The first 10 things to do when your PC can't run a new game

[Jos]

You just got a new PC game! Hoo buddy, you are excited. You’ve been looking forward to this one for years. You load it up and… oh, hell. Something’s off. Your frame-rate is bucking wildly. The mouse input is all wrong. The introductory sequence hangs for a second or two every time someone talks. When you move the camera, there’s some sort of horrifying stuttering.

You go into the options menu and make the usual tweaks. Turn off MSAA. Turn down shadow quality. Turn down reflections. Turn off any feature with a weird name and Nvidia branding. None of it does much to help. This game simply does not run well on your PC. Here’s what you do next.

Read the complete article.

 

[Badvok]

Sounds like someone installed Norton or AVG to me. Also, what's with the anti-Nvidia slant? I always thought AMD's TressFX was one of the worst culprits for messing up performance.

 

[Humza]

11. Opt for a re-fund, get a new crappy one and do this all over again

 

[andy06shake]

How about just reading the minimum requirements on the back or going to "Can You Run It" (http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri) to determine if you can play the game?

Chances are if you don't meet the minimum requirements across the board then you wont be able to run or play at an acceptable FPS.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

11. Did you check to see if your PC was plugged into a wall socket and that there was power to it?

 

[Nobina]

When I was a kid I used to mess with BIOS settings hoping it would somehow give me more performance. It didn't.

 

[Bigtruckseries]

Stop buying underpowered hardware. Buy the best you can get.

A number of people told me: "you don't need a Titan X - just get a 980Ti"

I ignored em. I got the Titan X. I'm future proof for years.

 

[oldikes]

How about just reading the minimum requirements on the back or going to "Can You Run It" (http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri) to determine if you can play the game?

Chances are if you don't meet the minimum requirements across the board then you wont be able to run or play at an acceptable FPS.

There are many, many possible issues other than FPS, and can be related to many, many things other than underpowered hardware.
Too many crappy PC releases and bugged drivers these days. Why do you need to update drivers every time a new AAA game releases to get more FPS?

 

[jizzyburnizzy]

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

 

[cartera]

Stop buying underpowered hardware. Buy the best you can get.

A number of people told me: "you don't need a Titan X - just get a 980Ti"

I ignored em. I got the Titan X. I'm future proof for years.

Can we hold you too that? Nothing's future proof if the last 10 years is anything to go by. Also you will likely get used to the higher level performance and graphics quality which will make you upgrade earlier than you think.

 

[Dimitriid]

1) Don't preorder games or buy on day one. Wait until you can be reasonably certain you can play it.

That's it, no more steps you plebs: just don't ****ing fall for the hype game.

 

[BSim500]

11. Get a refund, stop-preordering and move on. Plenty of other fish in the backlog.

How about just reading the minimum requirements

Stop buying underpowered hardware. Buy the best you can get.

Half the stutter problems in modern games are non-performance related engine issues rather than lack of horsepower. Eg, both Bioshock Infinite and Deus Ex Human Revolution stuttered like mad at launch due to the way the PC version had engine code that limits the rate data was requested to be "streamed" in at pre-designated points almost like it was designed for reading directly off a last-gen console optical disk. Several months later, post-patched gameplay was smoother on an i3 + GTX 950 + HDD than pre-patch release day was on an i7 + GTX 980Ti + SSD. Then Deus Ex:HR Director's Cut was released based on pre-patched code and the same (unfixed) non-performance related stutter is back again. Some consolization / lazy port problems you simply can't "brute force" through. (And nor should anyone need to either if the problem is fixable in software and the real bottleneck is laziness / excuse-making on the back of epeen).

Too many crappy PC releases and bugged drivers these days. Why do you need to update drivers every time a new AAA game releases to get more FPS?

When you read "game optimized drivers", understand that's industry code-speak for "We (AMD / nVidia) were forced to code "hooks" into the drivers that do an on-the-fly replacement of the developer's woefully inefficient shaders with our own rewritten ones, because without us they couldn't even code Pac-Man to run at 31fps on a GTX 1080 if they tried."

 

[andy06shake]

There are many, many possible issues other than FPS, and can be related to many, many things other than underpowered hardware.
Too many crappy PC releases and bugged drivers these days. Why do you need to update drivers every time a new AAA game releases to get more FPS?

Of course there are many other issues other than FPS to contend with which is why I said " if you don't meet the minimum requirements across the board".

As to the continuous driver updates seemingly every time a new AAA title materialises, I suppose it would be worse if ATI/Nvidia did not tweak there products to maintain what they claim is optimum performance. Poor optimization and proper ports probobly play there part regrading the issue. Essentially they make more monies from the console counterparts than the PC so they dont invest as much time refining the game ports or play testing them enough. Which lets face it is a shame considering the leg room a half decent PC has to offer over its Xbone or Playshit counterpart. Should probobly add I own a PS4 also. LoL

 

[fktech]

New #1

Get off your butt and develop a marketable skill; stop playing games and go to work!

 

[EClyde]

One thing to do when getting that "New" game. WAIT

 

[Theinsanegamer]

#11, dont buy the game at launch, wait for the devs to actually finish it first, and buy the game once it is done and works well, thereby refusing to reward devs and publishers for releasing broken games.

New #1

Get off your butt and develop a marketable skill; stop playing games and go to work!

NEW New #1. Learn a marketable skill in high school/college instead of screwing around, and play video games as a hobby in your off time that you get to have because you work a good job, and dont have to constantly work to make ends meet.

Seriously, there is more to life then working.

 

[andy06shake]

New #1

Get off your butt and develop a marketable skill; stop playing games and go to work!

You still seem to have the time to lecture others as to your philosophy of life, may I suggest a spoonful of your own medicine.

Plenty of people of all ages play games and still manage to work and perform there daily tasks, just a thought.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

When I was a kid I used to mess with BIOS settings hoping it would somehow give me more performance. It didn't.

Remember when adding a dedicated sound card and disabling the integrated sound would give your system a FPS boost back in the XP days?

 

[Igrecman]

Wait 5 years until you get a new PC and buy the game for 5$ at Wallmart

 

[andy06shake]

Remember when adding a dedicated sound card and disabling the integrated sound would give your system a FPS boost back in the XP days?

The game F.E.A.R was like that, gave a marginal increase in performance when using dedicated sound card.

 

[Uncle Al]

Oh no .... he left out the most important one .... "open 2nd floor window and toss it out, then tell wife the computer is broken and you'll need to buy another one" .......

 

[Daithi]

I don’t get what everyone here is complaining about. Running the game at max settings on a GTX 770, solid 60fps. No dips.

God, those people.

And if you quiz them then, it's a case of "well I turned this this and this down to low, but it's still near max and those settings are stupid anyway" and if you push further "no it never dips below 60 as long as I stay in this one spot staring at the concrete and not actually playing the game, but there's barely any difference between 60 and 40 anyway"

 

[wiyosaya]

#1 Uninstall the latest Windows 10 update.

 

[ZackL04]

11. Did you check to see if your PC was plugged into a wall socket and that there was power to it?

12. Try power cycling the PC

 

[Sillywabbitsz]

This just happened to me, I zero raided 2 ssd's and windows did not make a swap file, So everytime I tried to load Doom it wouldn't load.... I scratched my head for a couple hours then while I was looking at my systems specs in task manager I noticed there was only 16k devoted to swap so I increased it to 3072 and boom it worked perfectly. That's all I got
Peace