Optimise Windows for Gaming
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DISABLE HARDWARE ACCELERATION ON MOUSE If you’re a serious gamer, you’ve probably done this already. Hardware acceleration for computer mice smooths out the overall pointer experience by making your cursor move further if you move the physical mouse faster, but this can be ruinous in first-person shooters, where snap movements to aim at a target can overshoot their mark. Hop into the Control Panel and select “Hardware and Sound,” then find your mouse settings. Under “Pointer Options,” you can deselect “Enhance pointer precision” – this is what Windows 10 calls in-OS hardware acceleration. You can tweak baseline mouse sensitivity here, too, although we recommend doing that via the physical DPI controls on a gaming mouse.
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BLOCK AUTO-UPDATES IN GAME LAUNCHERS This is a must-have, particularly if you’re on a metered Internet connection. Steam is easy enough; select “Downloads” under “Steam Settings,” and toggle the settings to your heart’s content. In particular, we advise unchecking “Allow downloads during gameplay” if you play online games. Origin and Epic don’t have quite the same array of choices, but do still allow for blocking auto-updates; Epic even allows you to tweak update choices on a per-game basis.
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REVERT GAME VERSION This is a somewhat niche tip, but it can be a lifesaver if an update tanks one of your games. Steam has a beta feature – not available in every game, but it’s easy to check – that allows you to roll back your game version to a previous update. Right-click the game in your library, select “Properties,” and navigate to the “Betas” tab. From here, you can opt in to older versions of the game in the drop-down menu, let the game update, and boom – you’re running a previous update. It doesn’t work for most online multiplayer games, of course; you need to be running the same version as everyone else.
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DISABLE FOCUS ASSIST This is the big one: Get rid of Focus Assist. Have you ever been midway through a high-stakes online match, only to be yanked out of it as Windows tabs you back to the desktop to inform you that you’ve received an email from your co-worker? Yeah, that’s got to stop. Find the “Focus Assist” tab under “System Settings,” and slap it to “Alarms only” – there’s no option to turn it off completely, but you can also disable it during gameplay or screen sharing. Lastly, you can deactivate the option to show you “what you missed” when you return to the desktop; an unnecessary irritant, for our money.
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KEEP YOUR GPU DRIVERS UP TO DATE Another potentially obvious tip for gamers is to keep your GPU drivers up to date. No, that doesn’t mean installing GeForce Experience – the clutter-free way to do this is simply to head to the manufacturer’s website and locate the most recent drivers for your GPU. Both AMD and Nvidia have handy search functions to help you find your exact GPU, and what drivers it needs. Remember to select the “Game Ready” drivers if you’re using a newer Nvidia card, rather than the “Studio” version.
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ENABLE GAME MODE A simple change to make, although it isn’t likely to improve game performance by much on most systems. Under “Gaming Settings,” find “Game Mode.” Make sure this is toggled on and your PC will manage temperature and available memory better to (theoretically) improve frame rates in games. While we’re not sure it really boosts frame rates, it does also block Windows Update from doing anything while you’re in-game. It’s possible that some games see more stable frame rates – perhaps Microsoft’s own stuff, as Game Mode is officially listed as an Xbox-branded tool.
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INSTALL DIRECTX 12 You might already have DX12 installed, but there’s an easy way to check if you do have the latest version of the widely used Microsoft API tool. Hit the Windows key and R to open the Run function, then type “dxdiag” (again, no quotes), and hit Enter. This should bring up the DirectX Diagnostic Tool; on the bottom of the page, it shows you which version of DX you have installed. If DX12 isn’t installed, go check your Windows Updates!