Although you can overclock memory manually, it’s a long, complicated, and tedious process. Instead, all RAM defaults to a set memory speed, and you need to overclock it to unlock the speed it’s rated for. Your RAM doesn’t automatically run at the speeds listed by the manufacturer. However, your power plan could leave some extra performance on the table. It should be noted you won’t see a 10% improvement in games every title is a little different. Moving to the Balanced power plan and making that Nvidia change, we gained about 10% in the final 3DMark score. Open the software and go to Manage 3D Settings. Scroll down to Power Management Mode and select Prefer High Performance. In addition, you can force your graphics card into its most performant state in the Nvidia Control Panel. To find the setting, use Windows Key + S and search for Choose a Power Plan. There, make sure you’ve selected either the Balanced or High Performance option. Balance is the best for most people, but you can try out High Performance if you don’t mind consuming extra power and have plenty of cooling. You want to make sure the Balanced or High Performance plan is set. The Power Saver plan still allows your processor to reach its maximum utilization, but it will reduce speeds before ramping up your fans. You may be using the Power Saver plan, which could have a big impact on your PC’s performance. There are dozens of settings that you can change for your power plan, including the minimum and maximum processor utilization. Windows generally uses the Balanced power plan by default. We’re only covering gaming here, but we have a separate guide for speeding up Windows PCs that offers a few extra optimization steps. Some games will benefit more while others will benefit less, so keep that in mind. We also used a synthetic benchmark to measure the changes, not games. Keep in mind that every build is different, so your performance increases could vary widely. We then tested each of the changes individually, not cumulatively, to get an idea of how much performance you could gain back. This score represents performance when doing everything wrong. To test each of the changes, we set a baseline score with 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme.

Optimize pc for gaming software