A well-written game can only run as well as the platform it's installed on. Make sure your platform lives up to the minimum specifications and make sure your platform is at its optimum. How do we get the platform to optimum level, you ask? Simple, if you take the time to do a little research, and then do some updating, downloading, installing, and running of a few programs - while making sure your PC is backed up.
FIRST DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF SOMETHING HAPPENS AND YOU SOMEHOW LOSE DATA OR RENDER SOME PART OR ALL OF YOUR PC INOPERABLE!
SECOND DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with any product or website listed in this post in any fashion! I'm just making recommendations based on my experience. If you have something you think works better or have another product you're already using fine! It makes no difference to me!
These are suggestions only from someone who's been building PCs for years and gaming for longer. You can take them piecemeal if you wish, but as a whole they will create the optimal, backed-up platform for any operation on a PC, especially gaming.
First and foremost, backup your PC!
Make a copy of your vital data off of your physical PC and onto an external drive, memory device, or cloud service. You can back up just your data or, better yet, your entire PC - configuration and all - with the right tools and patience. If you wish only to backup your data, make sure you have a way to recover and recreate your PC from scratch, as well. That means the original Windows disc(s) and/or system recovery discs from your PC manufacturer. If you didn't receive discs, there should be a program and method for creating them with your CD/DVD/BluRay disc writer built into your PC. Or, though highly unlikely, it's possible you need to contact your manufacturer and have them sent to you - probably at a cost to you.
Second, clean your PC!
Do you have an anti-virus program? Is it up-to-date? CHECK NOW! If not there are many excellent solutions available, just do some research. Microsoft themselves have a free solution called Microsoft Security Essentials available on their website.
PC cannot live by anti-virus alone, however. You need something to help prevent malware and spyware. Again, there are many good solutions out there, do some research. Personally, I have used a combination of SpywareBlaster from Brightworks and Spybot Search And Destroy (version 1.6 from safer-networking.org; I've not used their newer version) for many, many years with great success and for free. With those solutions - as with many other free solutions - I have to remember to do my own updates and scans manually (I just put a reminders in my Yahoo/Google calendar). Another program that is strongly recommended from most corners of the internet is Malwarebytes. I only have limited experience with this product but thought it worth mentioning.
Once you have your solutions all up to date, do a complete scan. Don't skimp on this step. You may be 'infected' and not even know it. The only way to be sure is to do a complete scan with your chosen AV and malware/spyware solutions.
Always remember that the best defense against 'infection' is your own online behavior. Not clicking on questionable links, not opening questionable emails, reading web pages and installation screens BEFORE clicking Next, OK, or Finish are all solid methods of preventing 'infections', although inadequate as your only defense.
Next, what's the manufacturer say?
Whether your PC is home-built, shop-built, friend-built, or came pre-built, all of its components use drivers. Drivers are updated all the time to correct problems, add features, and to make them more efficient for use. When's the last time you checked on the drivers for, say, your sound card? Built-in or add-in, sound systems have drivers. They need to be up-to-date.
Who's sound card are you running? Motherboard? Video card? Network interface (wireless, wired, or both)? How about that nifty new mouse? keyboard? gamepad, joystick, HOTAS, etc.? They all need to be up to date in order for you to guarantee that you're using the manufacturer's latest and greatest driver for optimum performance.
When you look up the manufacturer of your motherboard or your pre-built PC you'll often seem something about the BIOS. This is the part that gets your PC powered up even before the operating system (Windows) loads. *WARNING* Updating the BIOS can be risky in some systems. You should be at the best BIOS recommended by your manufacturer and sometimes that may not be the latest. This must be taken on a case by case basis. Do your research with the manufacturer, on forums, etc. And, by all means, if you have no idea how to do it after reading the instructions do NOT attempt it. Personally, if I have a good backup and still have a warranty on my motherboard (or don't care about the outcome), I'll update the BIOS to the latest. Again, I'm NOT responsible if it bricks your motherboard. But BIOS updates can correct issues, allow different memory and processors, and enable features through newer drivers we talked about above.
Now get down to fighting weight!
