Dec 06, 2017 PC gaming isn't always as simple as console gaming. Instead of plug & play, it's more plug & pray that your games run smoothly or even run at all. If there’s anything that’s not optimized about your PC, your games' speed will suffer: they’ll stutter and won't look as beautiful as they could.

There are countless reasons why your PC may not be fully optimized for gaming, such as old drivers or malware issues. A low FPS does not make for an enjoyable gaming experience, so it’s important to know why it’s not as high as it should be.

Luckily there are plenty of ways to optimize your computer for gaming, whatever the issue may be. Read on to discover how to keep games running smoothly and quickly on your PC.

How to make games run faster on your PC

PC gaming has many benefits over consoles, like higher quality graphics and the ability to install mods, but it’s also up to you to make sure your computer is optimized for best performance. Unlike consoles where developers know the exact hardware they are developing for, there’s a huge number of different PC configurations that a player might have. PC games will never be as optimized for your specific hardware as developers simply can’t test every possible configuration.

Since console operating systems are designed to only run games and a few simple apps, they can be far more efficient with resources. You can do a lot more on PCs, but that means there’s a lot more potential for other programs to steal processing power and reduce your video game performance.

Common examples of things that can slow down your PC include too many background programs running, malware or virus issues and outdated hard drives. Tackling these problems first may help to increase game speed.

While fixing a slow PC can improve your performance generally, there are also computer upgrades for gaming that will help boost your FPS. Read on for more about FPS and how to increase it for best game performance.

What is low FPS and why does it happen?

When games are displayed on your screen they consist of a fast sequence of images, much like videos. These images are called frames and are created by your video card using data it receives from the games program running on your PC. The number of frames displayed by your monitor in one second is called the frame rate or frames per second (FPS).

While videos usually run at about 24fps, games running at this speed will look jagged and feel unresponsive. This is mostly due to something known as ‘motion blur’. When filming at 24fps, a film camera will take 24 pictures in a second, but the lens will stay open long enough when taking each picture that any moving objects will slightly blur. This makes the objects appear to move smoothly into the next frame. A video game, on the other hand, will display game objects exactly where they are, without motion blur (or with only a motion blur special effect). This makes it look like they are jumping from one frame to the next.

Finding your current FPS

If you don’t know what FPS your game is running at, there are a couple of ways to find out:

• Many PC games have an option in their own Video Settings menu to display FPS
• If you use Steam or GeForce Experience, they both have settings for displaying FPS
• You can also use Fraps to show the FPS in any game

What is the optimum FPS?

The standard for good FPS is generally said to be 60, not only because games running at that frame rate will look smooth, but also because standard monitors run at 60Hz. Hertz, or the refresh rate of a monitor, is how many images the monitor can display in a single second. Having your game run at an FPS faster than your monitor refresh rate provides no added benefit as the monitor won’t be able to display the extra frames. For example, a game that runs at 90fps will only be able to display a maximum of 60fps on a 60Hz monitor.

While 60hz has been the standard for years, many new gaming monitors now have higher refresh rates such as 120Hz or 144Hz. If you buy or build a PC with a high refresh rate monitor, boosting your FPS is even more valuable because your monitor will be able to display the additional frames, creating an even smoother gameplay experience.

Don’t know the Hz of your monitor or laptop screen? Follow these steps to find out your refresh rate on Windows 10:

• Press the Windows key (usually between CTRL and ALT) + I on your keyboard to open Windows Settings
• Click ‘System’

• Scroll down and click ‘Advanced display settings’

Mrmacright How To Optimise Your Mac For Gaming

• You will see your refresh rate and screen resolution listed under each screen or monitor

(On earlier Windows versions you will find this information under 'Control Panel' > 'Appearance and Personalisation' > 'Adjust screen resolution' > 'Advanced settings' > 'Monitor')

Once you know both your monitor refresh rate and the FPS you are getting on the games you play, you will know how much you can boost your FPS before you’re limited by your monitor. Note down your FPS at this point so you will know if anything has changed once you have taken steps to increase it.

Why is my FPS so low?

There are many things that can contribute to low game performance. Here are just some examples:

• Outdated drivers
• Old or slow graphics cards
• Other programs running on the computer
• Game settings being turned up too high
• Running on a higher resolution than necessary

Increasing FPS on your PC

If you’d like to know how to increase frame rate without buying new hardware, here are the best things you can do:

Update graphic and video drivers
Graphics card manufacturers have a vested interest in ensuring that all new and popular games run well on their own hardware. AMD, NVIDIA and Intel regularly release drivers with performance improvements on their cards. So, to increase graphics card performance, it’s important to download and install the latest drivers for your card.

