One of the most frustrating experiences is finding out that the new game you want to play may not work on your old computer.
The most immediate decision is to upgrade your hardware, but when budget is important, you can follow these tips to get the most out of your old computer. his last legs.
Understand your boundaries and boundaries for graphics
Before we begin, it is very important that you trim your expectations a little. There is no way that you can play high-end games smoothly on a low-end PC, so you have to sacrifice some performance.
Your search for the holy grail of optimization hacks on the web is likely to be fruitless if you expect your old computer to play modern games at 60 frames per second at high graphics settings
However, if you set the parameters as low as possible and follow the advice in this guide, you can squeeze a few extra frames out of the game you are playing.
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First, reduce the settings in the game. It might not look very nice, but choosing “very low†for everything in the settings menu and turning off any additional effects is a great starting point.
Want more frames? Consider decreasing the resolution. If your graphics card is too old, this can be a great way to improve performance. Fewer pixels means less stress on your graphics card. However, there is a downside to the coin: it can cause a lot of strain on the eyes.
try out a game-streaming platform
Many premium game streaming platforms have emerged in recent years. These platforms allow high-end PC streaming in the cloud. Basically, you get the performance and functionality of a real PC streamed straight to your computer.
If you have a high-speed Internet connection and have a budget to pay for your subscription, I highly recommend this option. If your internet connection is slow, you will notice screen tearing, input lag, and other issues.
To access your own virtual machine, you will need to pay a fee. At the time of this writing, there are two leading companies in this area – Shadow and LiquidSky.
LiquidSky offers three pricing tiers that charge you either a one-time payment or a monthly fee. For the $ 14.99 Starter Package, you get 25 hours of one-time access and 200GB of storage in your own virtual machine.
A Prestige subscription for $ 29.99 per month gives you 100 hours of gameplay every month and 500GB of storage.
There is also an annual fee of $ 24.99 per month and you get 1,440 hours per year and 750GB of storage.
Shadow offers a $ 35 / month subscription that gives you essentially unlimited access to your own virtual PC with state-of-the-art hardware.
Both options are fine when you want to play high quality games, but they are not without problems. Streaming games is still a new technology and not perfect. Expect occasional input lag and screen tearing even if you have a high-speed (15 Mbps) Internet connection.
Plus, an annual subscription on any platform will be enough to buy a decent pre-owned graphics card or processor for your PC.
restrict background apps
If you want to stay on your old computer and don’t want to pay for a subscription, there are several methods you can use to improve performance.
One such technique involves limiting the background applications that run when you play games. Open Task Manager before loading the game and force close whatever you don’t need. This can be Google Chrome, Skype, Discord or any other application running silently in the background.
Each of these programs will require a small amount of hard disk, RAM, and CPU, which could otherwise be used for video games.
try Razer Cortex: Game Booster
Razer Cortex: Game Booster is free software from Razer that optimizes your PC for gaming. The Razer Cortex will automatically handle background processes.
All you have to do is load the Razer Cortex before playing and you can automatically free up your system resources. Razer Cortex: Game Booster also optimizes your processor for maximum performance.
Don’t expect any miracles from using the Razer Cortex: Game Booster, but it’s still a tool that automatically manages the advice we gave in the last step.
search for low-graphics “hacks”
Some games have preference files that you can edit to further reduce the quality of the graphics. For example, you can turn off shadows completely or lower the texture quality.
In many cases this can make the game look terrible and there may be some graphical issues, but it can be a great way to get more frames in high-end games.
You can simply search for “game customization example” on Google to see if there are such resources.
Not all games have these graphical settings, and some developers will actively discourage you from using them, especially if it’s a multiplayer game. It is important that you carefully read any information provided by other players or developers about the use of such settings before using them for yourself.
overclocking your devices
Another possible way is to overclock the video card or processor. Overclocking powerfully charges your hardware by increasing the clock speed to a higher level. This will increase the temperature of your equipment, so you will need to provide adequate cooling.
You should always be careful when overclocking. Here we wrote a complete guide to safely overclocking your graphics card.
conclusion
This brings us to the end. We hope the tips in this article will help you improve the performance of your favorite games.
Everyone’s situation is different, so some of these tips may work better on your computer than others. If you need more specific advice regarding your particular system, please leave a comment and I’ll be happy to help.
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