PC gaming is wonderful because it allows you to adjust almost everything. PC gaming is also terrible because it allows you to tweak almost everything. Starting up a new game often means being met with a wall of controls and arcane acronyms that seem intended to intimidate anyone who just wants to start playing.
The good news is that you don't have to spend hours watching optimization videos or copying a professional eSports player's setup. A handful of simple tweaks can improve performance, reduce input lag, make games look sharper, and even save your hardware from unnecessary stress. These are the settings you should check before starting almost any PC game.
Turn off motion blur
Motion blur is one of the first settings many PC gamers disable, and for good reason. While intended to make movement appear more cinematic, it often makes fast-paced gameplay look smoother and less detailed. During firefights or quick camera pans, excessive blur can make it harder to track enemies or spot important gameplay details.
Some developers implement subtle motion blur well, but many games raise it by default. This is especially noticeable if you play on a monitor with a high refresh rate, where the naturally smoother image makes artificial blur feel unnecessary.
If a game offers separate settings for camera motion blur and object motion blur, you can experiment with keeping the latter enabled while disabling camera blur. Still, for most people, disabling the effect entirely results in a more responsive experience that lets the artwork shine instead of smearing across the screen.
Enable DLSS, FSR or XeSS
Upscaling techniques are some of the biggest performance boosts available in PC gaming. NVIDIA's DLSS, AMD's FSR, and Intel's XeSS all work by rendering the game internally at a lower resolution before reconstructing the final image.
The result is often a significant increase in frame rate with surprisingly little compromise. In many newer games, the “Quality” preset can look almost identical to the original resolution while performing better.
If you're having trouble getting consistent frame rates, enabling one of these technologies should be one of your first troubleshooting steps. Even gamers with powerful graphics cards can use them to reach higher refresh rates or enable more demanding visual features such as ray tracing.
Just avoid the more aggressive Performance or Ultra Performance presets unless you really need the extra frames, as image quality starts to become more noticeable at the lower render resolutions.
Adjust your field of vision
Field of View, often abbreviated to FOV, controls how much of the game fits on your screen at once. A wider FOV lets you see more of your surroundings, which can be an advantage in first-person shooters, especially. Many games still have values around 70 or 80 degrees by default, which can feel a bit narrow on a PC screen. Increasing the setting to somewhere between 90 and 110 often gives a more natural perspective while reducing that tunnel vision effect.
It's also worth experimenting with if you experience motion sickness. There is no universal best number. Your screen size and personal preferences play a role, so spend a few minutes finding the right spot.
Limit the frame rate
It may seem strange to intentionally limit performance, but an unlimited frame rate is not always ideal. Allowing your GPU to render as many frames as possible can cause unnecessary heat and inconsistent frame rates.
Setting a frame rate cap close to your monitor's refresh rate will provide a better overall experience. For example, if you have a 144Hz monitor, you can limit your game to 141 or 142 FPS.
Frame caps are also useful in older games where new hardware can produce hundreds of frames per second with no real benefit. Instead of wasting these resources, your system runs cooler and quieter while still feeling just as smooth.
Turn off Launcher Overlays
PC gaming has become a game of managing a dozen different windows before you even reach the main menu. From Steam, Discord, NVIDIA, Xbox Game Bar and publisher startups, there are tons of background overlays competing for attention and sometimes performance.
While overlays can be useful for taking screenshots or quickly responding to messages, they can also add performance issues. You don't have to disable everything, but it's worth a try if you're troubleshooting performance issues. Turning off unnecessary overlays can free up some system memory and reduce the number of applications fighting for GPU resources.
Lower shadow quality before anything else
Not all graphics settings affect performance equally. Shadows are often among the most demanding options in games, but they are also one of the hardest differences to notice during gameplay. Dropping shadow quality from Ultra to High, or even Medium, can restore a decent amount of performance while producing only subtle changes. Most people won't even notice the difference unless you stop specifically to compare screenshots.
Rather than first lowering texture quality or resolution, reducing shadows usually provides a much better balance between image quality and performance. It's one of the easiest ways to squeeze extra frames out of almost any gaming PC without making the game noticeably uglier. Do!
Disable mouse acceleration
Competitive peeps have been recommending this for years, but I really recommend it because it benefits almost anyone who uses a mouse. Mouse acceleration changes how far the cursor moves based on how fast you move your hand. Slow movements travel shorter distances, while faster movements cover more ground. While that may sound good, it creates inconsistent muscle memory that is especially frustrating in shooters.
Disabling Enhance Pointer Precision in Windows removes this acceleration, which in turn gives you one-to-one mouse movement that feels more predictable. Most new games also offer Raw Mouse Input, which bypasses Windows processing entirely. It may take a day or two to adjust if you've always used acceleration, but I still recommend it.
Turn on HDR if your monitor supports it
HDR has become quite common, but many people either forget to enable it or just never calibrate it properly. When implemented well, High Dynamic Range dramatically improves contrast and color depth. For example, game explosions will be more colorful and sunsets will have a next level of realism that standard SDR can't quite match.
Not all games have HDR support, but when they do, the difference is immediately noticeable. If you've invested in an HDR-capable monitor, it's worth taking a few minutes to make sure you're getting the experience you paid your cold, hard cash for.
Update your graphics drivers
It may not be the most exciting recommendation, but outdated graphics drivers are responsible for countless avoidable performance issues.
GPU manufacturers regularly release driver updates that improve optimization for newly released games, fix crashes, eliminate visual bugs, and sometimes give you surprisingly large performance gains. Installing the latest driver before playing a brand new version can prevent problems before they even appear.
This does not necessarily mean that you update as soon as a new driver is released. Sometimes early releases introduce new bugs of their own, so waiting a few days for community feedback isn't a bad idea if everything is already working as it should.
Still, if you've gone months without updating, it's one of the easiest maintenance tasks you can do. It only takes a few minutes and can instantly improve compatibility across your entire game library.
Make sure your monitor is running at maximum refresh rate
This one captures more PC gamers than almost any other setting. Buying a 144Hz, 165Hz, or even 240Hz gaming monitor doesn't automatically mean Windows uses that refresh rate. New monitors and graphics driver updates can all leave the screen locked at 60Hz by default.
You can verify your refresh rate through Windows Display Settings or the graphics driver control panel in less than a minute. Right-click on the desktop, open Display Settings, and then go to Advanced Display. Under Choose a refresh rate, select the highest available option for your monitor.
