15 Powerful tips to optimize Windows 10 for gaming

No doubt, Windows 10 provides an amazing user experience. The fancy transitions, colorful layouts are all very charming. Windows has come up with Windows 10 containing some great features to make the gaming on PC easier and seamless than before. Yes, now you can play games on Windows 10 without much efforts. But if you are not able to play games on Windows 10 smoothly then you need to optimize your Windows 10 system for gaming. So here's the 15 tips to optimize Windows 10 for gaming...



1. Uninstall unnecessary programs

To improve the gaming on PC and optimize your Windows 10 for the best gaming performance, it is necessary that your Windows 10 does have a sufficient space on the disk. As if there is no sufficient storage space in your system then all the programs whether it is a game or Windows application will not work properly and slows down its performance.

So, to free up space, the best thing is to uninstall all the unnecessary and unwanted programs which you never use on your Windows 10 PC. Because whether you run them or not, they use up the storage. Simply go to Control Panel>> Programs & features>> Uninstall a program, and then right click on the application which you want to uninstall and click Uninstall button.

2. Disable Automatic Updates

By default, the automatic updates function is always enabled. What it actually does is to automatically updates your operating system to make it up-to-date always. It is also beneficial for you as you will get the latest features and security.

But on the other hand, it is not good for gaming on PC as it slows down the performance of PC gaming. The reason behind this is pretty clear that the automatic updates takes place in the background and uses your internet connection and processing speed.

So, obviously, if you are playing games online then it will slow it down as the internet is also being used for the Windows updates. Whenever Windows updates itself automatically then there are many repetitive restarts of the Windows which may cause losing your in-game progress. So, it is good to disable the automatic updates.

3. Disable Nagle’s Algorithm

Windows contains Nagle’s algorithm for efficient data transfer. It combines several small packets into a single large one just to improve the efficiency of data transmission. Though it is good for efficient data transfer it slows down the internet connection and hence incincreasese latency while playing online games. By default, it is always enabled in Windows but you can easily disable it. Just follow the below steps.

1. Press win+R, type Regedit and hit enter.
2. In the new window which is Registry editor, just go to the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces
3. You will get many files in the Interface folder. Find the one which contains your IP address.
4. After you find the required file, right click on it and create two new DWORD. Name of them as TcpAckFrequency and the another one as TcpNoDelay. After creating both simply double-click on it and set their parameters as 1.
5. That’s it. Nagle’s Algorithm will be disabled immediately.

4. Adjust PC for the best performance

Windows 10 is best known for its excellent flat designs and the amazing transitions and animation effects. They provide a great user experience. But, as there is some flaw in everything on the Earth, the same thing applies to the animation and transitions effects of the Windows 10.

Though they look beautiful but these effects can also slow down the overall performance of your system and will hamper your gaming. So, to optimize Windows 10 for gaming you need to disable these animations and set your PC to best performance instead of best appearance.  For doing the same follow the below steps.

1. Type Performance on Windows start menu search box and click on the “Adjust the performance and the appearance of Windows” option.
2. Now select “Adjust for best performance” and hit Apply button then click OK.

5. System Gaming Responsiveness

You can also enable this tweak in order to boost the gaming on Window 10. Actually, there are many games which use MMCSS which stands for Multimedia Class Scheduler. This service ensures prioritized CPU resources without denying CPU resources to lower-prioritized background programs. You can enable this tweak by following the below steps.

1. First, press win+R, type Regedit and then hit enter.
2. Now go to the following folder path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile.
3. There, you need to create a new DWORD, name it as SystemResponsiveness and then set its hexadecimal value as 00000000.

You can also change the value of some services in order to change the priority of games.

1. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\Tasks\Games.
2. Now, Change the value of GPU Priority to 8, Priority to 6, Scheduling Category to high.

6. Customize the Power Option

Power option also helps you to improve the performance of Windows 10 PC and hence will also optimize it for gaming smoothly. But some of the people see a huge difference in the performance after adjusting the power option whereas some don’t notice big differences. So, it better to check by yourself whether it works for your PC or not.

Simply go to control Panel>> System & security>> power options>> High performance. This will optimize the performance of you Windows 10 for PC and at the same it the energy usage will be higher too, but that doesn’t seems to be a problem as you are getting high-performance Windows 10 which is necessary for playing games lag free.

