How To Speed Up Your Computer For Gaming

Most customers usually have a single purpose in mind when they purchase a computer. Even the experienced ones, no matter how much they’d want to hide it behind programs they use and school purposes, or demanding videos in truth, most want stronger, faster computers for one purpose in mind: gaming. In the past 15 years, games have evolved at an unprecedented rate. If in the 70’s and 80’s we barely had graphics and pixels the size of Rubik cubes, in 2012 we have state of the art games that look so real, you’re getting the feeling that you’re actually being shot at. Combine that with the evolution of gaming orientated computer hardware such as state of the art processors and video boards and…you’ll probably never go to school again (unadvisable).

How To Speed Up Your Computer For Gaming (Source: gagogeek.com)

The idea behind a computer game is simply relaxation. Unfortunately for some, games such as World of Warcraft and other MMORPG are becoming an obsession or, if I might, a second life. But, since we’re not discussing the damaging effects games have (we’re going to leave that to the latitude of the individual, or in some cases, the parent) we are going to present the major requirements for high performance gaming.

First of all, we need to understand that a computer game can put a considerable strain on the computer depending on the type of game, its minimum or recommended requirements and the performance of the computer. No matter how powerful a computer can be, due to the imperfect operating system and the dangers, coming from the internet, you will always have to install several programs to run in the background in order to keep you safe from outside threats.

Unfortunately all these programs tend to slow down your computer even if by a little bit. For instance the antivirus or the antispyware are two of the programs that tend to eat up a lot of memory and slowdown your startup, but you cannot live without them (at least if you don’t feel like reinstalling your Windows every 2 months). On the other hand, when you’re playing a game, especially if you’re using a secure connection such as STEAM, you can put some of these facilities at a stop. Let’s check out some of the simplest methods of speeding up your computer.

How To Speed Up Your Computer For Gaming (Source: webwallpapers.net)

As a respectable gamer, you must definitely know that the frame rate makes all the difference in the world especially on an online game, but it can also affect the overall game time. The faster the game, the smoother the transition from computer to network to server and so on giving you that much needed edge over the opponent.

The first thing you will want to do (especially when you’re playing offline or an online MMORPG) is to disable your antivirus system. Nowadays, most of them have a gamer module which you can activate in order to disable all kinds of notifications and warning displays but from my point of view, shutting them down altogether is a simpler solution. The antivirus, no matter how refined it may be, will always draw your computer back due to the multiple tasks it runs in the background. If by any chance the antivirus “decides” it’s time for an update or a scan, you can kiss your gaming experience goodbye. Simply shut it down and you won’t have any worries. Naturally, don’t forget to turn it back on, especially if you’re planning on surfing the web a bit afterwards because you can get into serious trouble with malware, adware and spyware raining over your hard drive.

If you want to get some decent gaming going in, under no circumstances are you to leave any chat program such as Skype, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Windows Messenger or any kind of messenger for that matter. These types of programs can be extremely annoying, especially during your highly important World of Warcraft Raid which you’ve been planning with your mates all week. First of all, these programs tend to eat up memory with the spoon especially if they have integrated animated ads and other plugins. Secondly, and far more important, imagine putting the target on the enemy ready to fire concentrated at the maximum and all of a sudden you hear the earsplitting ringing of an incoming Skype call. There’s no need for any of that. What do we all have Steam for?

Since your computer cannot possibly be for gaming alone, you will most likely have installed other utilities such as Office, iTunes, Adobe, codecs and other things meant to allow you to watch movies, listen to music and other stuff. All that could be shut down during a game. Even your components hay come with support that keeps running in the background such as the Nvidia Services, Ati Catalyst, RealTek Sound Manager and many other things. You can close all these basically useless processes since you won’t be needing any of them while gaming. Simply hit the control + alt + delete key and you’ll get to the task manager. In the Task Manager window, select the Processes tab and you will see all the processes that are running in your background. There you can find a detailed description regarding any of the processes so … start killing. Any processes that you see related to utilities, background processes for iTunes, Adobe, Firefox, Skype and so on. Every one of these processes can be closed during a game because you’re not going to require any of them.

A single word of caution. Make sure you don’t shut down any important processes related to Windows because you will encounter some serious problems.

How To Speed Up Your Computer For Gaming (Source: blasterzone.ro)

Since hardware tweaks can be even more efficient than software tweaks for improving the quality and speed of your gaming experience, you should also consider overclocking your system. In order to complete the steps involved by this procedure, you need to be more on the side of experienced computer users, because you will have to work on shallow grounds. If you are unfamiliar with the term overclocking, you should know it involves running a piece of hardware at a clock rate that’s higher than that recommend by the hardware’s manufacturer. That means more juice for your CPU, RAM and GPU and more speed for your gaming. The only problem with this tweak it’s the danger level it involves. First of all it will void the hardware’s warranty and secondly it can be the cause of component crash or burn out if the overclocking process is not correctly handled.

In order to avoid disastrous results, you should first do a little research and see how much you should force the hardware components that are part of your system. You should also figure out the right way of doing things for the type of processor or video board you own. You should only then switch to actions and get into the computer’s BIOS where most of the settings that allow you to overclock your system are available.

Another method that you should take into consideration is using specialized software like AMD Fusion Utility for desktops. This software has been created by AMD and is especially designed for those who want to improve the speed of their gaming experience. All you will have to do in order to use this software to your advantage is click a button that will automatically close all the processes that are useless for your current activity. You will notice that even Windows 7 aero effects are managed by this app in order to speed up your computer. This is the software that you should definitely use if you want to get your adrenaline fix from gaming or speed up a computer that’s really slow and annoying.

On the other hand, there are users that have went “over the barrier” into Intel territory. Since the beginning of 2011 Intel has released the second generation of Core I processors codenamed Sandy Bridge. The second generation of processors has reached new heights. It runs on a single die architecture which for the first time holds the CPU and the GPU on the same silicon base.

How To Speed Up Your Computer For Gaming (Source: brightsideofnews.com)

Intel has thought mainly of gaming when they’ve developed their state of the art Intel Turbo Boost Technology which now has reached version 2.0. This technology has been developed in order to control the frequency of the processor during various levels of solicitation. If, for instance you would run a game, the Intel Turbo Boost Technology will literally modify the frequency of the processor taking near its breaking point if it has to in order to deliver maximum performance. For example a 2.2GHz Intel Core i5 processor can be taken up to 3GHz frequency without damaging the hardware and insure the performance require by even the most grueling games.

Conclusion

Since the number of threads and the number of cores has dramatically increased these technologies can manage and insure state of the art performance for all your gaming needs, so start organizing your WoW Raid. Buy Now!