How to Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming

Learn How to Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming to boost up your game-play and performance like never before.

Windows is one of the most favorite platform for the professional PC gamers.It offers flexibility and extensive cool options and gadget support to make gaming a hell fun. All the gamers play games on a specific version of Windows like Windows 7, Windows 8 and now finally Windows 10. As we all know that Microsoft suspended support for the Windows 7 now and for that reason most of the users and gamers have migrated to the new Windows 10.

After the Windows 7 support suspension, Windows 10 got to it’s peak for it’s more extensive and powerful features. It’s beautiful and attractive graphics and powerful gaming support attracted the gamers to switch to this awesome platform now.

As most of the new gamers are coming to Windows 10 family and in need to optimize PC for better gaming performance. So, in this article we are going to share all the methods for how to optimize windows 10 for Gaming. In order to get the best gaming experience, you must optimize the system following all these essential steps for maximum performance.

Learn How to Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming for Maximum Performance

These are the best steps you can perform on your Windows 10 device to optimize for gaming to deliver maximum performance. Follow all the steps and squeeze all the gaming benefits from Windows 10 to experience the gaming like never before.

  1. Optimize Windows 10 With Game Mode
  2. Disable Nagle’s Algorithm
  3. Disable Windows Auto-Updates
  4. Disable Steam Auto-Updates
  5. User Maximum High Performance Power Plan
  6. Keep Your GPU Drivers Up to Date
  7. Install DirectX 12

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With these simple 7 steps you can really boost up your gameplay to an ultimate level. Dive into each step of how to optimize Windows 10 for gaming and boost up your game performance to maximum. Make sure to follow the instructions properly.

1. Optimize Windows 10 With Game Mode

Good news for gamers, Windows 10 has been designed keeping the gaming needs in mind. It is featured and packed with a prebuilt game mode that optimize games automatically and offer the best performance without any problem.

It’s very easy to activate the Game Mode. Jump into the Game Mode of Windows 10 for gaming optimization and better performance. Go to Start Menu >> Settings. Once in the Settings window, search for Game Mode in the upper right search bar. Select it and click on the Control Game Mode for Optimizations. Click on the Game Mode on the Gaming screen and get the automatic gaming experience optimized with this Windows 10 awesome feature.

Learn How to Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming using Game Mode

Unfortunately, not all the windows 10 versions support Game Mode. But if you see Game Mode in settings, it’s mean your Windows version is supported for Game Mode and to play the games with switching on game mode will turn off the Windows Updates to achieve the maximum frame rate for better gaming performance.

2. Disable Nagle’s Algorithm

Nagle’s algorithm improves efficiency of the data packet transmission over the networks by reducing the number of packets that makes internet connection to work smoothly.

As it’s good for smoother internet, it also has consequences for the gaming performance. It involves latency issues for the online gaming. In order to overcome this issue, we need to disable Nagle’s algorithm for better gaming performance.

To turn off the Nagle’s algorithm might look a bit complex but actually it’s not if you follow all the steps accordingly.

  • To disable Nagle’s algorithm, go to Start Menu and type regedit in the search box. Open up the propagated result Regedit. (Regedit or Windows Registry contains all the Windows features registry, so be careful to play with Regedit).
  • To make it quick, just copy the following file path in to the address bar to jump to Nagle’s folder.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces
Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming by Disabling Nagle's Algorithm
  • Now you will see a tree of folders on the left side of Window with different names including numbers. To find out the exact file which we needed, make sure to match IP address with the DhcpIPAddress in the one these listed files. To check your IP address, simply go to Start and type cmd, now in the Command Prompt, type ipconfig and hit enter. It will display your network information including the IP address. IP address will be as IPv4. Note that IP and match it with the listed files in Windows Registry.
  • Once you have found the file that contains the your IP address, right click on that folder and click New and select DWORD (32 bit) Value.
  • Make two DWORD values, one named as TcpAckFrequency and the second one as TCPNoDelay.
  • After creating the values, double click on each of these and set their parameters to 1.

All done. You have successfully disabled the Nagle’s algorithm. If you wanted to revert the changes, you can simply change the values to 0 for both of these.

3. Disable Windows Auto Updates

One of the most risky situation is, you are playing the game and Windows installs the updates and reboots the system automatically without any notice popup or any alert. That can be very problematic for the gaming as it can hurt your rankings badly or even can put your team into hard time during the game.

Windows Updates also keeps on downloading the updates that makes the internet connection to slow down and consumes large amount of data. It’s auto downloading affects the game performance as well for it’s active background downloading that makes the game to lag. So, to overcome this issue, you need to turn off the Windows automatic updates or you can set a specific schedule for the updates which will keep your machine up to date and even won’t affect the gaming performance. We would recommend to set a update time interval instead of turning it off completely, so Windows can update to keep your system secure from the privacy threats and other viruses as well.

By setting the active hours, you inform the Windows not to update or do any activity in that specific time frame. So set your active hours when you do the gaming. You can set maximum of 18 active hours, rest 6 hours will be allocated to the Windows updates and installations.

Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming using Setting Active Hours

In order to set the active hours, go to Start Menu > Settings > Update & Security and click on Change Active Hours and choose the active hours as per your feasibility.

Also don’t forget to turn off the automatic restart. Go to Windows Update > Advanced Options and turn on the option ‘We’ll show a reminder when we’re going to restart’. It will make prompt the alert before restarting the computer. You can even delay the restart from that too.

