How often have you been faced with a game that came from a perfectly good startup disk or download that simply won’t run? Either a plethora of errors is shown, or a blank screen and worst of all, the computer simply freezes up. I
n my country, this usually occurs because the system doesn’t meet the minimum requirements or the computer is just too old!
Despite all that, usually, with a little work the games can be made to run although in many cases not at the best performance and here are some tips to do just that
[divider]Update all drivers: [/divider]
A lot of new games tend to be incompatible with old drivers, so the first thing to do in such a situation is to upgrade all drivers, especially for the graphics cards. The updated drivers also tend to allocate computational power better, so it will usually improve performance and allow games to be run when your system is just borderline. Drivers can usually be found at the manufacturer’s website.
[divider]Increase virtual memory: [/divider]
Increase the allocation of your virtual memory, i.e., space on your hard disk that the computer treats as RAM, also referred to as a swap partition. Basically, instead of storing everything that’s running in RAM, it swaps the data in and out of the hard disk as required and while this is not as efficient or as fast as native RAM, it will still suffice in most situations. The steps to do it varies from OS to OS but looking at the manual or doing a Google search should tell you how to.
[divider]Use virtual graphics cards: [/divider]
If your graphics card is one of the older integrated Intel chipsets, many new or even moderately old games will refuse to run because they don’t support integrated cards. In such cases, a virtual graphics card may be used, which is essentially a software that allows your CPU to render the graphics. Since the CPU uses a series connection, it is inefficient and your frame rate may suffer. Some others also fool the game into believing you have a separate card, while doing the rendering with your GPU, but these tend to work with fewer games and requires more tweaking. Two of the best softwares in this are 3D analyzer which is of the latter type and Swift Shader which is of the former type. As a rule, try out 3D analyzer first, and only if that fails, switch to Swift Shader. Virtual Graphics cards tend to make the PC hotter and increase noise.
[divider]Overclock: [/divider]Overclocking is when a computer part is run at higher clock cycles than intended by the manufacturer. This increases performance at the expense of excess heat produced and thus more noise. You’d go to the BIOS from the Power On Start Test, into the advanced tweaking section and increase the clock multipliers to improve performance. This usually means you can run games that normally wouldn’t work. NEVER OVERCLOCK A LAPTOP! That can destroy your device.
READ MORE: Beginners Guide to Overclocking
[divider]Upgrade your hardware: [/divider]Last but not the least, if your computer is really that bad, then you can always consider upgrading your hardware and even though this option can be really expensive, it usually pays off in the long run. Probably the most obvious in the list, it still deserves a mention.
So guys, Happy gaming.