There are lots of bits and bytes all over that hard drive in your PC. Just opening a browser adds files to your PC, let alone when you start surfing your favorite sites, installing and playing games, etc. Over time all the files with their pieces scattered across your hard drive slow things down. Even the registry - the heart and soul of Windows operating systems - gets cluttered as programs are installed, uninstalled, updated, settings are changed, etc., etc. So let's remove the bloat and trim things down so the hard drive doesn't have to work quite so hard to get it's job done.
Personally, I recommend starting with Piriform's CCleaner application. It's free and does a phenomenal job cleaning junk files from your PC and junk from within the Windows registry. WARNING: all those passwords that you told your browser to use automatically every time you return to websites will be wiped (configurable). Internet history and webpage form data auto-fill info (configurable) will also get wiped. Only get it from piriform.com and get the free version (meaning you'll have to download and install updates on your own).
CCleaner will remove junk files and it will also remove junk from the registry. First run from the default Cleaner tab (Analyze then Run Cleaner), then Registry tab (Scan For Issues then Fix Selected Issues - do the save when they offer it!). When those have finished, I invite you to try the Tools tab where you can see all the programs you have installed, along with an uninstall option, as well as the Startup tab where you can see all the programs that are auto-loading every time you boot Windows. It can all be quite revealing. I'm not going to cover their use here. But if it's all intuitive to you, I strongly suggesting using it to help lighten your PC's load even more.
One other potential morass of problems and slowdowns can come with browser extensions and add-ons. Accessing these and managing them differs with each browser. I strongly suggest you become conversant with how to check that and then get in there and clean them up as necessary. Nobody needs all those toolbars and buttons that commonly come with extension, add-ons, etc. that have installed by our own ignorance or programmer stupidity if not maliciousness. More reason to check those webpages and install screens before we click Next or OK or Finish!
Let's get our house in order!
This next section is for those of us using hard drives only. If you're running on an SSD, I will take the opportunity now to tell you DO NOT DO THIS SECTION! I could take the time and space to talk about SSD operation and how to make sure it's at it's best for you but I'm not going to cover it here.
So, FOR THOSE WITH HARD DRIVES NOT SSDs, CONTINUE: We have data scattered all over our hard drives. So the drive mechanism has to go through a lot of gyrations to collect it all and supply it to the processor for the processor to perform its magic. Even the individual files themselves are broken up and scattered all over our hard drives. It's also simply physics that the outside of a hard drive's discs rotates faster than the inside. That means we want the most commonly accessed files on the outside and we, of course, want them all in one piece if at all possible. Our hard drives need to be degragmented and optimized.
A product I've been using in recent years comes from a company called Auslogics. Their Disk Defrag Free is all you really need to fill the bill. For those into such tools, this one cannot perform a boot-time defrag. So if you have a solution that performs well for you and has that feature as well, feel free to stick with it. When you go to auslogics.com, currently there is a Products drop-down. There you want to select Freebies and you'll see Disk Defrag Free. That's the animal. Download and install BUT when you go to run it know two things: a) the defrag can take a while so be ready to do without your PC 'til it's finished and b) the default operation is only Defrag but we want to select Defrag & Optimize from the drop-down. Yes, you could do other things with your PC while the defrag runs but it will be slow and it will defeat some of the purpose of the defrag & optimize.
So, how fast am I now?
Well, we now have the PC about as optimized as anyone could realistically expect. So measuring the PCs performance isn't really necessary. It's about how fast we are online now. Do you know how fast your internet connection is? Do you even remember what speeds you paid for? Do you know how to test it?
An easy test is supplied by a website I use in the U.S. called speedtest.net. A more thorough one is testmy.net. They cover U.S. ISPs and may, for all I know, cover more. You may have better options in your home country. We're interested in 3 things, basically: ping time, download speed, and upload speed. Ping time tells us how quickly a packet gets to a specific point on the internet, how long it took that device to reply, all combined with how long it took for the reply packet to get back to us. The smaller the number the better and they're measured in micro-seconds (ms). In today's world of faster download and uploads speeds, ping time is much more important! You want as low as possible and wireless just can't do that! Download and upload speeds are measured in megabits per second (Mbps) and the higher the number here the better.
Besides upgraded, up-to-date router and modem hardware there are two things I've found that can dramatically increase over-the-net performance. One we're not going to be too specific about here is your DNS settings.
