This will be the first of perhaps many guides I will be writing. (I will be taking some time off from gaming till I get a new graphics card or fix my situation.) So, let us start now, shall we?
Defragging.
Defragging will not give a 1000 more frames but in some situations it could help give you some speed. Also, it will help improve load times and let us be honest, who loves them?
You can use the one built into Windows or you can use a third party program. I highly recommend the Auslogics one.
Registry cleaning.
I do not know the whole physics and science behind it, but in layman's terms, programs leave mistakes in your System registry. These mistakes will cause your computer to slow down and with time it could prove to be a threat to your performance. Remember to use a good program, because in my experience, a poor one can make even more mistakes.
You could always manually edit the registry yourself, but I doubt even the best of us could do that.
Startup.
Most of us PC gamers know what this is, but I it is major so I will include it. Along with necessary services created and needed by the OS, other programs will load on startup. Usually it is your anti-virus or some drivers. However, unneccesary programs like Itunes and your messenger programs will hog your memory and CPU and could have hit on gaming performance. The best way to regulate your startup is with Msconfig.
This should do, no?
Obviously, you should not disable something if it looks important. Making a bad change can prevent your system from running stable.
Overclocking. (GPU.)
Are you a bit sad with your GPU's performance or do you want those extra 5 frames? You may be in luck, because with today's graphic cards you can overclock them well. There are 3 clocks with your graphic card: shader clock, memory clock, and the core clock. I do not feel the need to explain all so I will just leave you with this: Do not overclock too much, too quick! Also, remember to up the fan speed! You do not want an overclocked card if it is melted.
Now, I have never overclocked RAM, CPU's, or Motherboards so I can not tell you how. However, you should know that the best way to overclock them is through the BIOS.
Hmm, a thread this size in just 15 minutes, now if only I could do this with my school work! Next episode will most likely be on benchmarking or customizing your OS!
Last edited by Roman Clone; October 12, 2008 at 08:37 AM.
I Must disagree with you, Defragging and using CCleaner will not even effect FPS by even 1 unless you have 1MB of space left on your harddrive,and even then.
I defrag and registry clean to keep my PC... clean, not fast, thats what I have duelcore for, and overclocking. CCLeaner is a lovely program, one of my favorite actually and I'd also recommend it to anybody.
However, turning off startup programs and overclocking can grealty increase startup speeds and overall speed, but at a cost of stability.
Last edited by Wheelchair; October 07, 2008 at 03:37 PM.
I Must disagree with you, Defragging and using CCleaner will not even effect FPS by even 1 unless you have 1MB of space left on your harddrive,and even then.
I defrag and registry clean to keep my PC... clean, not fast, thats what I have duelcore for, and overclocking. CCLeaner is a lovely program, one of my favorite actually and I'd also recommend it to anybody.
However, turning off startup programs and overclocking can grealty increase startup speeds and overall speed, but at a cost of stability.
If you are sick of high ping and you want to do something to try and help bring it down, this should help:
Windows XP reserves by default to use only 20% of your bandwith. I will admit, I am horrible when it comers to networking, but this should still help.
This one is bogus. You will not gain any performance boost from this in practically any situation, and it might have negative effects. I don't recall exactly what this setting does, but it's not at all what you think it is.
The difference between sysadmins and gamers when it comes to performance, I guess, is that sysadmins benchmark . . .
Originally Posted by Wheelchair
I Must disagree with you, Defragging and using CCleaner will not even effect FPS by even 1 unless you have 1MB of space left on your harddrive,and even then.
Defragging can speed up almost any disk-bound activity, which could certainly include load times. It could certainly save quite a few seconds on loading screens. Steam makes sure to check if your drive is fragmented and warn you to defragment it if necessary, IIRC, after benchmarking by Valve identified that as a significant problem for users. Registry-cleaning will probably make no performance difference these days, although in Windows 9x it used to be reputed good for stability at least.
This one is bogus. You will not gain any performance boost from this in practically any situation, and it might have negative effects. I don't recall exactly what this setting does, but it's not at all what you think it is.
The difference between sysadmins and gamers when it comes to performance, I guess, is that sysadmins benchmark . . .
I'll replace it if you agree to erase my quote after I do so.
There are very good XP/Vista guides from TweakGuides.com here. I just downloaded the current XP one and it is 189 pages long
They cover everything imaginable.
Trying to keep up with Freddies guides (I haven't done one for well over a year now) are you Clone? Some good advice in there and it's nice touch to see the wording backed up with the Youtube vids.
If you have ever wondered why your computer doesn't boot up as fast as it did when Windows was first installed two years ago it's probably due to the fact you have all manner of crap being loaded in the startup. If I ever get pulled in to help fix a families or friends computer I'm staggered by the amount of crap that have running in the task tray. I was trying to arrange a Unreal Tournament death match game between me an my friend but I just couldn't see his PC, it turned out he had 3 firewalls + windows firewall running in the background. Someone else had Norton protection eating up all of his resources other programmes that seem to load themseleves are mobile phone software, multiple messenger programmes, video card display driver, itunes, acrobat update, real player registration, Quicktime, java, MS Office, desktop weather, Limewire.....the list goes on. You don't need these so turn them off!
