Optimizing your PC for gaming

Operating System

There are quite a few ways to tweak your OS for better performance and utility. I won’t really cover older systems like XP and Vista because there really is no reason to use them anymore with Windows 7 being available.

So let’s start by covering the massive feature called User Account Control (UAC). This is basically a feature integrated for extremely new users of a computer. I recommend turning it off as soon as you install a decent antivirus software and firewall. It’s only an annoyance if you know what you’re doing and what applications you start up

Registry Tweaking

- TCP ACK Frequency -

This is a variable that sets the priority of acknowledgement packets being sent for upload packets in the tcpip driver.

there’s a nice little tool for both 32/64 bit systems to set it so that it improves these packets priority since by default these packets are low priority supposedly to increase download speeds in Windows systems. I for one haven’t noticed any reduction in download speed by using this registry tweak but my latency went down from 150-200ms to 50-70ms … I recommend it to any online gamer.

<More information and download link for the Tool and a guide to set it up manually>

- Core Parking -

This is a power saving function on multi core systems which makes some of the physical CPUs sleep if there isn’t any heavy load/calculation to be done. This can improve to stuttering while the OS restarts core when a  fight starts in WoW for example when you pull a boss and the combat log nearly breaks from information

I recommending setting this registry value off if you have 2 or more physical cores.

- Go to Regedit
- Find this key:-  “ 0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583 “
- Within this key, there is a value called:  ” ValueMax “
- This value represents the % number of cores the system will park – the default 100%  ie:  all Cores are potentially park-able
- Change the value from 64 to 0 so the ” ValueMin “  and  ” ValueMax ” are both zero
- You will have to find the key a few times and repeat the process for each time it is found – the number of instances will depend on the number of power profiles in your system
- Do a full shutdown and power-off and cold-re-start

Hardware section

Keeping your Computer in good shape is just as important as the parts you choose to put in it.

It’s recommended to clean the cooling fans regularly since dust gathers really fast in them and leads to overheating parts and reduced performance.

Also remember to defragment regular HDDs once in a while to keep loading times of applications decent atleast

For WoW I’ve found the best upgrade for my system was a Solid State Drive (SSD) which improved my loading  times about 10 times regardless of how many addons I use.

Having a decent amount of RAM is also valuable. I’m running with 4GB – DDR2 Corsair pieces and they are pretty much enough for running WoW on Ultra with quite a few addons and even frapsing on 30 FPS

CPUs are a nasty part when you aim to have performance in WoW. If you are PvP oriented any decent Dual Core CPU should suffice nowadays. However if you are into 25 man raiding you will need something heavier. After a little testing I figured that higher clocked cores will have better performance when it comes to raiding. The Amount of Cores really doesn’t matter in WoW since it was generally written for 2 main threads therefore not really benefiting from additional cores. Of course it’s not useless to have a quad core cpu, but generally a higher base clocked 2 core should have just the same results if not even higher.
Cache size in the CPU is also very important.

World of Warcraft

- In-Game Configuration

I don’t think I have to cover the in-game options in-depth.

Vertical Sync – This will limit your frame rate to your monitor’s refresh rate.

- Console Config Variables (Config.wtf)

*you can edit it with notepad, but make sure wow isn’t running when editing it*

SET timingMethod “2″ – Adding this line in your config.wtf will set the synchronization method between cores differently this has proven to be a framerate boost on quite a few multi core CPUs (setting it to 1 will limit your framerates and uses a different method)

SET gxApi “d3d11″ – If you have a DirectX 11 compatible Video Card it is recommended to add this line to your config.wtf, this will use newer API functions for graphics calculations and improve framerates and effects.

SET farclip “1600″ – This is the absolute maximum viewdistance to set from config variables and needs farclipoverride to be enabled. See below!

SET farclipoverride “1″ - This enables values above 1200 ish to be set for farclip which caps around 1600.

SET horizonfarclip “9999″ – Not sure what it’s cap is so you can just set it to 9999 and that should max it out. This controls the mountains and terrains seen in the background in the foggy areas far away.

SET processAffinityMask “15“ – This is the value which shouldn’t really be needed to be set up manually nowadays. It sets which cores wow will use from your processor. <Details Here>

SET environmentDetail “512″ – This is the cap for rendering all small models and doodads at the longest distance with all the eyecandy.

SET groundEffectDensity “256″ - This sets the flowers and stuff”s density on the ground to max above settings maximum.

SET groundEffectDist “512″ – This sets teh distance at which flowers and grass is rendered.

SET M2Faster “3″ - This enables optimizations in the vertex shader’s calculations. 3 should be the best value for high end systems.

- AddOns

From a performance point of view if you have plenty of RAM you shouldn’t be caring much about addon memory usage at all. Most performance is going to be lost by addons that are analysing the combat log.

Damage Meters, Scrolling Combat text’s and such. These are putting an insane pressure on your CPU and can reduce frame rates drastically.

If you don’t have a powerful PC it’s recommended to turn these kinds of addons off and only use the essential ones.