The Ultimate Sweatlord's Guide to PC Optimization

[DrunkenSpartan]

In response to some feedback, I've decided to put this here before the introduction. Keep a close eye on your temperature when conducting the more advanced maneuvers in this guide. I recommend a running temperature of no higher than 75 degrees Centigrade. Above this you may start to notice performance decreases. Anything above 90 degrees Centigrade is straight up dangerous.




In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I've decided to revisit a topic that has given many pc users the slip. The phrase "how to speed up computer" has approximately 8,100 searches on google, yahoo and other search engines every single month, yet for most there is nothing in the way of definitive answers. While cleaning up unused files, defragging your hard drive and deleting browser history are often recommended, these seldom increase gaming performance by any noticeable amount. With that discrepancy between what is desired and what is achieved in mind, I humbly present The Ultimate Sweatlord's Guide to PC Optimization.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Table of Contents

1.1 Intro
1.2 Contents
1.3 A Word of Caution
1.4 PC Optimization Made Easy- Let's Start With the Internet
1.5 Benchmarks
1.6 Captain Obvious Over Here
1.7 Help, I'm Steppin' Into the Twilight Zone - Overclocking Your GPU
1.8 Overclocking Your...Monitor?
1.9 A Word About Overclocking CPU and RAM
2.0 Miscellaneous Ways to Boost Performance
2.1 Conclusion
2.2 Epilogue - Steam Optimization
2.3 Epilogue Vol. 2: Killing Cortana

[DrunkenSpartan]

First, a word of caution. I will do my best to start with the simplest methods to improve PC performance and work up to the most advanced. In that manner I hope that the average PC user will still be able to make use of this guide without having to conduct risky maneuvers on their machines which may cause components to catastrophically fail if not executed properly. I have also done my best to test each of these methods numerous times over the past two weeks to ensure stability and compatibility. That said, however, the more advanced techniques displayed in this guide however have the very real potential to fundamentally harm your computer if performed improperly. You have been warned. Do not hold me liable if your PC no longer works after you overclocked the GPU by 3000MHz because "that sounds like a cool number". Also note that this guide only works with Windows 10.

[DrunkenSpartan]

PC Optimization Made Easy- Let's Start With the Internet

Every one of us has had to deal with extremely slow internet at one time or another. While it is true that there is no way to (legally) increase the speed of your internet past what you pay your ISP for, the vast majority of times users are not receiving close to the advertised speeds they paid for. There is a very simple way to test this. Simply call your Internet Service Provider and confirm the speed package you have purchased. Then use a speedtest such as https://www.speedtest.net/ by Ookla. While not technically best, Ookla's speedtest is free and extremely user friendly. It will usually give you a ping between you and the nearest server, then calculate your download and upload rate. If you notice that your download and upload rates on speedtest are significantly lower than what you pay your ISP for, it is time to start optimizing your internet.

Now, the first thing you want to do when optimizing your internet is to make sure that no greedy freeloaders are hogging your wifi. To do this, simply pull up your router's webpage by typing in the router's ip address into your web browser's address bar. Your router's default ip address is located in your router manual. Alternatively, the cmd command "ipconfig" can locate your router's ip address.

Once logged into your router's web interface, locate a tab that should say something akin to "devices". Here you will be able to see a list of devices connected to your internet. If you have any unknown devices connected, it may be time to change the wifi password, or failing that, manually lock the unknown device out of your internet. Remember that if you change the wifi password, you will have to re-enter the new password to all of your previously connected devices. Once the offending device is no longer connected to your internet, it is time to proceed to the next step.

In this next step we will attempt to modify what is called a "DNS Server". Don't be alarmed, however, as this is a relatively straightforward and easy method to use. To modify your DNS server, go to the Control Panel, then Network and Sharing Center, then Change Adapter Settings. Right click on the internet you are using, and select Properties. Go down to Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), select to highlight it, make sure that the box is checked, then select Properties. In the bottom half of this new window, click on "Use the following DNS server addresses:". From there, head to https://www.lifewire.com/free-and-public-dns-servers-2626062 and choose a DNS server address listed on the website. Personally I have experienced the fastest test times with Cloudfare, however, OpenDNS and Google's own DNS are usually in the same league. Type in the Preferred and Alternate DNS server addresses in their respective fields in your settings. Then click OK, and your DNS server is modified.