You can usually download the newest drivers for your graphics card on the manufacturer’s website. Follow the steps on the installation wizard to install your new driver, and make sure to check any auto-update settings to ensure your driver remains up to date in the future.

Take a look at our post on choosing the best graphics card for more information on finding out which type of card you’re currently using.

Optimize in-game settings
Maxing out the video settings will make your games look great, but unless you have the hardware to handle the calculations you may be left with a glorified slideshow. Turning down your gaming settings is a reliable way to give you a big boost in FPS.

The options available will depend entirely on the game, but important things to look out for are usually under ‘post-processing’ and ‘special effects.’ These options will add things like sunrays, bloom and motion blur to your game - taking a large amount of processing power for little impact. Similarly, game physics options like NVIDIA PhysX and AMD TressFX take a huge amount of processing power for a negligible difference.

If your FPS is still low after disabling the special effects, ‘render distance’ and ‘texture quality’ options are the ones to reduce next. Turning them down may have an effect on visual quality, but it will also have a positive impact on your FPS.

Reduce your screen resolution
Higher resolutions increase the number of pixels that your graphics card needs to render, which can reduce your FPS significantly. Ideally you want to run games at the same resolution as your screen. However, if you are struggling to maintain enough FPS even after reducing your other game settings, you may want to reduce your screen resolution. Almost every game will have the option to do this in their video settings menu.

Change graphics card settings
AMD and NVIDIA both provide control panels where you can change the performance settings on their cards. There are a couple of options in both control panels that might increase FPS in your games.

Jun 11, 2018  If you want to extend your game to an interstellar scenario, StarCraft II is one of the best strategy games you can get for Mac. Once you have constructed your base, you can start building the army. After that, you have to lead the army to beat the opponents and conquer the galaxy. The highest rated Total War game ever, Rome: Total War has to be on anyone’s best Mac strategy games list. With the classic Total War combination of empire building strategy and battle tactics, Rome: Total War allows you to lead one of Rome’s famous families all the way to the top. Feb 28, 2020  Best Strategy Games for Mac in 2020. Civilization V. Source: Aspyr Media, Inc. When it comes to turn-based strategy games, you can't do better than Sid Meier's series of Civilization. Civilization VI. Mini Motorways.

The most important option is changing your power mode to maximum, which means that your graphics card won’t try to save electricity or be more efficient by reducing processing power. For instructions on using the control panels and changing your power mode, refer to AMD’s and NVIDIA’s own websites.

Invest in FPS booster software
FPS booster software promises to increase your frame rate in games, but if you’ve already taken steps to optimize your FPS by other methods you likely won’t see much difference. What the best gaming optimization software can do is stop or slow down background processes, freeing up computing power for your game.

Microsoft added Game Mode with Windows 10, which you can access by pressing the Windows key + G when you are in a game. Game mode can reduce the impact of other programs running on your PC, although you’d be better off by closing those programs directly in Task Manager.

Razer has a software called Cortex which prioritizes processing resources for your game and does other things like turning off your computer’s CPU (central processing unit) sleep mode. Cortex is entirely free so it won’t hurt for you to try it, but don’t expect any dramatic performance improvements.

We hope that helps!

If you have any comments, please tweet us. We're@CCleaner.

Macs are great gaming machines. But even great machines need maintenance to stay in good working order. This guide will help you make software and hardware adjustments to keep your Mac as speedy as possible over the long haul so it can stay in top gaming shape.

Clean desktop clutter
A busy desktop can slow down your Mac. If you have an abundance of photos/screenshots and documents all over your screen, the OS has to render every single one of them for quick preview purposes. Put these images and documents in folders instead of leaving them on the desktop by themselves.

How To Optimize Mac For Gaming

Make sure your HD can breathe
Just like a tidy desktop, a neat Hard Drive is important as well. It is easy to fill it up to the max with personal files and games. An ideal measure is to leave 10% of your max HDD capacity free at all times. Hard drive space isn’t static, as the system and even games need extra room to shuttle around files and temporary items. To keep your hard drive happy, regularly delete unused files, apps, and games, or move large files you don’t often use to external storage.

