Frame hunting with no ammo - Optimising performance for those with no real budget

[JustAddPete]

Recently switched to PC and been battling to get the most out of my rig:

 

i7-3770

GTX 1660 Super

24 GB 1333 MHz RAM

MSi ZH77A-G43 motherboard

980 GB Kingston SSD

1 TB Western Digital HDD

 

Finally achieved optimal performance without spending a dime extra. Here's how:

 

1. Run a Windows 10 debloater to clear the decks of unwanted garbage.

 

2. Check your RAM is dual channel (2x 4 GB sticks in the correct slots is empirically faster than 1x 8 GB stick etc.)

 

3. Download CCleaner and activate for 14 day trial. Run every service under every tab available. Make sure drivers are all updated and keep trying to push updates through if they fail - they should all eventually work.

 

4. Go online and make sure you got the latest graphics card drivers of your choice (usually Game Ready).

 

5. Make sure your operating system is running from an SSD (if you don't have one, even a quarter terabyte will do and they're relatively inexpensive these days)

 

6. Try get your game/games of choice all installed on SSD if possible. 

 

7. If you're like me, then probably no extra cash for cooling. Cooling is more or less essential, especially in warmer climates. I reappropriated some old fans out dead PC's, all plugged into my MoBo and keep the side panel off while gaming. PC is on a surface top (chest of drawers) near a window with an old fan my dad gave me sending cool air from the window through to the PC. Sounds overkill but I rarely get temps above 55-60 C under heavy lifting so it works 

 

8. If you can use Nvidia Control Panel and switch the handling of all colour on screen to your GPU, do it. Windows 10 sucks at HDR but your GPU doesn't.

 

9. Download and run PixelClock Patcher to remove software restrictions on your GPU. No, this wont hurt it. Yes, you should get 10-15 fps more, even on high end GPU's. (20-25 fps extra for me, same jump on a friend's 2070 Super). Needs to be patched after each driver update.

 

10. Download, install then run Malware Bytes Scanner. Malware slows everything down, especially while gaming. This should keep performance stable.

 

11. Install the Prio extension for Task Manager and when you run your game, tab across to it. Select your game .exe and set priority to 'realtime'. Now whatever your game wants, it gets from the system before everything else. Do this with all your games once to set the rules. 

 

12. Install Razer Cortex, do the system boost and try launch all your games from it. In the options for the game boost, check everything so everything gets turned off while you're gaming.

 

If you followed this whole list then run CCleaner again and reboot your PC. Can even uninstall MB Scanner and just keep the install .exe for next time, same with Pixel Clock Patcher. There's also overclocking of course. MSi Afterburner is the best tool for this. Word of warning though, what might work in benchmarking might not be stable enough for gaming. Prepare to temper your expectations, even if you think you have won the silicon lottery. I can only push 180 MHz on my core and 800 MHz on the memory.

 

Would drop a word on Integer Scaler and batch commands but you're unlikely to need those unless your rig is underpowered or you plan on modding up retro games. 

 

As for in-game settings, each game is different and some are optimised well while others really aren't. Some rules of thumb though:

 

- lighting effects eat frames

- volumetrics (clouds, fog etc) eat lots of frames

- shadows eats frames (usually not much difference between low/med/hi, only ultra)

- aliasing eats frames (TAA looks best but is hungry)

- level of detail eats frames (same rules as shadows)

 

Try tuning the above in the first instance and if all else fails, just set everything to low and start bumping things one by one, process of elimination style. If you make sure you got RivaTuner Statistics running with monitoring options in Afterburner for CPU usage, GPU usage, CPU temp, GPU temp, average frames and memory usage checked, you'll have all the telemetry you need to see if temps are destabilising things or if a bottleneck exists in your CPU or GPU.

 

Sorry for the essay. There's more but I'm writing this on my phone and pretty sure you can find tutorials on overclocking and upgrading components that will be far more entertaining and enlightening than I can offer here

 

[tikker]

On 7/5/2021 at 8:29 PM, JustAddPete said:

9. Download and run PixelClock Patcher to remove software restrictions on your GPU. No, this wont hurt it. Yes, you should get 10-15 fps more, even on high end GPU's. (20-25 fps extra for me, same jump on a friend's 2070 Super). Needs to be patched after each driver update.

How would this improve performance? It seems to just let you enable higher resolutions or refresh rates you otherwise wouldn't be able to (neither of which increase FPS) and comes with its own drawbacks. Unless I'm missing something?

[QuantumSingularity]

Well, this is the first time i see debloater increasing gaming performance. Yes, it can seriously increase the responsiveness of your system in desktop and while switching through different applications, but FPS increase in a game, i'm sceptic. And its' effectiveness is even further reduced by the additional bloatware you install (CC clean, MB scanner and so on). For the most part, unless you visit some seriously scatchy sites, Windows Defender is enough. If you are going to throw in some $$$$ for cheap, small SSD, get one for caching of the HDD - much faster loading times and way more consistent FPS.

The key to boosting performance is to always find and understand your bottlenecks first. No going on the net, downloading all kinds of magic programs that claim to boost performance. Use Afterburner; check your GPU and CPU usage. IF you have 90% CPU usage and 29% GPU at 1080p medium details, going even lower won't help you a bit, as won't changing down the resolution. In modern titles, almost all of the graphics tasks are handled by the GPU. So if your CPU can't keep up, the only way is to increase some of the details to give the GPU some work to do and not stay basically idle.