Next, we will attempt to turn off background apps which are eating into your bandwidth little by little. Left click on your start menu and enter Settings. Enter Privacy settings, find Background Apps, and select it. Then go through the applications listed and deselect which apps you want to disable. This will usually result in a minor amount of bandwidth being freed, however if you are not sure which apps to modify, feel free to skip this step.


After disabling background apps to free up a minor amount of bandwidth, we want to disable something called Peer to Peer updates. To do this, simply type in "Delivery Optimization settings" into your start menu's search bar. Turn "Allow downloads from other PCs" off. It's as simple as that and can sometimes free up significant amounts of bandwidth in some cases.

In the more advanced section we will disable Large Send Offload. Large Send Offload theoretically reduces overhead but usually ends up costing minor amounts of performance. To disable it, in the search bar type "Device Manager" and select it. Go down to "Network Adapters", and click the arrow to expand it. In the list, double click on your network card. If you are using Ethernet, select Ethernet controller. If you connect via wifi, connect via wifi. From here, go to the Advanced tab, and in the list select "Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4)", and set the value to Disabled. Repeat with "Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6)". When you are finished, click OK.

Lastly, we will adjust the amount of internet bandwidth allocated to Windows 10. The typical user usually only has access to approximately 80% of their internet bandwidth. Yes, you read that right, 80%. The other 20% is allocated to that greedy bandwidth grabbing Windows 10. To steal that 20% back, you will need to enable something called "Group Policy Editor", which by default is only available on the Pro edition of Windows 10. To enable it on Windows 10 Home, head https://www.itechtics.com/enable-gpedit-windows-10-home/ and select "Method #2". Download the GPEdit Enabler from the provided link, then extract the files to a regular folder. Right click the gpedit-enabler.bat and select Run as Administrator. Your installation process should start momentarily. It will repeat in a loop, but fear not, this is not a bug or a virus. Simply restart the computer while keeping this loop going (do not exit out of the CMD) and upon restart your Group Policy Editor will be available on Windows 10 home.

Now that the easy part of this method is out of the way, select the Run window and type in "gpedit.msc". Hit enter and it should pull up the Group Policy Editor. Be careful in this window. In the left pane click on "Computer Configuration". In the right pane, double click on "Administrative Templates". Double click Network, then double click QoS Packet Scheduler. Double click on "limit reservable bandwidth" and then select "Enabled". Change the bandwidth limit to 0. When you're finished, click Apply then OK to exit. In my experience this will significantly increase your internet speed if executed properly.

Typically after each of these steps you will want to run Speedtest by Ookla again to see exactly whether or not your internet has improved at all. It is also worth noting that I have experimented with other methods such as disabling Nagle's algorithm and using Haste. In my experience Haste only works if you have an unusually circuitous ISP route and disabling Nagle's algorithm ironically slowed down my internet rather than increased its speed. The methods I have outlined on the other hand have all been tested by myself and work fairly well at increasing internet speed. In practical application I was able to increase download speed by 45% and am now able to use Netflix, YouTube, Spotify at the same time while also gaming, without any issues. Note that in most cases none of these steps will actually lower your in-game ping, as that is usually limited by your distance to the game server.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Benchmarks

Benchmarks are in a very simple definition a method used to determine PC performance. While they provide many useful pieces of data to sophisticated users, the average joe can use PC Benchmarks to determine just how much of an improvement they will see with PC tweaking. For the purposes of this guide, I heavily recommend 3DMark. It is currently on sale on Steam for less than $5USD, and it is very useful in determining whether or not gaming performance has been impacted by any of your tweaks. Furthermore, a benchmark such as 3DMark is necessary for some of the more advanced options I will discuss later, such as GPU overclocking.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Captain Obvious Over Here