These are the settings that are most likely sent to you via your ISP through your router. They basically translate website names into the actual numeric address they are which all devices understand. So www.google.com may translate to something like 173.194.46.116. If that 'translation' is happening with slow servers, conversations between your PCs (and other devices on your home network) can be needlessly slow. There are methods for determining the fastest DNS server settings from your network and searching the 'net will get those answers. OpenDNS and Google's own DNS servers are good places to start. 'Nuff said on that.
So what's the other dramatic performance difference for my internet-connected PC you ask? An ethernet cable! Remember the speed test we talked about above? Do you believe me when I say your numbers will be hugely better if your PC is plugged into an ethernet cable and into your router than if you use your PC wirelessly? Try it and see. I'll wait ... =) I know using a cable may be nigh-on impossible for you. But it's deadly true. You should at least find a way to try it on your network just so you can see the difference sometime. Don't forget to turn off your wireless radio on your PC when you're using your ethernet cable just to be sure your PC is using the right network medium.
Did it all and my PC reboots... =(
If everything's up to date and your PC's squeaky clean I have a quick, somewhat common, possible source for reboots. If your PC gets hot enough it's going to shut down. You can test for this by opening your case - if you feel comfortable doing so and no pets will jump in the case - and directing a fan at the works at a close but safe distance. If that fixes the problem then you need to figure out how to get more air into your case. Of course, it could just be that your PC's innards are filthy dusty. Very common! Clean it up carefully with compressed air (outdoors!) or even a very carefully handled vacuum cleaner with proper attachments. Heat kills electronic components and shortens their lives. A clean case is a happy, longer-living overall PC!
After that, reboots can come from a variety of sources. If everything's clean and up to date, hardware and bad drivers become easy targets. Power supplies do fail and this can be an early sign. Memory may be going or is dirty/loose in it's slots. Shorted or even just aged electronics can be at fault. Get on the forums and try to find some answers if this is happening to you!
This is too long already, I know. And there's much more detail and even more methods you can use to make things snappier when using a PC online. But I thought I'd get some basics out.
Feel free to ask questions, flame me, anything you want in this thread. I'm sure there are many - and perhaps even better - suggestions out there. If you don't feel comfortable with these things, by all means DON'T TRY THEM.
I hope this helps someone somewhere. Even if we just learn a bit more about our PCs it's worth it!
See you in-game!
<-Kazz->
FIRST DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF SOMETHING HAPPENS AND YOU SOMEHOW LOSE DATA OR RENDER SOME PART OR ALL OF YOUR PC INOPERABLE!
SECOND DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with any product or website listed in this post in any fashion! I'm just making recommendations based on my experience. If you have something you think works better or have another product you're already using fine! It makes no difference to me!
These are suggestions only from someone who's been building PCs for years and gaming for longer. You can take them piecemeal if you wish, but as a whole they will create the optimal, backed-up platform for any operation on a PC, especially gaming.
First and foremost, backup your PC!
Make a copy of your vital data off of your physical PC and onto an external drive, memory device, or cloud service. You can back up just your data or, better yet, your entire PC - configuration and all - with the right tools and patience. If you wish only to backup your data, make sure you have a way to recover and recreate your PC from scratch, as well. That means the original Windows disc(s) and/or system recovery discs from your PC manufacturer. If you didn't receive discs, there should be a program and method for creating them with your CD/DVD/BluRay disc writer built into your PC. Or, though highly unlikely, it's possible you need to contact your manufacturer and have them sent to you - probably at a cost to you.
Second, clean your PC!
Do you have an anti-virus program? Is it up-to-date? CHECK NOW! If not there are many excellent solutions available, just do some research. Microsoft themselves have a free solution called Microsoft Security Essentials available on their website.
PC cannot live by anti-virus alone, however. You need something to help prevent malware and spyware. Again, there are many good solutions out there, do some research. Personally, I have used a combination of SpywareBlaster from Brightworks and Spybot Search And Destroy (version 1.6 from safer-networking.org; I've not used their newer version) for many, many years with great success and for free. With those solutions - as with many other free solutions - I have to remember to do my own updates and scans manually (I just put a reminders in my Yahoo/Google calendar). Another program that is strongly recommended from most corners of the internet is Malwarebytes. I only have limited experience with this product but thought it worth mentioning.
