When you start gaming seriously, it becomes increasingly important that you’re using high-end hardware and software to ensure the best possible experience and performance.
Gaming on a laptop offers you the flexibility to play your favourite titles wherever you are, however, if you want a combination of convenience and a high-quality experience, it’s essential that you optimise your laptop for gaming.
From software tweaks to hardware upgrades, there are numerous ways that you can enhance your laptop’s performance.
Stick around while we provide you with a comprehensive guide on how to optimise your laptop for gaming.
- Adjust Your In-Game Settings
It’s not only about laptop settings – make sure you adjust the in-game settings, as this can significantly impact your performance.
Here are a few settings you can tweak for improved performance:
- Texture Quality: If your laptop struggles with higher settings, reduce the texture quality.
- Resolution: By lowering the resolution, you can boost the frame rate, so try to find a balance between visual quality and performance.
- Shadow and Lighting Effects: It may not seem like much, but shadows and lighting within games can put strain on your hardware, so you can improve performance by lowering these settings.
- Anti-Aliasing: By turning off (or just reducing) anti-aliasing, you’ll be able to increase frame rates without impacting visual quality too much.
- Upgrade Your Graphics Drivers
Keeping your graphics drivers up to date is one of the most critical aspects of optimising your laptop for gaming. Graphics card manufacturers like NVIDIA and AMD frequently release driver updates that fix bugs and improve performance.
Check the manufacturer’s website regularly for updates, or you can use their dedicated software to stay current – that is, AMD Radeon Software or NVidia GeForce Experience.
- Manage Background Processes
Processes and applications that run in the background can consume valuable system resources. Here are some tips on how to manage them:
- Startup Programs: Disable unnecessary startup programs by going into your Startup tab in Task Manager. This will ensure that fewer applications run in the background from the get-go.
- Task Manager: Open your Task Manager and close unnecessary processes and applications.
- Clean Your Laptop Regularly
Over time, debris and dust tend to build up and accumulate inside your laptop (even if you can’t see it), and this leads to reduced performance. You can solve this by regularly cleaning your laptop to maintain optimal airflow. Two options to do this include:
- Professional Cleaning: Take your laptop to a professional to be cleaned properly.
- Compressed Air: Use compressed air to blow dust out of vents and fans if you’re comfortable opening up your laptop yourself.
- Optimise Power Settings
The power settings on your laptop can greatly affect the gaming performance of the device. Switch to a high-performance plan by doing the following:
- Control Panel: Go to your Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options.
- High Performance: Opt for the High-Performance plan to make sure that your laptop is still running at full capacity, even though it may consume more power and generate more heat.
- Optimise Game Installation Location
If you install games on an SSD instead of on an HDD, you can drastically improve load times and performance. So, if you install your most-played games on your SSD, you’ll be able to take advantage of faster read/write speeds.
- Ensure That Your System is Always Updated
It may seem annoying in the moment, but it’s really important to keep your operating system is always up to date.
- Windows Update: Always be aware of available updates and install them when they’re ready to keep your system running smoothly.
- Driver Updates: Keep all your drivers – network, sound, chipset and graphics – up to date.
- Update Your Network Settings
Check your network settings and ensure that they’re optimised for online gaming. Most importantly, you need a stable and fast connection, especially when playing for real money at sites like Lucky Creek.
Here’s how you can optimise your network settings:
- Router Placement: Make sure your router is positioned in an optimal location to minimise interference and maximise signal strength.
- Ethernet Connection: A wired Ethernet connection is preferred for more stable and faster internet speeds (rather than Wi-Fi).
- QoS: Your router has Quality of Service (QoS) settings, and you can change these to prioritise gaming traffic rather than other types of data.
- Get a Laptop Cooling Pad
Gaming can generate a significant amount of heat, and this has the potential to throttle performance. A cooling pad can be a great way to maintain optimal temperatures. It provides additional airflow to keep your laptop cool during extended gaming sessions.
- Update Your Hardware Regularly Enough
If you can, consider upgrading certain components of your hardware to boost your performance. You can do this by means of:
- RAM: By increasing RAM, you can significantly improve your game performance and overall system responsiveness. A minimum of 16GB is recommended.
- Storage: If possible, upgrade to an SSD for faster load times and better performance.
- Use Game Boosting Software
Applications can be used to optimise your system for gaming by freeing up resources and managing processes. A few options include:
- Wise Game Booster: Optimises system settings and stops unnecessary services to enhance gaming performance.
- Razer Cortex: Frees up RAM and prevents unnecessary background processes.
- Adjust Virtual Memory Settings
Virtual memory is something you can use when your laptop runs out of physical RAM, and you can optimise it in a few ways:
- Custom Size: Set a custom size with an initial size of 1.5 times your RAM and a maximum size that is about 3 times your RAM.
- Virtual Memory Settings: Go to Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system settings > Performance settings > Advanced tab > Virtual memory.
- Manage Windows Notifications and Updates
We all know how annoying Windows notifications and updates can be, especially when they interrupt gameplay and consume resources. You can manage these things to minimise disruptions:
- Focus Assist: Enable Focus Assist to silence all notifications while you’re busy gaming.
- Active Hours: Go into Windows Update settings and set your active hours to prevent automatic updates during your gaming sessions.
- Disable Visual Effects in Windows
If you disable visual effects on your laptop, you’ll be able to improve your gaming performance.
- Performance Options: Go to Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system settings > Performance settings
- Adjust for the Best Performance: Select “Adjust for best performance” to disable visual effects that are unnecessary for ordinary functionality.
Now, all you need to do is start playing.
