Finding the perfect balance between graphical power and game performance has always been somewhat tricky with PC gaming. Some opt to spend thousands of dollars building a "gaming rig" that has the latest state-of-the-art graphical processing units and tons of RAM. If you don't have that much money, there are still things you can do, both inside the game and on your PC, to improve gaming performance.
Instructions
Customizing PC Game Performance in Game
1. Lower (or raise) screen resolution. The larger the screen resolution, the more "space" your video card has to render graphics for. Of course, the downside to this is that on-screen objects such as your HUD (Heads-Up Display) will begin to cramp the screen at lower resolutions. Of course, if your PC can support high-end graphics, feel free to bump the resolution up so you can truly appreciate the visuals.
2. Adjust Anti-Alias levels. Anti-Aliasing in video games is, more or less, the smoothing of graphics to cut down on "jaggies," the rough edges on 3D models. Anti-Aliasing is one of the more taxing functions of a video card, and can bring your game's performance down by a significant margin.
3. Select the "Best Performance" option (often a button). This will automatically scan your PC hardware as well as out-of-game options for your video card and set the game's visuals so that the game will perform at its best.
Customizing PC Gaming Performance Out of Game
4. Open your video card control panel. In Windows, this can be done by either going through your Control Panel or by right-clicking your desktop and selecting it from the options that appear.
5. Adjust 3D settings. With nVidia cards this will be the first window you see, while ATi software will require you to select it from a menu on the left side of the window.
You will be able to select from a variety of options, including "Let the Application Decide" and "Always Use These Options". For best in-game performance, let the applications decide which visual style to use.
6. Navigate through the options to set the visual options of your choosing. For basic video cards, you will be able to change screen resolution and refresh rate as well as adjust video and image color settings. More advanced cards will allow you to adjust shadow generation, PhysX control (on-board physics driver) and, in some rare instances, even let you overclock your card.
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