Now that we've looked into making the most out of our existing internet connection, and have a decent benchmark software, it's time to start tinkering with the other bits and pieces of our gaming experience. The first method to increasing PC performance I will list here involves obtaining more RAM. Random Access Memory has been around for decades, and yet most people are still confused on how it works and how much of it they need. Typically for the casual gamer, 8GB of DDR4 is plenty. Modern RAM is more powerful than the old DDR3 of your youth, and unless you are using RAM intensive applications, 8GB of modern RAM is more than sufficient. If you wish to add more RAM to your PC, however, you will need a couple of things. Most important of which is the exact type of RAM your current PC has at the moment. To pull this up simply visit https://www.hwinfo.com/download/ and download HWiNFO for Windows 10. Open the application once downloaded and look for a section that says "Memory Modules". This will contain the exact type of RAM which is currently in your PC. In practice I have found it easiest to simply copy-paste this model number into EBay and purchase another equally sized stick of it (assuming you have free memory nodes available). You can find out how to physically install the RAM on numerous internet sites, and as it varies from system to system, that is beyond the scope of this guide.

Next, if you can, invest in a Solid State Driver (SSD) over an HDD ("mechanical whirry-thingy that I kick when the pc malfunctions"). If you can afford it an SSD will drastically decrease load times for you. For example, with an SSD Windows boots up in approximately 4-6 seconds for me, and Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars boots up in approximately 3-7 seconds depending on other factors. When I used an HDD I typically had to wait for about a minute each. This is the only component I don't mind spending a bit of money on, as they are well worth it and aren't usually very expensive.


I will spare you the agony of suggesting "hee hee le noob why you no buy better Grafix Card". For most of us, myself included, this is simply not an option due to cost.

Next on the Captain Obvious list is defragmenting your hard drive. If you still use a mechanical (HDD) drive, regularly defragmenting it is a definite step in the right direction. To do this, simply type in "Defragment and Optimize Drives" and follow the process to defragment your hard drive. Be patient as this will usually take some time, but it can decrease loading times for those who still have an older HDD.

Most obvious, perhaps, is also physically cleaning your PC. Over time dust builds up in vents and causes your PC to not perform as well. Simply purchase a $5USD can of compressed air for PC cleaning and tell those dust bunnies to move on out.

Another obvious yet often overlooked way to increase PC performance is to make sure you are running on "High performance" power options, particularly if you are using a desktop. To check the battery setting of your computer, head to Control Panel, then Hardware and Sound, then Power Options, then, if not enabled, enable "High performance" mode. This will drain the battery faster if you are using a laptop, but it will increase performance somewhat.

Finally on the list of obvious things one could do to boost performance is a dedicated PC optimizer. Personally I find the majority of these things superfluous junk and could not care less about them. AVG's TuneUp, on the other hand, is a reasonable application that does offer some minor performance increases on older systems. It has a 60 day free trial and you can get it by visiting https://www.avg.com/en-us/download-thank-you.php?product=GSE-2019 .

[DrunkenSpartan]

Help, I'm Steppin' Into the Twilight Zone - Overclocking Your GPU

If you've read this far you are either desperate for reading material or ready to take your PC tweaking to the next level. If the latter is true, this is likely the section you've been waiting for. Overclocking is in very simple terms making something run faster than it was originally designed for. With that in mind, what can you overclock? Well, almost anything as it turns out. We'll start with the simplest and the method that is going to have the most noticeable improvement for most people - GPU overclocking.


GPU overclocking in this day and age is very simple and usually safe. The first thing you're going to need (aside from making sure you have a dedicated graphics card and not integrated graphics) is an overclocking tool. I personally prefer MSI's Afterburner. Visit https://www.msi.com/page/afterburner to download Afterburner and then follow the instructions to start it up. Be very careful in these settings, as tweaking the GPU too much can cause your PC to crash, or in older systems, heat up to the point of components melting. The second thing you'll need, as I've mentioned earlier, is a benchmark software such as 3DMark. Once you've got these two things installed, it's time to get to work.