Start>Run>Msconfig>Startup and untick everything bar Firewall and Anti Virus.
Trying to keep up with Freddies guides (I haven't done one for well over a year now) are you Clone? Some good advice in there and it's nice touch to see the wording backed up with the Youtube vids.
If you have ever wondered why your computer doesn't boot up as fast as it did when Windows was first installed two years ago it's probably due to the fact you have all manner of crap being loaded in the startup. If I ever get pulled in to help fix a families or friends computer I'm staggered by the amount of crap that have running in the task tray. I was trying to arrange a Unreal Tournament death match game between me an my friend but I just couldn't see his PC, it turned out he had 3 firewalls + windows firewall running in the background. Someone else had Norton protection eating up all of his resources other programmes that seem to load themseleves are mobile phone software, multiple messenger programmes, video card display driver, itunes, acrobat update, real player registration, Quicktime, java, MS Office, desktop weather, Limewire.....the list goes on. You don't need these so turn them off!
Start>Run>Msconfig>Startup and untick everything bar Firewall and Anti Virus.
I admit, your guides were a bit of an inspiration.
4 Firewalls? All I have is Spybot + Windows Firewall. That is aplenty for me.
I have an input, not on making the PC itself any faster, rather making it shutdown faster. Possibly.
It has to do with Windows asking for programs to shutdown and waits a high amount of time before doing so. When you want to turn off the computer.
You can change the value in regedit. Alas I can't remember where.
Will tell if I find.
"And the Heavens Shall Tremble" Resistance is futile™
I have an input, not on making the PC itself any faster, rather making it shutdown faster. Possibly.
It has to do with Windows asking for programs to shutdown and waits a high amount of time before doing so. When you want to turn off the computer.
You can change the value in regedit. Alas I can't remember where.
Will tell if I find.
Does it threaten stability? I'd hate to end my 7 month basement career with a lawsuit...
Does it threaten stability? I'd hate to end my 7 month basement career with a lawsuit...
Don't think it should.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
When a user shuts down Windows XP, first the system has to kill all services
currently running. Every once in a while the service does not shut down
instantly and windows gives it a change to shut down on its own before it kills it.
This amount of time that windows waits is stored in the system registry.
If you modify this setting, then windows will kill the service earlier. To modify
the setting, follow the directions below:
Start Regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control.
Click on the "Control" Folder.
Select "WaitToKillServiceTimeout"
Right click on it and select Modify.
Set it a value lower than 2000, IE 100.
"And the Heavens Shall Tremble" Resistance is futile™
I always delete QoS RSVP anyways so it doesn't matter, but yes, Simetrical is right, it is bogus. + It can cause problems with applications related to it.
When you still a game/app, it usually becomes fragmented as data gets
spread across the hard drive, and defragmenting turns fragmenting into contiguous files. Which should help you access the files faster right? It doesn't for me, no stutter reduction, *slower* boot time(they probably mess with boot files), and app/game loading is the exact same.
Registry cleaning will do nothing, especially since auto-cleaners remove xB - 1.2KB. The best registry cleaning is using Regedit, then with the proper knowledge you can shave off MB's of useless data.
Disabling startup programs - Yes. I use autoruns instead of MSConfig
GPU/CPU overclocking - Yes.
I was waiting for someone to mention disabling services... oh well..
There are very good XP/Vista guides from TweakGuides.com here. I just downloaded the current XP one and it is 189 pages long
They cover everything imaginable.
TGTC is useless in my opinion, I already do *his* recommended daily cleaning schedule, I already have full-blown security, and I already have done a lot of the tweaks mentioned there(and some I *don't* do).
EDIT:
Anyone wanna see *my* tweaking? I only have *6* services in services.msc windows, the rest are deleted, all *ALL* .dll and other files related to it.
I have an input, not on making the PC itself any faster, rather making it shutdown faster. Possibly.
It has to do with Windows asking for programs to shutdown and waits a high amount of time before doing so. When you want to turn off the computer.
You can change the value in regedit.
This will increase the risk that programs won't be able to shut down properly. Programs are deliberately given some time to terminate so that they can cleanly shut down: delete temporary files, make sure any pending changes are saved to disk, etc. You can reduce the time allowed for that, but you're increasing the risk that some program won't be able to clean up fully, which might cause undesired behavior.
Originally Posted by Roman Clone
You mean take out 3/5 of the entire guide?
It still helped people, even if it was partly due to the responses correcting it.
This will increase the risk that programs won't be able to shut down properly. Programs are deliberately given some time to terminate so that they can cleanly shut down: delete temporary files, make sure any pending changes are saved to disk, etc. You can reduce the time allowed for that, but you're increasing the risk that some program won't be able to clean up fully, which might cause undesired behavior.
Do you want me to feel like Roman Clone?
I'm starting to get there
"And the Heavens Shall Tremble" Resistance is futile™
How to improve your P.C.
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Originally Posted by Wheelchair
Someone else had Norton protection eating up all of his resources other programmes that seem to load themseleves are mobile phone software, multiple messenger programmes, video card display driver, itunes, acrobat update, real player registration, Quicktime, java, MS Office, desktop weather, Limewire.....the list goes on. You don't need these so turn them off!
