Optimizing my System: Advice Needed

Professor Snugglesworth

Just to be clear, I am not looking into Overclocking at this time. As you may well know, I spent a lot of time getting my PC back into tip top shape, so I'm not looking to try anything potentially risky for now.

That said, I would like all the advice you can give to optimizing my PC so it can run all my games perfectly. It's already performing far better than I imagined, with most current PC games running on my desired settings, namely displayed off my Samsung '40 LCD at a resolution of 1920x1080. About the only time it taxes up is some slight stuttering in Mass Effect (worst), Mercenaries 2 (medium) and Gears of War (minimal). Games like Asassin's Creed, FEAR, The Witcher and anything older run perfectly.

So here's a list of my settings, with Nvidia and Vista up to date as of this posting. I appreciate any small tweaks and tips you can offer.

Ayulin

I'm not too sure about this, but I thought I read that it's better to enable AF/AA in games themselves, rather than forcing it through video card control panels; the reasoning was that the game would have been designed to selectively apply AF to the textures that needed it, and hence allow greater performance, while the video card would AF everything.

Again, not too sure about that. Hopefully someone who knows better can chime in

.kbf?

The only real "Optimizing" that can be done involves defraging and cleaning out your registry.

As far as GPU settings goes set as much as you can to Application Controlled.

If you're getting stuttering you could try raising the amount of pre-rendered frames (this will actually result in lower FPS but, hopefully, smoother game play) and set as many options as you can to "performance".

Also, force off V-Sync.

That_Guy

You could delete system32. That always speeds up computers

No not really buy Ccleaner and Spybot are awesome tools for fixing the little errors on a system that can cause longer bootups and shutdowns.

GrimReaper

Also getting rid of unnecessary crap from starting up with your machine will come in handy.

For example a lot of software nowadays likes to add little chunks to registry startup, not bad if it's one or two but lots and lots of them add up eating in to memory that could otherwise be used by your games. (also, freeing up processor cycles)

For example, printer drivers, itunes and so on. Go into registry startup for the machine and your user and remove entries that aren't needed. (make sure to backup the reg entries just in-case)

The above is a personal pet peeve, like how when I installed Google Chrome it added an updater that runs permanently in the background regardless of whether Chrome is running or not. Why programs like Chrome, JAVA etc can't just perform the check when they first run appears to be something that baffles such large companies. (Firefox does it perfectly, only checks for updates when it is running)

JustinSane07

Grim, if you saw his original thread, him going into the registry would be a bad bad idea.

Pretty much what Ayulin said though. Let the software control the graphics card, not the other way around. It does improve performance at a minor sacrifice to quality.

Dark Shroud

Use either CCleaner or Spybot to control the start up of programs. It will be the easiest way to keep track of what's what.

LoneIgadzra

Yeah, I only use driver AF/AA settings for older games where performance can't be hurt much anyway.

Professor Snugglesworth

JustinSane07 wrote: »

Grim, if you saw his original thread, him going into the registry would be a bad bad idea.

Pretty much what Ayulin said though. Let the software control the graphics card, not the other way around. It does improve performance at a minor sacrifice to quality.

I wish I could blacklist anyone who still brings this shit up.

Just because I made one major misshap doesn't mean I don't know shit about PCs. I've been editing registries just fine in the past. I don't mess with things I'm not familiar with, hence my post about Overclocking.

Anyway, I made some changes to let the application decide on things, minus the V sync, as games like FFXI and The Witcher don't have a V Sync option, and thus result in some crappy screen tearing.

As for blocking processes from starting up, how do I enable this in CC Cleaner? What are some common non-program processes that tend to slow down games?

Dark Shroud

Professor Snugglesworth wrote: »

As for blocking processes from starting up, how do I enable this in CC Cleaner?

CCleaner > Tools > Start up

I think Spybot's is a bit better as it tries to explain what processes are what. But I remove most things from start up. Sun Java & Quicktime should be the first victumes.

Also, don't disable Aero. Windows will shut it down automatically when games start up. Aero offloads visual processing onto the GPU for the desktop and start menu, so it's better to keep it turned on for normal performance.

Ayulin

I'll just pop in again to say that I'd agree with the recommendations to just reduce the amount of stuff that runs at startup. I'm not too much of a fan of disabling services and such (and there are plenty of guides out there which recommend it), since I don't notice any real benefit, and it can lead to issues further down the line.

So other than readjusting the graphics stuff like you did, and pruning startup items, I'd just say leave things alone for the most part :P

Dark Shroud

I messed with services once 2 years ago. Other than turning off tablet PC functions on my desktop I will never do that again. It caused me so much trouble until I finally formatted the PC when upgrading to Vista.

rocka4him

I'm stomped, anything that opens through windows explorer will not open on my desktop (ill click on my computer and it will show the outline of the explorer then close). This is what I did prior to this happening: I cleaned out everything from my temp folder because I was getting the HDD ready for partitioning (going to dual-boot Vista and Xubuntu). I also downloaded and merged this, "Fix_Recycle_Bin.reg", because the graphics for my recycle bin refused to refresh... and this is the first time anything like this has ever happened. Any ideas on how to fix it ?

[EDIT] -> found a fix

Open up your favorite TEXT editor. Copy the following four lines of text and paste them into your text editor:

regsvr32 /s %windir%\system32\mmcndmgr.dll
regsvr32 /s %windir%\system32\Dllcache\mmcndmgr.dll
regsvr32 /s %windir%\system32\shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 /s %windir%\system32\Dllcache\shdocvw.dll

Save this file as ExplorerFix.cmd, and I recommend placing it (or a shortcut to it) on your desktop. When Windows Explorer won't open or crashes whenever you try to open something, double click on ExplorerFix.cmd, and most of the time it corrects that issue.