So, you’ve got yourself a new game, but it doesn’t quite appear to be working as intended. For whatever reason, your system’s unable to play it properly. It lags. There’s graphical tearing. It locks up at random, or doesn’t start up at all. Naturally, this is a problem you want to fix- and fast. Assuming you’ve already tried all the available troubleshooting steps, there are a few general things you can do to help your software run smoothly (assuming your PC can indeed run it at all.) Here they are, from the easiest to the most difficult.
Adjust Your In-Game Graphics Settings
First and foremost, try fiddling with your settings in-game. I’ve noticed a lot of laptop graphics cards seem to have problems rendering shadows (particularly Nvidia models) for some reason. The first thing you should probably do, then, is to turn shadows off. If that doesn’t work, try reducing the complexity and quality of the in-game graphics, one step at a time. If you’ve tried all of the above and you’re still not noticing any marked improvement, try adjusting the resolution. Sometimes, rendering at a higher resolution(or a resolution higher than was meant for your monitor) can cause some pretty serious problems for your GPU.
Finally, if you’re noticing any screen tearing, try enabling vertical sync.
Make Sure No Programs are Interfering
When you’re running your game, ensure your antivirus software and any other programs which require a great deal of memory are turned off- some antivirus apps have a ‘gaming’ mode that you can enable. Try using that, since it’ll often drastically reduce the memory footprint and prevent any interference.
Also, make sure you’ve got all the requisite permissions for your game set up- exceptions in the firewall and all requisite security software. If you can, alt+tab out of the game to double check what’s going on in your OS.
Adjust Your Graphics Card
Most pieces of graphics software have some hardware that goes with them. Chances are, you’re going to find it as an icon on your taskbar or in your control panel. Most such pieces of software include a slider for individual applications that goes between optimization and performance- slide it all the way over to performance for your game (or, for the default rule, if need be).
Seek Out Tweaks or Patches
The best part about PC gaming is, as I’ve said on multiple occasions, the active and wonderful mod community. There’s a good chance that, if your performance issue isn’t something unique to you, if others have had the same problem, there was a programmer who looked at the issue and asked themselves “how can I fix this?” I know in the case of Oblivion (old game, I know), there was an entire suite of graphical tweaks and improvements that not only made the game run better, but it made it look better, to boot.
Not bad, right?
Basically, search around online for something that’ll improve your game’s performance. At the very least, you might find some information on how to fix your problem, and in the best case scenario, well…enjoy your tweaked software.
Get your Hands on some Optimization Tools
Firstly, if you’re playing a game on Steam, you might try verifying the integrity of the game cache (There’s been several occasions where the performance issues were actually the result of a corrupted file, in my experience). You might also want to try defragmenting the cache files – that could work, too.
Also, if you’re not regularly defragmenting your hard drive and running regular error checks and virus/spyware scans…start doing that.
Last, but not least, you can try tweaking your PC itself- after all, there’s a chance that your shoddy graphics performance could be related to your PC itself. There’s a whole suite of optimization tools out there on the ‘net for you to fiddle with, but one of the most highly recommended pieces of software out there is known as Game Booster, which includes a huge array of tools for sending your system’s performance through the roof. Not bad, right? Other workable tools include Gamefire and, in the event that you want to update your video drivers, driver magician can help you cleanly uninstall the old drivers before you do (something you should definitely consider).
These aren’t the only tools that exist- not by far. Do a bit of research, and see if you can’t track down one that works better for you.
Image Credits: [Joystiq]
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Just wanted to place some emphasis on the bit about updating your graphics drivers. More often than not this is the cause of many graphical glitches and outright crashes. You’ll be doing yourself a favor learning how to install/update your own graphics driver(s) without the help of an extra application.
Learning to deal with potentially unclean installations/un-installations is an added bonus, though, to be proper, cleaning up after an un-installed driver before re-installing IS the best way to go, as the article states, although I would generally recommend using utilities provided directly by the driver’s publisher to do this, if available.