Safe Tweaks for Gamers / Streamers on Windows 10.
There are tweaks that every gamer should apply on his gaming pc and they didn't affect or can create problems to Windows 10 operating system and in my opinion Windows operating system should already
had hardware profiles (similar to the old hardware profiles on Windows XP) with per-configured changes on hardware behavior based of the usage we want to do.
We all have spend unlimited time to find the reasons why our brand new pc is not working as we expected and we have find after searching on the internet for example that our operating system is using by default
the standard Power Profile for the PCI Link Management and this is ... moderate savings. If you search a bit on the internet you will find on
Microsoft's forums that this
setting is for windows devices that have ...a BATTERY !
OK, full stop here ! Why do we have a setting in our desktop computer that is for devices with battery like laptops, tablets and mobiles ?
Because this setting is not designed with the Hardware Profile in mind but with the majority devices the windows operating system is pre-installed. and guess what devices are mostly windows pre-installed ?
Not our gaming-watercolling-geek-cpu-power-plenty-ram-beasts but Laptops, Notebooks and Tablets that all these have ...a BATTERY !
Ofc, this will not change soon but let me tell you that statistically speaking when you set OFF the [ Link Management Power Management ] under the PCI Express, the performance of your
VGA is what you should expected, otherwise a small or sometimes notable latency appears during games and during daily activities.
So, we can live with a operating system without preconfigured Hardware Profiles but we can't play with the default windows settings either and this is why i collected some of these settings* that a gamer should
change after 1st install of Windows 10 to have a gaming PC without the "Standard Latency". I hope in a future update we see the Hardware Profiles back , better and preconfigured for our gaming windows devices*. At that time i want
to mention that all these Tweaks are SAFE and i will not write for registry changes because windows devs are always changing something (example
1 &
2 ). Please, try to stay away from these tools or registry changes
if you are not power user. i will mention only the changes that there is a GUI window to be applied since with these you can't damage your OS.
1. CPU AFFINITY.
If you are a long time PC gamer you have hear many times that most of the games need CPU single thread power. This is true and lie same time. The truth is in the middle. Most of the modern games
designed to use all the CPU cores because silicon reached its limits and CPU manufactures found that more cores increase the CPU power.
Who remembers the beta of Anthem where the client initialized to use all the cores of
the CPU and people should had adjust the affinity manual after launch of the game because game lagged everything else in operating system?.
Someone should say, the answer for a good gaming PC is to use a mulit-core CPU and if it is a server's CPU then it's better!
NO, NO, NO, NO and ... NO !
The Single Thread core power in CPU still matters more and the newer or even the overclocked CPU still performs better in games than the CPU with more number of cores and less GHz. Proof of that is these 2 cases
in the image below that screened with the CPUID app and compare my CPU to a) a more cores and newer CPU and b) a same cores newer CPU.
Why an 8 years old CPU performs well enough compared to a newer and with more cores CPU (1st comparison on the left) ? Because i overclocked it!
Why i mentioned affinity 1st ? Because first of all i am fan of Resources Management and secondly i am big fan of 1 GAMING / STREAM PC. Why ? Because nowadays, the modern CPU are multi-core and powerful enough to
handle Live Streams while we are playing our games and i want to have better management of what is going on in my PC when i am streaming. it is better, easier and more "GREEN" to control 1 PC than 2 PC! Right ? Right !
How to assign specific cores to an executable game client or any executable?
[ ctrl + alt + del > task manager > more details > details > YourGame.exe > right click > set affinity and choose no more than 8 ( total core+threads) ]
If you want to create launchers for your gaming clients with affinity parameters read this
Microsoft's Article.
The formula that generates the Magic Number is: (2n-1) . where n is the Number of Cores or Threads as Hex Number.
Unfortunately most of the games are coming with launchers and it is difficult to launch the game with affinity parameters from inside the launcher, but you can create bat files for the games like i did for Star Wars
Battlefield II in the example that follows:
I created bat files in Star Wars Battlefield II's folder with the name swbfii-Xcpu.bat (where X is the number of cores i want to use each time) . for Streams i am using total 6 cores (3cores + 3threads) and i added inside the
bat file this command:
Start /affinity 3F starwarsbattlefrontii.exe
Next, i created a shortcut of this bat file with right click and i moved the shortcut in the folder i have all the games shortcuts with different CPU cores. Why 3 CPU cores + 3 threads ? Because i OCed the CPU and ths
game performs well with 6 cores+threads and i want the OS have enough CPU cores to support the encoding of the stream with the 2nd VGA (future article). For this reason.i created a second bat file in OBS' folder to use 1core+1thread
with this command:
Start /affinity 3 obs64.exe
This way i manage and control the CPU resources better and i know real time what is the reason for the lag when it is happening since i can see from inside the task manager what CPU core is working at 100% the exact time is
happening and this way i know what specific exe is guilty for this lag with ... AFFINITY !
For example, if you have a new 8 cores + 8 threads CPU, assign 8 cores + threads to the game, 1 or 2 cores+threads to OBS and the 7 or 6 remain cores+threads to Windows or any other app you want to use
during your streams. You have Lag ? nice, check what specific core is at 100% and you can exclude immediately the game or the OBS if the CPU core that stacked at 100% is not one of them you previous assigned !
2. Power Profile.
As we saw in the start of this article, the power settings are by default not adjusted to serve a gaming PC and the power adjust is necessary to be our second change. the easiest fix on this section is to open the
control panel and after that, open the Power Options and change the profile from Balanced (recommended) to High Performance.