Once you've booted up MSI Afterburner, you'll notice a number of settings on a sliding scale. The most important of these are the Core Clock (Mhz), and the Memory Clock (MHz) settings. Once you have the flat, unaltered numbers, run 3DMark and save the results of a benchmark. I personally prefer the FireStrike benchmark as it is more advanced than anything Warband can produce but is not as taxing as TimeSpy. Once you have these base results, it's time to get to tweaking. Slowly adjust the GPU's core clock by a rate of about 5%. At each 5% interval, run the benchmark again and record the results. Be very patient with this method, and do not jump right to a 25% overclock. I personally recommend no more than a 10-15% GPU overclock for most systems, and my personal computer has about a 7% overclock on the GPU for heat dissipation reasons. Keep slowly adjusting the core clock frequency until either you start to achieve glitches, Windows Freezes, Reboots, Crashes, or your heat gets out of control. I personally recommend keeping a close eye on temperature and recommend no higher than a 75 degrees centigrade setup. At temperatures higher than this I've noticed performance drop and anything above 90C is straight up dangerous.

Once you hit your limit, lower this amount by about 20MHz and keep it there for the core clock. This is your new speed. Assuming your heating situation is under control and performance is markedly improved on the benchmark tests, it's time to tweak with the memory. Once you've found a stable core clock speed, repeat the process with the memory clock, slowly raising the frequency by 5% until you start to experience glitches or the heat becomes too great to continue.

Remember to benchmark EACH setting increase to ensure stability. Once you've settled on a good overclock amount, turn on a game and start playing for a couple hours. Keep a close watch on that pesky temperature and see if you notice any issues with gameplay. Typically the average person with a dedicated GPU can squeeze between 5-10% increased performance out of their system in this method with no real downsides (aside from perhaps longevity of parts). I personally have gained approximately 10% more performance by overclocking my GPU. More advanced users with higher end desktops can sometimes achieve an overclock of 20% or higher, but I do not recommend this for beginners.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Overclocking Your....Monitor?

Yes you read that right ladies and gentlemen, you can in some cases overclock your PC monitor beyond its factory settings. I would advise caution with this method, however, as any overclocking voids manufacturer warranty and overclocking a monitor only works at a stable level if it is particularly well built. With this in mind, let's get to the how-to.

The first thing you're going to need is to grab a copy of ToastyX's Custom Resolution Utility. Visit https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU and download the utility, then run it. Once installed, open it and select your current monitor from the menu at the top left. Then go down to the section that says "Frequency" and view what refresh rate you currently have on your monitor. Most average monitors will have a refresh rate of 60Hz, meaning the screen flickers 60 times every second and appears as a solid image to the naked eye. To increase this amount, simply type in a higher number into the "Refresh rate" tab, and click OK. As with graphics overclocking I heavily advise starting small and working your way up. Personally I went from 60Hz to 75Hz with no difficulty, but at 96Hz my computer started to rapidly heat up (laptop), and I lowered the refresh rate again to 75 to maintain stability. Once you've selected your new refresh rate, click OK and restart your PC.

Once your PC is rebooted it should be running in the new frequency. To test the stability of this before playing a game, head to https://www.testufo.com/# and check to make sure that your new framerate is both being used and is stable. If this checks out you can boot up a game and you should notice smoother gameplay. If your gameplay stutters, you see white dots on the screen, or have other issues your setting is too high. Note that overclocking your monitor can also change the colors of the monitor, and you may have to adjust color saturation and so on in settings to balance out these new changes. On a more advanced computer I was able to tweak the monitor's refresh rate from 75Hz to 120Hz, but you should not expect these drastic results. Still, a framerate increase of 15-20 is still noticeably smoother.

