There are few things worse than booting up your PC only to find your games struggling to run properly. In a world full of fast paced, FPS shooters, games lagging can be the difference between having a great time, or finding your character face down in the mud over and over again. But what is the solution to this age-old problem? Well dear reader, lets find out. Here are 5 Ways to make your PC games run smoother, and hopefully leave lag in the dust.
1. Enable XMP
While you might not notice a whole lot, this is such an easy first area to try and adjust that its worth a shot. RAM right out of the packet, actually does not operate at the speeds advertised. It will actually operate at the default speed of 2133mhz, which if you own 4000mhz RAM means a lot of power is being left on the table. So, to do this simply navigate to your BIOS and change your RAM memory profile. There are lots of easy tutorials on this online if you are struggling, including one we made ourselves. Once you enable this, you might see a slight increase in FPS. 
2. Turning your graphics down in game
This is of course a pretty sad option, but it can do quite a lot. Have you ever stumbled into the stream of a really high levelled player in a game and noticed the graphics look like they have come straight out of Windows 95? Well, that’s because a lot of highly competitive players, play FPS games with the graphics incredibly low. This means your PC isn’t focused on rendering the best graphics and can instead focus on performance. While your game might end up looking like a potato, you might find a big increase in frames by doing this simple trick.
3. Update your Drivers
Did you know you have to upgrade your drivers? Because if you didn’t… oh boy. If you are noticing frame drops or stuttering or weird graphic issues, its possible you need to upgrade your drivers, specifically your graphics drivers. To do this, simply navigate over to the website of your graphics card (AMD or NVIDIA), and head over to the update driver section. You will have to fill in what graphics you have (if you don’t know, going into Task Manager and then performance will show you), and download the corresponding update. After the update, restart your PC and fingers crossed that has fixed some of your problems.
4. Check for bottlenecks
This is a slightly harder area to check for, but let’s go into it anyway. A bottleneck is when one or more of your PCs components can’t perform at their peak because of another older piece of hardware holding it back. Say for example you have a really old CPU but a 3080. Your 3080 won’t be able to perform fully, because the CPU will be holding it back. Have a look at your hardware and think about whether they are all working harmoniously or not. IF they aren’t, then you might need the next option which is…
5. Upgrade your hardware or overclock
This is the nuclear option here. If nothing else is working and you can’t handle it anymore, it might be time to consider either overclocking or upgrading hardware. We’ve already technically overclocked our RAM by enabling XMP, but you can also overclock your graphics card and CPU to try and squeeze some more power out of them. The alternative option (and far more expensive) is to upgrade your hardware entirely. I’d recommend starting small, beginning with your storage. If you are running games off of an old, slow HDD, upgrading to a zippy fast M.2 SSD might improve some areas. You can also look at getting a new CPU and GPU if you are running very old hardware. But please research the hardware first. Getting the latest and greatest might not be the best for you and might mean you spend more than you need. Check reviews, guides and even forums for people’s opinions to make sure you’re getting the best bang for buck for what games and programs you frequent.
So, there were 5 Ways to make your PC games run smoother!
Do you have any other suggestions that we missed? Pop them in the comments down below and help your fellow PC users out. And before you click away, why not click HERE instead to check out our other tech related posts!
