How to Optimize Gaming PC-3 Settings, 2 That Actually Work
How to Optimize Gaming PC starts with finding what is slowing your PC down. After that, you can change some free BIOS and Windows settings that can improve gaming performance. Many guides only suggest basic tips like updating drivers or closing background apps. This guide goes further and focuses on three important settings: Resizable BAR, Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling, and Core Isolation. We will explain what each setting does and which ones are actually worth changing.
It is a wise approach to start with the built-in Windows and BIOS settings before paying for third-party best PC optimizer for gaming software.
Table of Contents
How to Optimize Gaming PC- Quick Answer
âš¡ Quick FPS Checklist: What Actually Moves the Needle
- ✓ Enable Resizable BAR / Smart Access Memory in your BIOS. It’s free and gives a 2–4% average FPS gain, with some games seeing up to 21%.
- ✓ Turn off Core Isolation / Memory Integrity in Windows Security. This can recover 5–15% of your frame rate on CPU-limited games.
- ✕ Skip Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling. Independent testing shows it does almost nothing, even in the exact situation it’s supposed to help most.
- ! Before doing any of this, confirm your actual bottleneck with the PC Bottleneck Calculator. It tells you which of these settings will actually matter for your specific CPU and GPU pairing.
- → If none of these settings move your FPS, the problem isn’t software anymore. Check our GPU bottleneck or thermal throttling guides next.
Find Your Bottleneck Before You Touch a Single Setting
This is the step that gets skipped everywhere else addressing how to optimize PC for gaming, and it’s the reason so much generic PC optimization advice does nothing for a lot of readers. If your GPU sits at 99% usage while your CPU has room to spare, none of the CPU-side settings below will help you. If it’s the other way around, a GPU setting won’t fix your stutter either.
Open our MSI Afterburner guide and set up the in-game overlay so you can watch both CPU and GPU usage while you actually play. Whichever one is pinned near 100% while the other has headroom is your real bottleneck, and that tells you which sections below are worth your time. Run the numbers through the bottleneck calculator too, since it’ll give you an exact mismatch percentage instead of a rough guess from watching two bars move around.
Resizable BAR / SAM: The Free Setting Everyone Should Enable
This is the most underrated free performance setting in PC gaming right now, and it’s either missing from other guides entirely or mentioned without any real numbers attached. Resizable BAR lets your CPU see your GPU’s full video memory at once instead of accessing it in small chunks, which speeds up how fast data moves between the two. AMD calls their version Smart Access Memory, but it’s the same underlying feature.
You need a 10th-gen Intel or Ryzen 3000 CPU or newer, an RTX 30-series or RX 6000-series GPU or newer, and a single toggle in your BIOS to turn it on. TechSpot ran a 22-game test across a mix of Nvidia and AMD cards and found an average 2 to 4% FPS gain in titles with proper support, with games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Forza Horizon 5 seeing double-digit jumps. +
Their data also showed AMD GPUs generally gaining more from the feature than Nvidia cards did in the same tests. A small number of titles actually run slightly worse with it enabled, so it’s worth a quick check against your specific game list, but for most people this is free performance sitting untouched in the BIOS.
If you’re also deciding between platforms and wondering whether PCIe generation affects any of this, our PCIe 4.0 vs PCIe 5.0 guide covers how the two connect, since Resizable BAR runs over the same PCIe lanes your GPU uses either way.
The Two Windows Settings Every Guide Gets Backwards
Two settings show up constantly in “how to optimize gaming PC” checklists across the internet, and almost nobody backs either one with real testing. One is genuinely worth changing. The other isn’t.
Core Isolation / Memory Integrity
This is a Windows security feature that checks kernel-level driver code before it runs, and that checking creates real overhead on every frame your game renders. HotHardware measured a concrete 5 FPS average gain in Shadow of the Tomb Raider after disabling it, and testing outlet ComputerBase now flags Memory Integrity as capable of producing double-digit percentage differences specifically in CPU-limited games, which is why they disclose it as a test variable in their own benchmarks. If your CPU is the older or weaker half of your build, this setting is quietly costing you more than most people realize.
Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS)
This settings hands GPU memory scheduling duties from your CPU over to the GPU itself, and it’s supposed to help CPU-bound systems the most. GamersNexus tested it specifically on a deliberately CPU-bottlenecked Core i3-10100 setup, the exact scenario where it should show the biggest gain, and still measured close to 0% real-world difference. Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling isn’t harmful, and there’s no real reason to avoid enabling it.
It’s just not the optimization win the internet treats it as. It’s a low-risk setting either way, since leaving it on doesn’t cost you anything measurable while addressing how to optimize gaming PC, but the testing simply doesn’t support the attention it gets on nearly every “optimize your PC” checklist. Turn it on if you like, just don’t expect it to be the fix that moves your frame rate.
| Setting | What it does | Measured effect |
|---|---|---|
| Core Isolation / Memory Integrity | Runs kernel-level security checks on driver code | 5 to 15% FPS loss in CPU-limited games |
| Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling | Moves GPU memory scheduling off the CPU | Close to 0% difference even in CPU-bound testing |
Turning off Memory Integrity is a real security trade-off, so weigh that before disabling it, but the performance case for doing so is much stronger than the case for chasing HAGS. If your frame time inconsistency looks similar to what shows up from an overheating CPU, it’s worth ruling that out too in our thermal throttling guide before assuming it’s either of these settings.
A Dirty Driver Install Undoes Everything Above
None of these settings matter much if your GPU driver itself is the problem. A driver update that doesn’t fully overwrite the old files can leave behind registry entries and driver store junk that cause the exact stutter and inconsistent frame times people blame on Windows settings. If you’ve updated your GPU driver recently and performance got worse instead of better, a clean wipe with our DDU guide clears out everything the standard Windows uninstaller leaves behind and gives you a genuinely fresh install to test from.
When It’s Not a Setting Anymore
If you’ve enabled Resizable BAR, turned off Core Isolation, confirmed HAGS isn’t worth bothering with, and your driver install is clean, and you’re still not getting the frame rate you want, the calculator has already told you where the real limit is. Stuttering that specifically happens when switching apps or loading new areas in a game usually points to running low on memory rather than anything settings-related, and our DDR4 vs DDR5 RAM guide breaks down whether an upgrade there actually makes sense for your platform.
If your GPU or CPU usage is simply maxed out at 99% with no room left, that’s a hardware bottleneck the settings in this guide were never going to fix, and it’s worth confirming the exact mismatch with the PC Bottleneck Calculator before spending on anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I turn off Core Isolation for gaming?
Many competitive players do. On Steam Community’s Counter-Strike 2 discussion boards, one player reported their benchmark average jumping from 540 to 650 FPS after disabling Memory Integrity, and threads on Microsoft’s own Tech Community forum confirm some titles see 15 to 18% degradation with it left on.
It’s a real security feature, so it’s worth weighing that trade-off rather than switching it off without thinking about it.
Is Resizable BAR worth enabling on every system?
Almost always, since it costs nothing but a BIOS toggle. A discussion thread on TechSpot’s own forums noted that the closer your system already is to being CPU-limited, the smaller the gain from Resizable BAR tends to be, so a high-end GPU paired with a weak CPU won’t see as much benefit as a more balanced build.
Does Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling do anything at all?
Barely. Users on Guru3D’s forums reported gains of only 1 to 2 FPS after enabling it, matching what GamersNexus found in dedicated testing on a CPU-bottlenecked setup built specifically to give HAGS its best shot at showing a difference.
Can I optimize a gaming laptop the same way as a desktop?
Mostly, minus overclocking. Users troubleshooting laptop performance on Tom’s Guide forums were told directly that overclocking is locked out on most gaming laptops at the BIOS level, and that switching to the highest performance power plan while plugged in solves more slowdown complaints than any driver-level tweak does.
Does closing background apps actually help my FPS?
Only if you’re CPU-bound. On eXputer’s forums, gamers troubleshooting stutter found bigger, more consistent gains from capping frame rate with RTSS and enabling V-Sync through the GPU driver panel than from closing background apps alone, since a GPU-bound system already has CPU headroom to spare regardless of what’s running in the background.
Bottom line
How to optimize gaming PC performance starts with finding what is actually slowing your system down. Once you know your bottleneck, you can focus on the settings that can make a real difference instead of changing everything at once. Resizable BAR is worth enabling, while Core Isolation may be worth disabling on older CPUs. HAGS, on the other hand, is not something you need to spend much time chasing.