But i prefer to create a new Power Profile and change what i want there just to be sure that a Windows Update don't reverse everything to default without my permission or acknowledge.
winkey+q > type: choose a power plan > Create a Power Plan > Type your Preferred Name and choose the High Performance Option
Also, there is Hidden Power Profile in Win 10 that has name Ultimate Performance and it can easy appeared with this command in a administrator terminal:
powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
but i am not big fan of that since i am not always playing games with my pc and i prefer to have my own power options profile and not messing with default profiles. (secret but don't tell it to anyone:
CPU in Win10 are not parked anymore after 2017).
3. Disable Windows Search / Indexing.
Windows Search and Indexing are both necessary for them who are using their Computer for Office Work or Multimedia. If you are using your Gaming PC for Office Work too then it is necessary for you but if not it is
totally useless and unfortunately it creates unnecessary input lag.
Open a command prompt as administrator and type:
sc stop "wsearch" && sc config "wsearch" start=disabled
If you want to re-enable Windows Search, maybe you found a Office work :) type this command in an administrator cmd:
sc start "wsearch" && sc config "wsearch" start=delayed-auto
4. Disable Ease of Access Center.
Trust me, everything under this section [Control Panel > Ease of Access Center OR under Ease of Access of the new settings, command in a cmd: start ms-settings: ] is unnecessary for a gamer. if for any health reason
you need to have active any of these settings i am sure you know better than me what you should have active in this category of services. Since there are many changes under this section watch
this video to see what you should disable. Personally i have disabled everything and not only one box like 👇.
5. Disable-Configure Antivirus.
While you are playing is unnecessary to have your antivirus on and many times the anti viruses block games from working as they should (for example they block the report / block a player from inside the game via origin).
You can stop live monitor via the new settings app or via administrator powershell
Set-MpPreference -DisableRealtimeMonitoring $true
if you want to enable it change the true to the above command to false.
Unfortunately the previous command doesn't disable the anti-malware service that creates the problems to the games and after 20H2 windows 10 version is really impossible to full disable it (there is still a way
but the method i used to do it is out of the scope of this site)
6. Gaming Mode.
Gaming mode in Win 10 was never about increasing fps or decreasing latency or mouse lag, but to prevent the automatic updates and notifications from interrupting our games and to connect consoles with our gaming
PC. if you don't want to check every-time before play if it is downloading drivers or updates remember to have it enabled, otherwise go to the next step.
7. Disable Notifications & Updates.
If you don't have enable gaming mode you should disable Notifications and updates before start the game and enable it after if you want to use them again (the updates for sure)
Press WinKey + I > System > Focus Assist > Off or Alarms Only
Press WinKey + I > Update & Security > Windows Update > Pause Updates for 7 days
There are much more tweaks that someone can do in windows 10 to have better performance, but these i think are the necessary for gamers. Everything else than these can have the opposite effect of the desired, like the
proportion of many sites to change the dns of the pc from router's ip to a big cdn ip and the dns requests will travel every time 8+ hops far from PC and not only 1 hop (your router is relay dns server of your ISP).
If you have good router and good ISP DNS you will see zero improvement if you change it. only if you have problems you should search to find a solution by analyzing the problem first !
Ending and Conclutions.
Windows 10 after 20H2 version are moving the old control panel to the new settings app . if you want a shortcut for the new settings add this code to a bat file and run it:
@echo off
start ms-settings:
exit
Unfortunately Win10 started having huge and unresolved problems as operating system. When i started writing this article i was windows insider and the year was 2020. Now i am not a windows insider, the year is 2021, i have do
3 clean installs of Windows 10 & 2 image restores (lesson learned after the second installation) , i have cancel the upgrade of my pc due to the forbidden
for the common gamers prizes of VGA because of the Crypto Madness, i have write some twitter posts to express my disappointment to windows developers, i have full disabled windows defender (yes the same windows defender the gurus on
the internetz say it can't be disabled) and ofc i have disable the automatic/features updates.
I will not write anything again for Windows 10 as operating system since i know now that the Windows 10 will never be an operating system for PC Gamers and everything the developers are doing is making the mess a
bigger mess for Gamers.
How i know ? the windows 10 version that made me leave the windows insider program hasn't released yet and the LAG that had because of the double same services that are doing exactly the same thing are not full deployed
to the new versions of windows 10 20H2, 21H1 and i found a lot of double same services in 20H2 i am using now. That's right . the lag followed me and only after i did all the next steps my pc returned to a normal behavior
without LAG!
So to fix Win10, i clean installed the OS, i updated it with only the high security updates , i removed any useless program aka bloatware, i disabled windows defender (full updated 20H2, image below from 12 June
2021) and the updates, i demoted the administrator that installed the OS to power user, i enabled and added a password to the builtin administrator and i disabled ALL THE REMOTE REGISTRY abilities... just to prevent a disaster from
a internet worm!
*if you ask me this should be the Hardware/Usage Tree.
On top the Hardware Categories: Servers, Desktops, Laptops/Notebooks, Tablets/Mobiles.
After that, the Usage: Work, Social/Browsing, Gaming , Multimedia .
Merry (join them in a dictionary) these 2 lists and you just created all the necessary Hardware Profiles should exist in ANY OPERATING SYSTEM until today ofcourse.