Once you have your solutions all up to date, do a complete scan. Don't skimp on this step. You may be 'infected' and not even know it. The only way to be sure is to do a complete scan with your chosen AV and malware/spyware solutions.
Always remember that the best defense against 'infection' is your own online behavior. Not clicking on questionable links, not opening questionable emails, reading web pages and installation screens BEFORE clicking Next, OK, or Finish are all solid methods of preventing 'infections', although inadequate as your only defense.
Next, what's the manufacturer say?
Whether your PC is home-built, shop-built, friend-built, or came pre-built, all of its components use drivers. Drivers are updated all the time to correct problems, add features, and to make them more efficient for use. When's the last time you checked on the drivers for, say, your sound card? Built-in or add-in, sound systems have drivers. They need to be up-to-date.
Who's sound card are you running? Motherboard? Video card? Network interface (wireless, wired, or both)? How about that nifty new mouse? keyboard? gamepad, joystick, HOTAS, etc.? They all need to be up to date in order for you to guarantee that you're using the manufacturer's latest and greatest driver for optimum performance.
When you look up the manufacturer of your motherboard or your pre-built PC you'll often seem something about the BIOS. This is the part that gets your PC powered up even before the operating system (Windows) loads. *WARNING* Updating the BIOS can be risky in some systems. You should be at the best BIOS recommended by your manufacturer and sometimes that may not be the latest. This must be taken on a case by case basis. Do your research with the manufacturer, on forums, etc. And, by all means, if you have no idea how to do it after reading the instructions do NOT attempt it. Personally, if I have a good backup and still have a warranty on my motherboard (or don't care about the outcome), I'll update the BIOS to the latest. Again, I'm NOT responsible if it bricks your motherboard. But BIOS updates can correct issues, allow different memory and processors, and enable features through newer drivers we talked about above.
Now get down to fighting weight!
There are lots of bits and bytes all over that hard drive in your PC. Just opening a browser adds files to your PC, let alone when you start surfing your favorite sites, installing and playing games, etc. Over time all the files with their pieces scattered across your hard drive slow things down. Even the registry - the heart and soul of Windows operating systems - gets cluttered as programs are installed, uninstalled, updated, settings are changed, etc., etc. So let's remove the bloat and trim things down so the hard drive doesn't have to work quite so hard to get it's job done.
Personally, I recommend starting with Piriform's CCleaner application. It's free and does a phenomenal job cleaning junk files from your PC and junk from within the Windows registry. WARNING: all those passwords that you told your browser to use automatically every time you return to websites will be wiped (configurable). Internet history and webpage form data auto-fill info (configurable) will also get wiped. Only get it from piriform.com and get the free version (meaning you'll have to download and install updates on your own).
CCleaner will remove junk files and it will also remove junk from the registry. First run from the default Cleaner tab (Analyze then Run Cleaner), then Registry tab (Scan For Issues then Fix Selected Issues - do the save when they offer it!). When those have finished, I invite you to try the Tools tab where you can see all the programs you have installed, along with an uninstall option, as well as the Startup tab where you can see all the programs that are auto-loading every time you boot Windows. It can all be quite revealing. I'm not going to cover their use here. But if it's all intuitive to you, I strongly suggesting using it to help lighten your PC's load even more.
One other potential morass of problems and slowdowns can come with browser extensions and add-ons. Accessing these and managing them differs with each browser. I strongly suggest you become conversant with how to check that and then get in there and clean them up as necessary. Nobody needs all those toolbars and buttons that commonly come with extension, add-ons, etc. that have installed by our own ignorance or programmer stupidity if not maliciousness. More reason to check those webpages and install screens before we click Next or OK or Finish!
Let's get our house in order!
This next section is for those of us using hard drives only. If you're running on an SSD, I will take the opportunity now to tell you DO NOT DO THIS SECTION! I could take the time and space to talk about SSD operation and how to make sure it's at it's best for you but I'm not going to cover it here.
So, FOR THOSE WITH HARD DRIVES NOT SSDs, CONTINUE: We have data scattered all over our hard drives. So the drive mechanism has to go through a lot of gyrations to collect it all and supply it to the processor for the processor to perform its magic. Even the individual files themselves are broken up and scattered all over our hard drives. It's also simply physics that the outside of a hard drive's discs rotates faster than the inside. That means we want the most commonly accessed files on the outside and we, of course, want them all in one piece if at all possible. Our hard drives need to be degragmented and optimized.