[DrunkenSpartan]

A Word About Overclocking CPU and RAM

Perhaps controversially, I have decided not to list these two things in this guide. The goal of my guide was to make something which applied to the average PC user. Overclocking your CPU and RAM, while doable, are not within the scope of most of this guide's audience. Furthermore most motherboards and CPU's on the market do not support overclocking at all. For example, you have to have a K or X series processor if you buy from Intel in order to enable overclocking on the processor. If you are really sweaty enough to wish to proceed to overclocking your CPU and/or RAM, feel free to visit these guides:

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/364294/how-to-overclock-your-intel-cpu

https://10scopes.com/ddr4-ram-overclocking-guide/

They are in depth and well-tested.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Miscellaneous Ways to Boost Performance


In this last section we'll explore some methods of improving PC performance that I felt needed to be mentioned but aren't long enough to each have their own section. First, let's look at updating graphics drivers. Updating your graphics driver is a frequently overlooked way boost performance while gaming. Typically more optimized software will be developed further down the line and is made available to the public by the graphics card maker. For NVIDIA owners updating the driver is as simple as opening the GeForce Experience application and updating the graphics driver from there. For Radeon owners, visit https://www.amd.com/en/support and select your graphics card from the dropdown list, then download the appropriate driver and update your PC.

Second, we can sometimes improve PC performance by adjusting the performance options. To do so, simply type in "sysdm.cpl" to your start menu and click on the "Advanced" tab. Click on the Settings tab under Performance and Select "Adjust for best performance". I've personally noticed that if I disable all options, my screen looks a bit weird. You can easily correct this by checking the box labelled "Smooth edges of screen fonts", and only this box. All others should be unchecked. Click Apply, then OK to exit.

Third on the list of miscellaneous performance increases is disabling Transparency Effects. To disable Transparency Effects, type in "Make Start, taskbar and Action Center transparent" into your start menu search bar. Go down to "Transparency effects", and toggle this to off. You should see a minor performance increase at the cost of transparency aesthetics on your Windows 10 machine.

Fourth on this list is disabling certain start up programs that may be impacting how fast your computer boots up. To disable start-up programs, right click on the task bar and click "Task Manager". In the Task Manager window, click Startup, then go down the list of start up applications and disable the ones you don't need by right clicking the selected program and clicking Disable. If you are not sure what programs to disable or enable, feel free to skip this step.

Fifth on this list is disabling Windows 10 tips. If you're like me, these tips annoy more than help, and it would be nice to get rid of them. To disable these incessant Windows tips, type in "Get tips, tricks, and suggestions as you use Windows" into your start menu search bar. Find the option of the same name in the window that appears and disable it. 

After disabling Windows 10 tips, we might as well turn on Game Mode. Game Mode is a setting created by Microsoft to offer slightly increased performance while gaming. To enable Game Mode, type in "Game Mode settings" in your start menu search bar, and click to enable Game  Mode on the window that appears. This will help your computer out in a couple of ways. According to Microsoft, while running a game Game Mode "prevents Windows Update from performing driver installations and sending restart notifications [and] helps achieve a more stable frame rate depending on the specific game and system."


Next on this list is disabling Prefetch. Prefetch is designed to streamline booting but, like the earlier mentioned Large Send Offload, ironically this contributes to poorer gaming performance. To disable Prefetch, go to Control Panel, System and Security, Administrative Tools, and Services. Scroll down until you see the Prefetch entry, double-click on it, and choose Disabled from the list. Click OK and close the Services window. Next, open the registry by typing "regedit" into the start menu search bar. Go to "“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM, then CurrentControlSet, then Control, then SessionManager, then Memory, then Management, then PrefetchParameters”, then double click on EnablePrefetcher and set its value to 0. If you ever want to enable it again just revisit the same setting and change the value back to 3.