Don’t stress your RAM
All system tasks, apps, and games use up processing power and RAM. If you are about to play a game, you may need to close some apps for best performance. You can use the OS X Activity Monitor to see how much RAM each app is using. Web browsers are notorious for using up RAM, especially if you have a lot of tabs or windows open. Having sites with Flash content or a bunch of YouTube windows open can suck up precious RAM needed to run games. If you are having trouble, try closing some apps and windows.

Restarting
Mac’s can be left on for a long time, but eventually, no amount of cleaning or app-tuning will free up the resources. You should restart your Mac at least once a month, perhaps even once a week. Many users shut down/start up daily and this is also fine. But if you are the type to leave your machine asleep a lot of the time, remember to restart it once in a while to refresh the system.

Run a cleaning application
Cleaning apps are a good way to have scheduled maintenance done on your Mac with minimal fuss. There’s only so much you can do manually, so apps like these reach all the dusty corners. They can also help you manage extensions, startup items, unused apps and more. Prosoft Drive Genius 4 is a great option to speed up, clean up and protect your Mac. Whichever app you settle on, be sure to run it a few times a month for optimal use of OS X.

Visit us daily for more updates of our free online games library.If you are a developer and would like to feature and promote your games online, you have also come to the right place! And we will review, feature and promote your games for FREE on our site and social media.Finally, we also publish mobile games through PlayPlayFun LLP. Flix and chill the game episode 1 free for mac.

Check your hardware
The better the machine, generally the better your gaming will be. If you are buying a brand-new Mac, be sure to think about your gaming needs and buy accordingly. Apple and other retailers also offer customized upgrade options or pumped up models. But for existing users, you can look to upgrade some of your hardware for better gaming. Since graphic cards are not upgradeable unless you have a Mac Pro tower (and if you do, MacSales.com offers the Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition), we are going to look at your other options.

Upgrade your HDD

Gaming isn’t just all about the processor and graphics card. Hard drives matter too. Aside from being a place to store your games, hard drives play a major role in accessing and loading your games as well. A faster drive, such as an SSD, also improves boot times and system tasks. Almost every brand-new Mac currently comes with an SSD, but not all. And if you are running an older Mac like myself, you may not have an SSD. Upgrading to an SSD is the best option if it’s in your budget. If not, look for a 7200 RPM hard drive over the standard 5400 RPM model. A quicker drive will boot up and load your games much faster.

Keep in mind that certain Mac SSDs can’t be upgraded once ordered (such as the 12” MacBook) but most can. Doing this yourself is often an advanced task, so make sure you are comfortable upgrading beforehand. MacSales.com offers a wide selection of step-b-step install videos for those looking for some assistance.

Upgrade your RAM
RAM plays an important part in your games running smoothly and even what kind of games you can play at all. Over time, the importance increases as games and operating systems become increasingly demanding.

Casual gamers will likely be OK with 4GB of RAM, but if you are looking to do some power gaming or play AAA titles, you will want to look to upgrade to 8GB or 16GB of RAM. If you find your Mac is running slow, upgrading your RAM can also help. The MacSales.com My Upgrades three step-process will help you find out exactly how much RAM your Mac can take. It may be more than you thought.

Related article:Getting the right amount of memory for your Mac

Explore Racing games for macOS on itch.io. Find Racing games for macOS like art of rally, FFX Runner HD, Last Car Standing, Tesla Motors Simulator, SuperTuxKart on itch.io, the indie game hosting marketplace. A free game where you can drive cars from Tesla. A game where you’re tethered to your best friend,. Best free driving games for mac.

In-Game
Once you are actually in a game, what can be done if you want better performance? Most, but not all games allow you to tweak the graphical and video experience extensively to suit your machine. Your first stop should be heading over to Graphics/Video options in a game and tweak the settings. While a full guide to graphics options is beyond the scope of this article, I can make a few suggestions:

• The screen resolution you choose to play at (in the game, not desktop) can have a significant impact on performance. Raise or lower this as needed to test out where you can land smoothly. Testing between running full-screen, full-screen-windowed, or just windowed mode can also help.
• Texture quality and Shadow quality are some of the most demanding options in games. Try lowering these two options in particular if your game is struggling to run well.
• There is usually also presets such as Low/Medium/High for overall settings you can try toggling between.
• You can always use the Mac FPS Counter app to test game performance, too.

Have suggestions of your own for optimizing your Mac for gaming? Let us know in the comments section.

How To Optimize My Mac For Gaming

Further Reading: