Although most of the people play games on their PCs and consoles, the demand for gaming laptops is growing too. People just love the idea of playing their favorite PC game on the go. But here’s a bitter truth.
As fast as gaming laptops can be, they can never achieve the performance level of their desktop counterparts. This is the reason most people avoid gaming on their laptops, even if they have an option.
That’s why here we’ll discuss 12 ways for you to improve your laptop’s gaming performance.
So, hold your belts, here it begins:
1. Have the latest drivers and DirectX version
One of the first thing you need to do, if your gaming sucks, is updating your system drivers and your graphics card drivers in particular.
Other than this, make sure to have the latest version of DirectX software. This software is a necessary requirement for most of the games anyway, so it’s a win-win situation for you.
2. Overclock GPU
Overclocking your graphics card will cause your laptop to produce more heat, that’s for sure, but it will also enable it to run your games a little faster.
To overclock your laptop’s graphics card, you need these things:
- A Laptop with a dedicated graphics card. As you can obviously see, you can’t overclock a graphics card if your laptop doesn’t have it in the first place.
- Make sure your manufacturer hasn’t “locked” your GPU (from overclocking) in the BIOS.
- A Good tool for overclocking. There are many tools like MSI Afterburner and EVGA precision, that make this overclocking task so much easier.
After this, you just need to follow one of those overclocking guides. One thing you need to make sure is to not overclock your GPU too much, and only put your laptop on places that have some proper ventilation. Also, since overclocking makes your laptop power-hungry, be near a power socket while you’re playing games.
3. Overclock CPU
In gaming PCs, you have the liberty to replace your gaming CPU with a new one, but that’s not the case with laptops. So, the only way to increase performance level of the CPU of your laptop is overclocking it.
Overclocking a cpu also has the same principle as overclocking a GPU. Although it won’t have the same effect as an overclocked GPU, it’s better to have something than nothing.
4. Keep your laptop clean and dust free
Dust and Dirt can make any Laptop/Desktop slower. That’s why always try to make your laptop as clean as possible. You can open your laptop from time to time, and try to brush off the dust, if there’s any. This will make the internal parts of your laptops more efficient.
Other than this, a clean laptop casts a nice impression on you, whether you’re gaming or something else. Apart from the internal parts, you can also brush the keyboard and screen too. It’s because nobody wants to look that dirty display screen.
5. Use a Laptop Cooler
If you’ve overclocked your laptop, and are looking for bring down its heat, then an efficient way to achieve that is using a laptop cooling pad. These fans don’t cost a lot, and you can get a very decent one under 50 bucks from Amazon.
6. Adjust Power Settings
By default, most of the laptops have “balanced” settings as far as their power plans are concerned. It’s because balanced settings enable you to get more time out of your laptop’s battery. That’s why manufacturers keep them this way. You can, however, change these settings to “high performance” and get a little more extra power.
7. Game Mode Settings Windows 10
Do you know that Windows 10 has a built-in feature to prevent all background tasks and optimize gaming?
Well, although it sounds too good to be true, it is indeed.
This feature is called ‘game mode’ and you can enable it by going to start > settings > gaming > gaming mode.
8. Stop Background Apps
Having a large number of background apps running, while you’re playing games, can have a negative effect on gaming performance. That’s why open your task manager before playing any game, and close any unnecessary app running in the background. Especially watch out for chrome-related tasks.
9. Check Network settings for online gaming
Unlike offline gaming where all things depend on your hardware configuration and drivers, there comes another big factor in online gaming: your home network. If your home network, be it wired or wireless, has a higher latency/lag rate then these games will not run smoothly. Good news is that we have already written a quick listicle about latency/ping.
10. Change Your In-Game Settings
If all else fails, you should lower your in-game settings. One of the basic graphics settings you can change are Texture settings, Shadow Quality, and Level of Detail Etc.`
11. Add New Hardware
Although a laptop isn’t as upgradable as a desktop PC, there are several components of a laptop that can be upgraded, such as:
- RAM. Upgrading a RAM will make your laptop run heavier tasks. Many games require 16/32 GB RAM. That’s why upgrade your laptop RAM if you haven’t done it already.
- SSD. Solid State Drives are way faster than any hard drive, even if those hard drives are made for gaming. Most of the gaming laptops are equipped with SSDs nowadays, but in budget laptops, hard drives are still popular. If you have one of those budget laptops, then you can switch to SSD easily by following the above-mentioned guides.
Read More: External HDD 2019 Roundup Review, Low Profile Graphics cards 2019
12. Consider some game optimization software
If you’re unsure if you closed all the background processes for gaming, then you can use a game optimization software, which is also called game booster. These softwares automatically optimize your pc for gaming, without much effort on your part.
Although there are many game boosters in the market, I particularly like Razer Cortex. It’s a free software that can help your free RAM memory, close background processes etc. You can download it from here.