4. Disable Steam Auto Updates

Steam is the same as of Windows updates, but it only updates the games. Steams updates all the games automatically including all the games you have not even touched for long. These background updates drain up the computer memory and results in slowing down the gaming performance.

To disable Steam from automatic game updates while you are going to play the game, open up your Steam client and navigate to Steam > Settings > Downloads and uncheck the Allow downloads during the gameplay option.

Disable Steam Updates to Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming

Also, sometimes during the automatic game updates, some new bugs occur in the game and sometimes make problem in running the game too. If you encounter this sort of issue, you can roll back to the older version of the game from Steam settings as well. To do so, right click on the affected game and choose Properties and navigate to Betas tab. Choose the version of the game from the drop down menu that was working fine for you.

Update the games manually to make sure everything is going accordingly and you can easily find out if the problem caused by the update.

Disable Steam Updates to Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming 2

To disable Steam for un-used games updates, you can right click on each game and select it’s Properties. Navigate to Updates tab and from the drop down menu, select the Only update game when I launch it option.

5. Use a Maximum High Performance Power Plan

For optimizing Windows 10 for gaming, switching to a maximum power plan is one of the best things to do. Power plans allows to change any power setting as you want it to. It’s designed to manage the power configurations. On the laptops, you might not get as much high performance as a desktop PC can get form this option as laptops come up with battery and power plans might make the battery to drain up fast. So, on the other hand desktop is totally free of this worry, and power settings can be adjusted to the maximum of high performance scale that consumes more energy and makes the system to perform better.

Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming with High Performance Power Plan

To change or create a power plan, go to Windows > Settings and choose Power & Sleep Settings. You can search for ‘power‘ in the top search bar and select the Power & Sleep Settings. Head to Additional Power Settings. Click on Create a power plan and select the High Performance option. Name your power plan to any name you like to.

6. Keep Your GPU Drivers Up to Date

When it comes to gaming, GPU or Graphical Processing Unit is one of the most important part for better performance. As every gaming PC comes up with GPU, it’s important to keep the drivers up to date for it’s optimum gaming performance. Every updated driver comes with some new bug fixes and make the machine free from other system glitches. So, make sure to update the drivers whenever new one is released.

Most of the devices and peripherals driver updated automatically in Windows 10 but it doesn’t update drivers for GPU as their respective manufacturers create their own software that support the GPU and offer different configuration options to adjust settings accordingly. Keep an eye on and whenever GPU control panel asks for an update, just allow it to keep your GPU drivers up to date for maximum performance. Updating to new version opens up many new features that can enhance the gaming experience.

Some of the GPU’s like GeForce come up with even Game Capture and Streaming Softwares as well for online game streaming as you play and even offer the ready to play game software and drivers. Drivers can also be updated from the Windows properties or you can update from their official website. In case you don’t know your GPU model and specs, you can find that out by Right Click on the desktop and select Display Settings. Click Advanced Display Settings and click on Display Adapter Properties.

Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming using GPU Driver Update

Following are the top manufacturers that offer the high performance dedicated gaming GPUs.

  • NVIDIA GeForce
  • AMD Raedon
  • Intel Graphics

7. Install DirectX 12

DirectX is a must to have driver to run the games and achieve the best performance. It’s a required driver for the Windows to play games that communicate with the machine how to work with games. DirectX 12 is the most updated version of DirectX with a lot upgrades and improvements. It makes the GPU to work at a balanced way with multiple cores of a CPU and even make the higher frame rate that offer the better graphics and performance as well. The new

DirectX 12 have been tested and shown an improvement of up to 300% than it’s predecessors in gaming performance. To avail this high performance through DirectX 12, game needs to be developed using this new DirectX version too. Now a days almost every new game comes compatible with it.

To make sure you are running a latest updated version of DirectX, press the Windows Key + R and type dxdiag and hit OK. It will open up DirectX Diagnostic tool. You will be able to see the current running version of DirectX on your computer. If it’s not the latest DirectX 12, update it ASAP to get benefit and improved gaming experience.

8. Tweaking Windows 10 Visual Effects

Windows visual effects can make your gaming performance slower than usual. Windows offer high quality display that makes it very attractive and user friendly. But when it comes to gaming, it’s GUI (Graphical User Interface) can drain up the power and can even make the machine slower with a rise in temperature.

Usually these Windows GUI conflicts with the Gaming interface. To overcome this visual effects conflict to avoid low performance issue, you can optimized Windows 10 for gaming using a set of configurations.

To tweak with visual effects for better performance, go to Windows > Settings and type Performance in the search bar. Choose the Adjust Appearance and Performance of Windows option from the search results. Next select Adjust for Best Performance and hit the Apply button. Now move to the Advanced tab and make sure to choose Adjust for Best Performance for programs too in this tab.

Optimize Windows 10 for Gaming by Tweaking Visuals

Conclusion

All right. Now you know all how to optimize windows 10 for gaming perfectly. You have made all the configurations that will offer you the best gaming performance like you never had. These 7 optimization tips will blow your mind away with an ultimate and smooth game-play.

Gaming performance can be enhanced using some powerful hardware like upgrading your GPU or adding up a gaming accessory that can make your gaming better than before. You can check out the best PC gaming accessories for ultimate gaming setup.

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