Summary

• Disabling certain Windows security and BIOS settings can help you get an FPS boost.
• Switching to Game Ready drivers can provide you with smoother and more stable gameplay.
• You might be unknowingly running out of VRAM on your GPU; tweak in-game settings to optimize the performance.

PC users are always looking for ways to get higher frames per second (FPS) in games. Whether it's daydreaming about hardware upgrades or trying to optimize Windows for gaming, for some it's a never-ending pursuit. But, among all these FPS-boosting guides, you might easily miss or gloss over some of the lesser-known settings and variables impacting your gaming performance.

The factors I'm going to cover here might include ideas you've already heard of but never got around to investigating. You might even find out about a few things that you never even considered could be tanking your gaming FPS. But, rest assured that you'll learn a new thing or two about some oft-overlooked factors that could be impacting your PC gaming performance.

7 Windows security settings

Be a little adventurous

While you might know all about background applications hogging system resources, the same is true about certain Windows settings. Settings like Memory Integrity and Virtual Machine Platform protect your system from security attacks and prevent other operating system security incidents. But, they're also quite taxing on your CPU and often other hardware as well, depriving your games of precious system resources.

Keep them disabled only if you notice a significant boost in gaming FPS.

Disabling Memory Integrity and Virtual Machine Platform settings will leave your system more vulnerable to security attacks. Plus, if you're utilizing hardware virtualization features, you'll face issues with that too. Hence, keep them disabled only if you notice a significant boost in gaming FPS. Otherwise, it's best to leave them on.

6 Leaving SMT or HT on

Try disabling Simultaneous Multi-Threading or Hyper-Threading

Now, this will work only in certain limited scenarios. Hyper-Threading (Intel) and Simultaneous Multi-Threading (AMD) are best left enabled to make the most of your CPU horsepower. Nowadays, Windows is smart enough to allocate the right threads to the right applications, prioritizing your games when they need the CPU resources the most. But, if you're facing lower-than-expected FPS in a certain title, you can try disabling SMT or HT in your BIOS/UEFI and see if you get a boost.

If not, you can simply go back into the BIOS and re-enable it. But, if you notice an improvement, even if marginal, you can keep it disabled if you're only gaming and not using multi-threaded applications. Otherwise, you'll notice a significant loss of performance in video editing, streaming, or other core-heavy workloads.

5 Not running game-optimized drivers

Those day-one drivers? Better get 'em

Both Nvidia and AMD often release Game Ready drivers and Software Adrenalin Edition drivers, respectively, to coincide with the launch of a new title. These specially optimized drivers promise enhanced performance or at least the best possible performance for that particular game. It's best to update your graphics drivers to these versions if you happen to have those games.

You might not notice a huge FPS boost in all cases when moving from your existing driver to an optimized driver, but there might be other benefits, such as more stable FPS and reduced chances of crashes. After all, it's just a simple graphics driver update which promises optimized gameplay in particular titles. There's not much to lose.

4 Not enabling XMP/EXPO

It's possible you forgot to enable this

Your memory kit most likely has an XMP or EXPO setting that should always be enabled in the BIOS. It's possible that you forgot to enable it when building your PC or when you bought your pre-built PC. This would mean that you're running your RAM at less than its maximum rated frequency, leaving some performance on the table. It's possible that you might not see a big FPS boost after enabling it in the BIOS, but it's better to be sure instead of being wrong about it and losing out on precious potential.

Based on your processor and motherboard, these settings might be named differently. You might even see names like AMP or X-AMP when you head into the BIOS. All of them mean the same thing and are just meant to allow your RAM to run at the settings it should really be performing at.

3 Running on low-power mode

You might be running on fumes

This one is relevant for laptops that are often running on "power saver" modes to extend battery life. In such cases, the power available to your GPU is also reduced, naturally tanking your framerates in games. What you can do to remedy this is to switch to the "Best performance" mode in your Windows "Power & battery" settings, and to the "High performance" plan in the "Power Options."

You can also consider overclocking your GPU to get some extra performance out of it. This might not reap huge dividends on laptops, but if you're on a desktop, give it a try and see if it's worth it. Who knows? You might be able to break the 60 FPS barrier for a heavy title, or simply get the satisfaction of running your GPU near its maximum potential.

2 Leaving lighting and volumetric settings on default

These are the biggest FPS tanking culprits

No one likes to willingly dial down in-game settings if they can help it. But, it's often something we need to do as PC gamers to achieve an optimum balance between visual fidelity and smooth FPS. You might already be doing this by turning ray tracing off or enabling DLSS or FSR in your games. But you might have left a few key graphical settings on default, inadvertently taking a big hit on your FPS.

Lighting settings like ambient occlusion and shadows have the biggest impact on gaming performance.

Lighting settings like ambient occlusion and shadows have the biggest impact on gaming performance, outside of overall ray tracing or path tracing settings. They do add a lot to the image quality, but if you can't get smooth gameplay, is it worth it? You might want to answer that for yourself and change these settings accordingly. Volumetric settings are the next big culprit, including volumetric lighting, fog, and clouds. You can start by disabling volumetric fog and clouds and move on to volumetric lighting if your FPS still isn't where you want it to be.

There's a huge possibility that even after turning these settings down or off, you might not notice a big downgrade in image quality and get a nice uplift to your FPS.

1 Running out of VRAM

That's where those stutters are coming from

This one is especially tough to notice, since you might not be actively monitoring the VRAM usage while playing your game. When the framebuffer gets filled up and you run out of VRAM, you start experiencing stutters, blurred textures, frame drops, artifacts, and even game crashes. Games require significant VRAM these days, especially at higher resolutions like 1440p and 4K. Some graphics cards, especially the recent ones from Nvidia, run out of VRAM even at 1080p.

Even powerful graphics cards like the RTX 3070 struggle simply due to insufficient VRAM.

The problem with manufacturers putting low VRAM on GPUs like the RTX 4000 series and RTX 3000 series is fast becoming a huge issue for gamers, where even powerful graphics cards like the RTX 3070 struggle simply due to insufficient VRAM. Keep in mind, these cards aren't budget SKUs, even $500 to $800 cards are also on the list of culprits. What you can do to reduce your VRAM usage is to reduce texture quality, turn off ray tracing, or render your game at a lower resolution.

These aren't ideal solutions, but until GPUs start shipping with adequate VRAM, they might be the only ones available to you.

Weed out the silent killers of gaming FPS

There are many hardware and software factors responsible for determining gaming performance, but it's the hidden variables that you should be the most concerned about. If you don't even know something is affecting your gaming FPS, you may go on playing unaware of the cause. The settings and factors I covered above might help you get a performance boost, and more importantly, help you find out more about your gaming PC.