Today, although it has been tried but true, high-end gaming laptops never achieve the same level of performance as desktop gaming has the same level. However, this does not mean that you cannot play games on a laptop, but you can still win new games if your laptop has a configuration that matches the requirements given by the game publisher.

While it has been tried but true, high-end gaming laptops never achieve the best performance like desktop gaming at the same level.

Besides, if you make enough 10 suggestions in this article, maybe your gaming performance on laptop will be significantly improved compared to before. As follows.

1. Always keep your laptop clean and dust-free

The first and most important thing you should keep in mind is to keep your laptop clean.

Dirt has always been a direct influence on laptop performance. Specifically, if there is too much dust in the heat sink area, it will obstruct and reduce airflow, leading to the laptop being overheated. And as the temperature goes up, components like CPU, GPU, … will slow down, making laptop performance decrease, affecting your gaming process.

Therefore, the first thing you need to pay attention to is to keep your laptop clean, remove dust in heat dissipation locations. In addition, you should also pay attention to the keyboard position because there is often a lot of dirt and food scattered during use.

One thing to note is that cleaning the laptop is not easy because the manufacturer will stick the warranty stamps around the critical areas of the machine. Therefore, you should be careful to avoid tearing or losing your warranty or if you have no experience of cleaning and want to be more careful, or take your device to a service center or a reliable store to clean your laptop.

2. Always check and update the latest drivers for laptops

Most computers running Windows, macOS and Linux often use the same hardware architecture. This also means that regardless of operating system, driver updates are important. Fortunately, this job is often very simple. Sometimes you will have to install them yourself, but most of them are usually installed in operating system updates.

However, when it comes to graphics card drivers, you have to install more yourself. Although Intel integrated graphics cards are often not suitable for gaming, they are updated regularly through Windows Update.

For other third-party graphics card providers, don’t do this. Instead, you have to install the drivers for these GPUs yourself and when installing them are usually accompanied by a GPU management software like Nvidia GeForce or AMD Gaming Evolved. Your job is to make sure they are set to automatically update. In addition, you must also ensure that controller and audio related drivers must be updated to the latest version.

3. DirectX must always be in the latest version

If you don’t know, DirectX is an important part of playing Windows games. Many upgraded versions of DirectX have been released by Microsoft over the years, and on each version are outstanding improvements in processing and optimization of gaming performance. DirectX 12 is the latest DirectX version and comes preinstalled on laptops running Windows 10.

To check the current version of DirectX, enter the “dxdiag” command into the search box and click the result as shown.

Wait a moment for the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (DXDiag) panel to run, then select the Display tab. Here, you can see information about the discrete graphics card in your device.

The System tab will be brief information about the laptop configuration, and the DirectX Version line will be information about the version of DirectX present on the laptop.

As well as updating the latest driver for the graphics card, you must also ensure that the audio driver is perfectly suitable for gaming. You can check the sound driver status at the Sound tab of DXDiag. Besides, you can also switch to the Input tab to see all the drivers of connected devices.

DXDiag is a great way to check whether the hardware related to the game is missing the driver. If so, you can let Windows Update update or update the device yourself for this device through its official website.

4. Overclocking the graphics card (not recommended if you don’t understand)

Although this is not really something that less experienced users should do. However, overclocking will add a bit of performance to the graphics card, and most of the support tools are quite intuitive. Therefore, if you have some knowledge, you can perform this overclocking.

The main problem with overclocking that users need to pay attention to is the power consumption and heat generated. Overclocking will make the graphics card use more power, so you need to adjust the power settings on the laptop to the best. And the heat of the graphics card after overclocking also proved more than before.

Typically, heat dissipation is usually handled by the integrated cooling system inside the laptop. Therefore, you should regularly clean the radiators and fans. If they are too dirty, the cooling system will overload, the heat generated cannot be handled promptly, the laptop will automatically turn off as a safe measure when the machine is too hot.

If you’re not sure, the current popular graphics card overclocking tool is MSI Afterburner. This tool is fully compatible with NVIDIA graphics cards as well as AMD.

5. Adjust the power consumption setting

Windows itself provides users with a number of specific power management options, but to get the best gaming experience, you should connect your laptop to power.

Next, go to Settings -> System -> Power and sleep -> Additional power settings

In the new window that appears, click on High performance.

In addition, you should also learn and set up additional options in the Change plan settings -> Change advanced power settings to get a stable power setting during the battle.

6. Use the Game Mode feature

This is a suggestion anyone can use. The Xbox app on Windows, in addition to the game account information, also includes other features like screen capture, streaming or Game Mode. And with laptops, Game Mode is exactly what you need.

To activate Game Mode, go to Settings -> Gaming -> Game Mode and switch to ON.

Once enabled, it will ensure that the operating system launches the game with optimized settings. In essence, Windows will proceed to close or pause some background tasks when the user starts the game.

7. Turn off background operations

The next suggestion you need to refer to and implement is to turn off all open applications and software before entering the game. Then continue to turn off processes running in the background in the system tray.

Note that you should not turn off the graphics card management application or the voice chat tools like Discord to communicate in the game.

8. Check network speed if playing online games

In addition to performance from hardware, drivers and personal settings on laptops, the internet is also a factor to consider if you play online games.

“Lag” is a slang that is quite familiar to players of online games, this is a problem related to internet transmission, particularly due to the slow connection between a laptop and a router. Most wireless card drivers available on laptops are usually updated through Windows Update. So, if the problem is not resolved, try connecting your laptop to the router via a wired Ethernet port during game play.

In addition, you should also consider buying a gaming router to optimize your gaming performance.

9. Manage update tasks

Although quite useful, automatic updates often cause a lot of problems. For example, Windows Update may implicitly download updates before prompting you to install them. Digital game distribution systems like Steam often do this. It often implicitly downloads updates to other games while you are playing a game.

To effectively manage update tasks, you can refer to this article to better understand.

10. Change the processing settings to optimize the graphics card

Finally, you need to adjust the settings for your graphics card, especially in case you need to run a game. Memory available on laptop GPUs also limits these options. So, you should also consider the necessary settings for each of your games. In short, adjusting the texture at a high resolution will consume a lot of RAM, affecting the frame rate.

Note that you can also adjust texture levels as well as shaders for each game. This is useful in case you play an old game and can run at High. In the meantime, you can still adjust the video settings of individual games to suit your device at the display / video settings.

Maybe, it will take you a while to find the optimal video settings for the games you need. However, when the performance of the game gradually increases, you will see this tradeoff is absolutely worth it.

Hope the article will be useful for you.