7. Adjust Game settings

You can also adjust the game settings in your system to boost its performance. Every game comes with its own settings and the manufacturer makes sure that the settings are adjusted to the highest performance so that your Graphic card can perform to its highest potential. But some games may come with the lowest settings which restrict the Graphic card to performs to its fullest. So, you can change the game settings for maximum performance.

8. Update the drivers

Drivers are the essential parts of our system and they make it work properly. For every hardware, you need to install its driver in order to communicate and perform better. And if you are looking to optimize your Windows 10 for gaming then the most important driver update is the Graphic card drivers. Whether it is old or new, continually updating the Graphic card driver will enable it to use its full potential. If you do not update it regularly then you will face many problems such as low frame rate and sometimes it will not allow you to start a game.

To check and update drivers simply go to Device manager and then update the required driver by right clicking on them and then select Update drivers. There are two ways to update drivers. You can directly update the driver just from the windows itself. And the other option is to visit the manufacturer’s website and get the up to date drivers from there. You can update all the drivers but the most important drivers which need to be updated are as follows.

• Graphic Card driver
• Motherboard Chipset driver
• Motherboard Networking/LAN drivers
• Motherboard USB drivers 
• Motherboard audio drivers

9. Install DirectX 12

To take your gaming experience to a whole new level, just install DirectX 12 on your system. It is the Microsoft’s most popular API tool which can boost the gaming performance on your PC like never before. With the help of DirectX 12, you can boost the amount of work given to the Graphic card and make it done in lesser time. It lets your GPU multitask and hence saves rendering time, reduces latency, and gets more frame rate. Multi-threading command buffer recording and asynchronous shaders are the two evolutionary features of DirectX 12.

10. Remove Bloatware

Windows 1o comes with a handful of pre-installed applications and these applications are called bloatware because these pre-installed programs are of no use to the user. They only eat up the space of the hard disk and contribute to lower performance of your PC. So, if you uninstall these bloatware, you will be able to boost your Windows 10 peformance to some extent.

You can uninstall the bloatware by using some third-party tool such as Uninstaller Pro. Simply install this software on your system and then scan all the unnecessary programs installed in our Windows 10. After then you can select all programs or apps you want to remove by clicking the Remove button. It is a great application for remove all the crap from your system.

11. TCP Optimizer 4

CP Optimizer is quite helpful for online gaming. This software lets you tweak your Rig & Network adapter without even going through the Registry editor.

You only need to download TCP Optimizer 4, right-click on it and run it as administrator. Now you can set the network speed and the other options in the software settings.

12. Network Throttling index

To get the maximum efficiency of your Windows 10 for gaming you need to disable Network Throttling Algorithm. But what is Network Throttling index? Well, let me tell you that Windows has implement this mechanism for processing of network for the resource intensive task. But it is better to disable the throttling to improve the performance of Windows 10 for gaming.

To disable it simply follow these steps.

1. 
   
2. Open run command, type Regedit and then press enter key.
3. Now, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile.
4. In system Profile, you need to create a new DWORD, name it as NetworkThrottlingIndex and set its hexadecimal value as ffffffff. This will disable throttling completely.

13. Disable Onedrive

If you do not use Onedrive then simply disable it. This application uses much bandwidth and hence other programs tend to suffer. To disable it simply right click on the Onedrive icon which you can find on your taskbar and then click Exit.

14. Check and fix HDD errors

To Windows 10 for gaming, you should always check your HDD for bugs and errors. For this, just type ChkDsk in the run command and hit enter. After that just set the tool as “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors” and “Automatically fix registry error” too.

15. Install Game booster software

You can even use Game booster software to improve the overall performance of your gaming on Windows 10. If you do not want to go through all these manual settings in order to boost your Windows 10 for gaming then these game boosters will surely help you out. These provide more resource to your game by shutting down the unwanted services. Some of the best game boosters for Windows 10 are Razor Game Booster, Wise Game Booster, Game Fire, Toolwiz game boost etc.

Please note that these tips cannot replace the necessary hardware required for intensive gaming. You will still need high RAM and a powerful GPU for HD games and online gaming.

Please comment down below for any questions or suggestions :)