What makes a graphics card faster

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AntaresX Distinguished. Apr 26, 0 18, 1. But with these two examples, based upon the specifications, it seems like the GTXTi is the better of the two, and it costs a lot less. If what matters most is the core, shader, and memory clock, the GTXTi seems to provide better function for half the price. Is there something I'm missing? Feb 6, 0 18, What matters to most is the FPS it makes. Others care about: length of card heat it makes how much noise it makes reputation of the company they buy it from.

Start here to see where they all fall in terms of performance, then google prices for each card that you see in the same category, because the prices are changing daily. Which is faster, a 4 cylinder Lotus, or an 8 cylinder Crown Victoria? Nov 15, 5, 27, You definitely can't say that is faster. Nov 17, 1, 0 19, What makes the faster than the ti is a larger memory pipeline, bit vs bit. The number crunching is done by the cuda cores. More cores, equals more number crunching, faster graphics processing.

You might be able to get a few more FPS by playing with clock speeds, but most of the time it's not necessary. Oct 14, 7, 0 26, Jun 28, 3, 0 21, I seem to be the only one to ever say this but I think it's important as well as true. I've had several over the years and the difference compared to Nvidia is immediately noticeable to me.

Others will tell you that Nvidia has driver issues too and that's true. However they fix theirs. Also, all the hype about a few extra FPS is just a pissing contest.

It's a game of diminishing returns. They don't add a thing to the enjoyment of playing a game. If you're into bragging rights then I hope you can afford it. Otherwise put your money into a solid performing rig and splurge on something meaningful. Step 1: Type dxdiag in the search box on the taskbar and press Enter. Locate the version number listed under System Information , as shown above.

Microsoft updates DirectX through the Windows Update feature. One way to improve GPU performance is to overclock it. This is done by tweaking the frequency and voltage of the GPU core and its memory to squeeze out additional speed. The wrong settings could potentially damage the chip.

Even more, an inadequate cooler will cause the overclocked GPU to overheat and crash. For more help on overclocking your graphics card, check out our dedicated guide. That includes power and voltage limits. Nvidia and AMD cards have a base and boost clock speed. When all of the conditions are right — power draw, temperature, etc. So, raising your power limit does one thing: Allows your GPU to hit its boost clock speed more frequently and consistently.

Note: As with overclocking, you should make sure your GPU has strong cooling before proceeding. This will raise your GPUs temperature and may make it run louder, too.

Repeat until you reach the power limit or the GPU becomes unstable. The recent RTX , for example, has a maximum operating temperature of 93 degrees Celsius. Step 4: Tweak the curve to increase your fan speed as the GPU gets hotter. The image above is the fan curve we settled on for an RTX If your graphics card gets too hot, it will throttle, or slow itself down, in order to avoid damaging its delicate components.

Your first line of defense is to clean all intake fans using a can of compressed air. Use compressed air to blow out any dust collecting on the components. Note: Resist the urge to use a vacuum cleaner. For laptops, your only option is to blow dust out of the intake fans.

While cleaning your desktop or laptop helps improve the airflow, you may simply need more. For desktops, you may have spaces in the chassis for additional fans on the front, top, and bottom. What you can do, however, is purchase a cooling pad that sits under your laptop. Does Windows get increasingly slower with each program you install on your PC or laptop — directly impacting all your games?

Download a free trial today. These may range from useless bloatware to apps you installed ages ago and forgot about. Click Move to Trash next to any program to get rid of it. Click Move to Trash to dump it. AVG TuneUp will r emove the bloatware along with its corresponding files and caches. But what about all those other programs you use on a regular basis that are still limiting your day-to-day performance?

Our handy tool will also help you adjust your power settings. AVG TuneUp can safely put these to sleep, then wake them up when you need them. Click Put all to sleep to snooze them all at once, or click Sleep next to each program to snooze them one by one. Our patented Sleep Mode technology prevents your selected programs from running in the background until you need to use them.

Thanks to this performance tweak of snoozing all your heavy background tasks, your PC will run like new — meaning your games will run faster. A slow internet connection can cause extra lag in games. From overclocking your GPU to learning all the advanced settings tweaks, there are some powerful changes you can make to raise FPS to elite levels on your gaming PC:. More than insufficient RAM or a struggling CPU , your graphics chip is almost always the bottleneck that causes stuttering or lackluster gameplay.

To improve performance and increase FPS, push your graphics card beyond its default speed setting via overclocking. Five to ten years ago, overclocking could potentially harm your hardware. But now, most current systems will shut themselves down before taking any damage. Always follow safe GPU overclocking practices when trying this yourself.

The same goes for overclocking your CPU — slow and steady wins the race. SSDs are much faster than mechanical hard disks , making them a great way to optimize your Windows 10 computer for gaming. Choose an SSD with at least GB of storage, though this is more like an absolute minimum than an effective starting point. Upgrading to an SSD can significantly reduce loading times. The more RAM you have, the more your computer can do at once.

Then, buy one or more of the same RAM module. SuperFetch referred to as SysMain in Windows 10 and Prefetch are built-in Windows features intended to boost startup times for apps on your computer and for Windows itself.

But with games, we noticed that loading times and background activity actually increase when these features are enabled. Turning them off is an easy Windows 10 gaming hack. Note: Please read the following instructions carefully, because deleting or changing the wrong values in the registry may cause problems with your PC.

Type services into the Windows search box, then select Services from the results. Press Yes to confirm. Double-click EnablePrefetcher and enter 0 the default value is 3 to disable the Prefetcher, then click OK. As data is written to or deleted from your hard disk, files become fragmented and will physically spread out all over the disk.

Disk fragmentation will lead to a significant performance hit — especially with games — as the hard disk will need to collect all of the fragmented portions before it can process the entire file. SSDs also benefit from regular cleanup. Open the Start menu and begin typing the word defragment. Choose Defragment and Optimize Drives from the search results.

Select your Windows disk and hit Optimize. Open Command Prompt: click the Start menu and type cmd into the search bar. Choose Run as administrator from the Command Prompt options and click Yes when prompted. Type in the command Fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify , and hit Enter. Try entering the command fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0. All Nvidia drivers come with their own control panels that give you more power over your graphics settings and performance to optimize your PC for gaming.

Go through the list of options and tweak them to increase FPS and find the right balance between performance and visual quality for your PC. These are some of the lesser-known but still important settings to tweak:. Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames: This controls the number of frames that the processor prepares before transferring them to the graphics card.

Increasing this value results in smoother gameplay, but you may notice lag when using the mouse and keyboard. To eliminate lag, try the 1 setting. Threaded Optimization: This option should always be On , because it allows the support of multi-threaded optimization for modern multi-core processors.

VSync: This synchronizes the frames that your graphics card renders with the refresh rate of your monitor. If you disable it, you might find that games run more smoothly, but some parts of the screen may not render correctly. Disable VSync only if your monitor has a higher frame rate than your gameplay. To fire it up, right-click on your desktop, select Radeon Settings , and head over to the Gaming Settings.