A product I've been using in recent years comes from a company called Auslogics. Their Disk Defrag Free is all you really need to fill the bill. For those into such tools, this one cannot perform a boot-time defrag. So if you have a solution that performs well for you and has that feature as well, feel free to stick with it. When you go to auslogics.com, currently there is a Products drop-down. There you want to select Freebies and you'll see Disk Defrag Free. That's the animal. Download and install BUT when you go to run it know two things: a) the defrag can take a while so be ready to do without your PC 'til it's finished and b) the default operation is only Defrag but we want to select Defrag & Optimize from the drop-down. Yes, you could do other things with your PC while the defrag runs but it will be slow and it will defeat some of the purpose of the defrag & optimize.
So, how fast am I now?
Well, we now have the PC about as optimized as anyone could realistically expect. So measuring the PCs performance isn't really necessary. It's about how fast we are online now. Do you know how fast your internet connection is? Do you even remember what speeds you paid for? Do you know how to test it?
An easy test is supplied by a website I use in the U.S. called speedtest.net. A more thorough one is testmy.net. They cover U.S. ISPs and may, for all I know, cover more. You may have better options in your home country. We're interested in 3 things, basically: ping time, download speed, and upload speed. Ping time tells us how quickly a packet gets to a specific point on the internet, how long it took that device to reply, all combined with how long it took for the reply packet to get back to us. The smaller the number the better and they're measured in micro-seconds (ms). In today's world of faster download and uploads speeds, ping time is much more important! You want as low as possible and wireless just can't do that! Download and upload speeds are measured in megabits per second (Mbps) and the higher the number here the better.
Besides upgraded, up-to-date router and modem hardware there are two things I've found that can dramatically increase over-the-net performance. One we're not going to be too specific about here is your DNS settings.
These are the settings that are most likely sent to you via your ISP through your router. They basically translate website names into the actual numeric address they are which all devices understand. So www.google.com may translate to something like 173.194.46.116. If that 'translation' is happening with slow servers, conversations between your PCs (and other devices on your home network) can be needlessly slow. There are methods for determining the fastest DNS server settings from your network and searching the 'net will get those answers. OpenDNS and Google's own DNS servers are good places to start. 'Nuff said on that.
So what's the other dramatic performance difference for my internet-connected PC you ask? An ethernet cable! Remember the speed test we talked about above? Do you believe me when I say your numbers will be hugely better if your PC is plugged into an ethernet cable and into your router than if you use your PC wirelessly? Try it and see. I'll wait ... =) I know using a cable may be nigh-on impossible for you. But it's deadly true. You should at least find a way to try it on your network just so you can see the difference sometime. Don't forget to turn off your wireless radio on your PC when you're using your ethernet cable just to be sure your PC is using the right network medium.
Did it all and my PC reboots... =(
If everything's up to date and your PC's squeaky clean I have a quick, somewhat common, possible source for reboots. If your PC gets hot enough it's going to shut down. You can test for this by opening your case - if you feel comfortable doing so and no pets will jump in the case - and directing a fan at the works at a close but safe distance. If that fixes the problem then you need to figure out how to get more air into your case. Of course, it could just be that your PC's innards are filthy dusty. Very common! Clean it up carefully with compressed air (outdoors!) or even a very carefully handled vacuum cleaner with proper attachments. Heat kills electronic components and shortens their lives. A clean case is a happy, longer-living overall PC!
After that, reboots can come from a variety of sources. If everything's clean and up to date, hardware and bad drivers become easy targets. Power supplies do fail and this can be an early sign. Memory may be going or is dirty/loose in it's slots. Shorted or even just aged electronics can be at fault. Get on the forums and try to find some answers if this is happening to you!
This is too long already, I know. And there's much more detail and even more methods you can use to make things snappier when using a PC online. But I thought I'd get some basics out.
Feel free to ask questions, flame me, anything you want in this thread. I'm sure there are many - and perhaps even better - suggestions out there. If you don't feel comfortable with these things, by all means DON'T TRY THEM.
I hope this helps someone somewhere. Even if we just learn a bit more about our PCs it's worth it!
See you in-game!
<-Kazz->
Last edited:
