides a rating for each requirement.

One of the first tasks to check off your list when trying to optimize your PC for gaming is to make sure that your graphics card is updated with the latest drivers.

As the focal point for your gaming experience, it is essential to keep your graphics card updated.

Failing to do so is one of the primary causes of poor PC performance while gaming.

Both Nvidia and AMDATI provide their own applications for managing graphics card drivers and optimizing the settings, Nvidia GeForce Experience and AMD Gaming Evolved respectively.

Their optimization settings and recommendations are based on a wealth of information they have gathered over the years for different types of hardware configurations.

Having the latest drivers can even help boost the performance of older games as well.

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