Last in the miscellaneous performance improvement methods is investing in a good laptop cooling pad (laptop owners only). They typically come in under $30USD and can dramatically lower the running temperature of your machine. This can in some cases allow a slightly faster overclock of other components without sacrificing stability.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Conclusion

Once you have finished tweaking your computer, run the benchmark from earlier again and record the final result. Compare this to your earlier result and divide the aggregate results into each other. For example, if by default your computer received a score of say, 10,000 from FireStrike, and upon reconfiguration it receives a score of 12,000, this is a 2,000 point improvement, or 12,000/10,000 = 1.2 = 20% performance increase. Thank you for reading, and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Epilogue - Steam Optimization

For this section we will concentrate on optimizing everybody's favorite online gaming platform, Steam. Optimizing Steam, unlike many of the other steps in this guide, is relatively straightforward and should have no negative impact on your computer in most cases. The first thing we want to do when optimizing Steam is to speed up the web browser. For some reason Steam has serious compatibility issues with Windows 10 that have never been corrected. Fortunately, it is easy to correct by ourselves. To do this, type in "Internet Options" into your start menu's search bar. In the "Internet Properties" window, switch to the Connections tab, and then click the "LAN settings" button. From here, disable the "Automatically detect settings" check box, and then click "OK" to save your settings. You can then click "OK" again to close the "Internet Properties" window. This should greatly increase the speed of the Steam web browser. If this technique has any negative repercussions on your computer, you can always re-enable automatic detection by re-checking the box under the LAN settings.

Next on our quest to optimize Steam, we will focus on clearing our browser's cache. To do this, simply pull up your Steam homepage and click the Steam button, then click Settings, then in the Settings click Web Browser. In this tab, click on "DELETE WEB BROWSER CACHE" and "DELETE ALL BROWSER COOKIES". Even though these are both in all caps, there is nothing particularly dangerous about these options. They simply delete the browser cache and history of your Steam web browser, making it a little faster if you have used it for a while.

Next we will optimize the library settings to free up bandwidth and a minor amount of CPU performance. In the same Settings tab we just used to delete our web browser history, click the Library tab and in this tab click "Low Bandwidth Mode" and "Low Performance Mode". Both of these options, while designed to assist lower end systems, will sometimes noticeably impact even higher end machines. Once these boxes are checked, hit OK to exit.

Finally on our mission to optimize Steam we will focus on Launch Options. For those of you who don't know, launch options are options available in Steam that can alter how a specific game runs. To find the launch options console for any particular game, click Library, then Home, then scroll down to your chosen game. Right click the game and click "Properties". Under the General tab which pops up, find "Set Launch Options..." and click on it. Once you've clicked on it a small console should appear. In the text box, type "-high", minus the quotation marks. Then click OK. What this command does is instruct your PC to prioritize the chosen game upon launch over all other applications. In my experience this causes significant performance increases in many cases, at the sacrifice of multi-tasking. Also keep in mind that setting the priority to high will increase the temperature of your system. If you are already having heat issues due to GPU overclocking, you may wish to avoid this step. Additionally, be sure you have ample free CPU capacity to prioritize towards the game you choose, otherwise you could have a negative impact on performance as basic necessary functions are slowed down in order to run your game faster (lower end machines only).

[DrunkenSpartan]

Epilogue Vol. 2: Killing Cortana

Cortana is one of Microsoft's newest features in their operating system. Unfortunately, for most of us gamers, features such as Cortana are often the bane of our existence. Cortana is a straight up bitch of an application. Also unfortunately, Microsoft loved Cortana so much they gave her the keys to the kingdom, and fully uninstalling Cortana will break Windows like a, erm, window. Not all is lost, however, and we can at least disable Cortana. To disable Cortana, we'll need to make use of the only tool powerful enough to take her on: Registry Editor.

Open the Run console by typing Run into the start menu, and in the Run console type "regedit", then hit OK. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search. If there is no Windows Search folder below the Windows folder, right click the Windows folder and select "New > Key". Name the new Key "Windows Search".

Next, right click the "Windows Search" key (folder) in the left pane and select "New > DWORD (32-bit) Value". Name this new value "AllowCortana". Double click it and set the value to "0". Now close your registry editor and restart your computer and presto, Cortana is dead! If for some reason you need to undo these changes and restore Cortana, return to the same are of the Registry Editor, locate "AllowCortana", double click it and set the value to "1". Then restart your computer.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Reserved for future expansion.

[DrunkenSpartan]

Reserved for future expansion.