Give back my fps!

Frames per seconds , that’s what it’s all about. Who are we kidding if we are saying we can play ET with 30 fps stable. If one wants to become good at Enemy Territory u just need a decent fps, no matter how good u are. Going from a weak to a good pc makes a huge difference. Playing without 43fps stable is not being able to use your full potential. But having the hardware for a good fps and not reaching that 125fps what u were hoping for is even more annoying. There are some very basic solutions, that won’t promised a huge fps boost but will at least be able to keep the fps more or less stable.

I heard it more then once people who have got a great pc which should give them 125fps stable without any problems. And sure if they just bought their new pc they get that maximum potential, but as time goes by they start having trouble maintaining that fps. Sudden drops to about 30-40 or their pc just can’t handle 125fps capped. How can we explain that if we are still using that very same pc. Well it’s easy maintenance. Like cleaning up your room u just have to clean up your computer if you want to keep having a good fps and keep getting the maximum out of your computer. I’m not saying u won’t keep a stable fps if u don’t clean it but if u are bothered by fps drops u can’t explain, try using the following basic steps that might make a difference.

I pointed out 3 basic steps that should improve your pc performance in general.

The windows package

Windows has a few basic programs providing u with some decent ,but pretty shallow cleaning. The two most important features are disk cleaning and defragmentation. What disk cleaning does is quite obvious but defragmentation actually reduces the amount of fragmentation in file systems. It does this by physically reorganizing the contents of the disk to store the pieces of each file close together and contiguously. So defragmentation improves the speed of your hard disk. The faster and more efficient your disk is, the better your performance will be. Try playing games with a raptor HD or a casual HD that hasn’t been defragmented in years. The difference will [/b]be very notable. There are also other defragmentation programs, even more powerful then the default windows defragmenter. One I would advise is “power defragmenter”, Fast and very efficient. Using these 2 windows default options at least once a month will keep your disks in a good shape.


The register

What is the register? Well to state it as short as possible The Windows registry is a database which stores settings and options for the operating system. The more u have on your pc, the bigger it is. Let’s take an example to show u what exactly causes the problem with the register keys. U install a game, and after some time u uninstall it. If u think everything linked to the game is removed you’re wrong. The big problem is games leave keys in the register that an uninstall will not remove. I’m not talking about one or two register keys it can go up to hundreds of keys. So it’s quite obvious if u had a few games and removed them, or just had some programs which u removed afterwards, your register can be filled with invalid keys. But here’s the tricky part, your register is also quite vulnerable so if u randomly start removing keys, in a worst case scenario your windows might not even boot anymore. So don’t start messing with your register unless u know what to do (or back it up). Luckily if you don’t really have any knowledge concerning the register there are few good programs to help u on the way. Of course this choice is hard because there are a lot of register cleaners on the market. And it could well be that one programs finds hundreds of errors while the other can only find thirty errors but differ to the ones the other program found. So using more than one programs isn’t exaggerating.. If u really don’t know what to pick one (or two) of those should be great. Registery mechanic, register cleaner and tuneUp utilities 2007. If u have never ever cleaned your register, the chance u find more then hundreds of invalid keys is very big. Using one of the following programs I proposed should give your pc a boost. Especially with starting up various programs.

Virus scanner and firewall

Let’s be honest surfing the web and downloading things these days is a big risk. I dare to state that doing this without a virus scanner is suicide for your computer. They chance of getting an infected file with a backdoor Trojan, or any kind of virus is huge. A Trojan installs malicious program while under the guise of being something else. And yes that is using memory or cpu. Agreed, It won’t use 50% of your computer memory but the chance of having more then one Trojan or virus if u don’t have a scanner is just way to big. On the other hand having a virus scanner like Norton installed might slow your pc even more then having a Trojan and no scanner. Norton is the most overrated virus scanner on the market. His detecting capability is hardly better then other scanners and his cpu and memory usage is just way too much. So what should u use instead. The market is full of virus scanners and it’s hard to find a suitable scanner. As we are going for a good performance here we don’t want to use too much resources so the best u can get is Nod32. This scanner is just great, it has a great protection while using almost no memory (peaks of max 22.000kb). Easy to use and no unnecessary plug-ins or whatsoever.

Using a firewall is less important than having a good virus-scanner but I still suggest u use one. Best ones on the market? Kerio personal firewall & Sygate personal firewall. Again very low memory usage, easy to use and good protection

Total packages

These days u can find programs that are total packages, providing u with register cleaners, disk cleaners and memory optimizers. If u don’t want to make it to hard for yourself and if you are not willing to sacrifice too much time cleaning up your dear old pc, a program like that could be handy. But there is no program combining the best of easy clean up task. Although 2 programs are very close to perfection I would advise u too keep using separate programs. Winutilities and tuneUp 2007 are great total packages. Going from register cleaning to cleaning history’s finding invalid shortcuts and removing bho’s.

Conclusion

To some It might seem useless to do these thing I just described but I’m really convinced this does make a difference, it’s obvious it won’t make a huge difference because the number one requirement for a good fps still is a good pc. But I believe if u have a good pc and your fps is not performing as good it should having that pc. These thing could make a difference. And not only for gaming this is useful, it’s something generally advisable for your computer. I hope I convinced u to take care of your computer cause it does make a difference!

Summery of interesting programs

1. http://www.virustotal.com/en/indexf.html
this site offers u the possibility to upload a file, and the site will check it with about 20 different virus scanners. So if u think this file is infect this site will definitely tell with what kind of virus you are dealing.
2. ATF – Cleaner
Cleaning the cache from the primary browsers on the market. (opera, IE, firefox)
3. Hijack this log
Makes a log and detects every form of malware, spyware and viruses. If u got something that isn’t supposed to be on your computer, this log finds it! The downside is that u have to use other programs to fix it. The program only tells u what is it, it won’t fix it
4. Your uninstaller
This programs is able to remove every program on your computer, even if u lost the uninstall file or the uninstall just won’t start. It also has a great “clean temporary files” function. In most of the cases it will detect over gigabytes of junk files.
5. AVG-anti spyware
Very decent spyware detector, big database.

Furthermore just keeps your eyes and ears open when surfing the net, and don’t open or download things that don’t look familiar.

Thanks for your time, I hope it was at least a bit useful