How to improve laptop gaming performance ? This is a pretty common question asked by gamers who like portability. When we compare the gaming performance of a Laptop with that of a desktop PC, the latter will always be the clear winner. Reason being that, it offers a variety of options to customize your hardware as per the gaming requirements. With Laptops, we don’t have that liberty. Very rarely can you customize the hardware component of a laptop to extract that extra juice out of the machine.
Still there are gamers who prefer laptops over desktop PC’s because of the former’s portability. Also, you can challenge friends on the go. There are gaming laptops such as the Alienware’s and the MSI’s that will give you an amazing gaming performance, however the truth is that only a few can afford it. I generally play games on my Xbox one console (The Xbox one experience), however I do have a laptop with Nvidia GeForce GT 650M and like challenging my friends on a few multiplayer games. I have always tried to tweak a few settings here and there to improve the gaming and the overall laptop performance in general, and have found that some things do work ! Today, I will share with you guys sure shot ways to improve laptop gaming performance.
How to improve laptop gaming performance ?
1) Always keep your drivers up to date
Drivers are computer programs that provide a software interface to the hardware. Nvidia and AMD keep releasing drivers for their graphics card to improve gaming performance and various other improvements. The graphics card drivers for laptops are generally released by the respective laptop vendors, however you can visit the website of the graphics card manufacturer and check out their forums for a compatibility check and the latest driver versions.
Always verify if a driver is compatible with your hardware and it is always a good practice to research a little on various driver versions. It may not always be the case that the latest drivers are the best one’s available. Install the best version available for you graphics card to optimize the laptop gaming performance.
2) Uninstall unwanted programs
We keep installing a lot of software programs on our laptops and with time some of these programs are forgotten. These programs are still installed and hog up memory and storage space. To improve the gaming performance on your laptop, it is recommended to uninstall the programs that are no longer being used. To uninstall these programs, go to Control Panel – Programs and Features
3) End the background processes
A lot of applications keep running in the background in Windows OS. Few of these are kicked off when the laptop starts. These applications might take up a lot of resources. Just think – If you can free up the resources taken up by these background applications, will it help to improve laptop gaming performance ? The answer is Yes ! Just open Task Manager and click on the Processes tab. You will be able to check the background processes that are running. You can select the Startup tab to change the settings for the applications on startup as well. You can also end the background process using the Windows CLI. For the guide, check out How to end a process using windows command line interface
4) Disk defragmentation
Another way to improve your laptop performance is to run disk defragmentation regularly. Most of the times a lot of files are scattered at various places on your laptop. You keep changing or deleting these files and they become fragmented. Disk defragmentation helps in consolidating this scattered data on your hard disk. It may take a long time for the disk defragmentation to complete, however the performance improvements are noticeable immediately.
5) Clean those laptop vents
Over time, the laptop vents will accumulate dust and will require cleaning. An overheated laptop affects the gaming performance adversely. You can just blow out the dust from the vents or open up and clean the fans as well. This is very easy to do and will help to improve laptop gaming performance.
6) Manually set the priority for games
I have used this technique a lot of times and have observed great performance improvements while playing games on my laptop. When you are in a game, minimize it/come back to your desktop and open up Task Manager – Details. Select the process for the game that you are playing. In this example, it is HMA.exe as I was playing Hitman Absolution. Now, change the priority to High by following the below procedure:
Right Click – Set Priority – High
You can now switch back to your game. Please be advised that changing the priority of a process may cause your system to become unstable and is not recommended. Please try this at your own risk.
7) Use a cooling pad
Playing games for a long duration heats up the laptop and we all know that the cooling arrangement in our laptops are not that great. In such cases it is always good to use a laptop cooling pad so that you get that extra cooling effect. Select a cooling fan with higher heat dissipation for great results.
The above mentioned tips and techniques are the one’s that I have personally tried and have seen really good improvements in gaming performance on my laptop. You guys must understand that these are mostly related to software tweaks and system maintenance. Since upgrading hardware in the laptop is difficult, you can try these techniques to experience the performance improvements in your laptop. Do let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.