In this article, I’m going to show you how to optimize your Mac for Gaming. In the past, Macs have not always been associated with gaming, but times just might be changing. It almost goes without saying that you need to meet the specification requirements of the games that you want to play, but with just a few tweaks, gamers can easily enhance and optimize their Mac for gaming. This guide tells you how.
Optimize Your Mac for Gaming
PC gaming is one of the best ways to get entertained even in 2019. The gamers love to play high-ended video games on PC due to many reasons. The gaming option for Linux is limited; mac rarely handles the graphics processing of AAA titles. You don't need to 'optimize' for gaming. Especially on a Mac. Macs are lousy for gaming anyway. If it's powerful enough the play whatever you're interested in, it won't need to be 'optimized.' Unlike Windows, OS X doesn't get 'bloated' as time goes on. That's one of the many benefits of using a Mac.
Nowadays, more and more top-quality games are being released for Mac on a daily basis. Apple users can access games through the app store and game developer communities like Steam. Other apps like PokerStars can be directly downloaded to your Mac, giving you access to exciting games, including the upcoming Power Up, which blends poker and eSports. Developers have also started to make their work available on Mac, and now it’s time for gamers to follow.
How to Optimize Your Mac for Gaming
You can start by freeing up disk space on your machine. Your hard drive is not an essential component for gaming, but it is needed in order to install games onto your machine, as well as for running games and apps smoothly. Uninstall unwanted, unused and outdated apps to make room, especially those that run needlessly in the background or that take up a lot of space unnecessarily.
Sift through your files and delete what you don’t need. It might be painful to let go of your old music or photos but just think of the gaming as you delete them, or simply move what you want to keep to the cloud or an external storage device. Do whatever you can to free up disk space by removing everything that you don’t want or need.
Next, it’s time to free up RAM, which truly is important for the performance of your games. RAM is the type of memory that is required for live processes and having enough of it free will make games faster and smoother. Disable apps that start up automatically and keep other apps closed during gaming time. Any apps that are open will consume resources, weakening the performance of your Mac.
One of the biggest consumers of resources is your web browser, so make sure you close your Chrome or Firefox before you game. Having them open in the background will almost definitely slow the game down. You should also close heavy web browser plugins like Java and Flash or just uninstall them completely if you don’t need them. If you really want to nitpick for more RAM, you can even disable OS X features that you don’t need like the Dashboard, but this is going a bit far if you don’t really need the extra memory.
You can also check on your Mac’s overall performance before gaming with the Activity Monitor, which will show you the GPU and disk resources, as well as the apps and processes that are running and the amount of memory they are consuming. This will allow you to see if you have overlooked any background apps that are taking up too much space or memory without purpose and close or uninstall them.
Game performance is related to graphics in a lot of ways. For example, a higher resolution requires more processing power and may result in poor performance if your Mac can’t “hack it”. Changing graphics settings is, therefore, one of the most powerful ways to easily enhance performance. OS X does most of the work when it comes to the system graphic settings, but you can also change the in-game settings to optimize your Mac.
Lower resolution and lower Anti-Aliasing will improve performance as well but to the detriment of graphics quality. Instead of lowering these, you can first start by lowering the shadow quality. Shadows take a lot of processing power because they have to account for a lot of factors like the angle of the light and the shape and posture of the object or character. Turn this down to improve performance with little overall effect on graphics quality. Reducing the texture also has a similar effect.
It is generally not possible to upgrade graphics cards on a Mac, but what you can do is upgrade your hard drive. With an older Mac, you may want to upgrade to an SSD for improved loading times and system task performances. If your Mac doesn’t have the RAM capacity for the games you want to play, you can also upgrade to 8 or 16GB RAM to enhance the performance. By following the tips here, your Mac should be ready to handle any game that its specifications allow. Happy gaming!
Dozie AnyaegbunamPublished March 26, 2019Guides
SHOW CONTENTSBudget limitations can sometimes be a barrier for most gamers when investing in a gaming rig.
?️ Supercomputers can be ridiculously expensive. ?
No matter how great it is, a gaming PC under $500 won’t be able to run the latest titles on highest settings. However, it’s still possible to tweak your ordinary gaming PC and experience better in-game performance as a result of your optimization. Moreover, the best part – you don’t have to be a tech enthusiast to pull this off.
Before you start thinking of optimizing your gaming PC, ensure that your PC meets or exceeds the minimum system requirements of your favorite game titles. Microsoft word update for mac. Most game publishers have already listed out both the minimum and recommended system requirements needed to run their games.
Optimizing Your PC
When done correctly, optimizing your PC can turn it into a finely tuned workhorse, handling resource-intensive game titles with ease. However, optimizing your PC won’t make your old 15-year-old PC run the latest game title with high-end graphics smoothly.
Rollercoaster tycoon 2 mac free. download full version. Here are six essential tips that can get your gaming PC in shape for the next high-end game title:
Update Your Graphics Drivers
First up, your graphics card drivers. Doing this is crucial, as outdated graphics drivers might cause you inconvenience such as literally not being able to run the game or constant crashes.
Most gaming PCs come with an NVIDIA or AMD GPU, which tend to be the best graphics cards for gaming on the market. Updating your graphics card drivers consistently means you get the latest features, bug fixes, support for most recent games, and performance updates that the manufacturers roll out monthly.
These updates potentially make the entire gaming experience smoother. Also, set your graphics settings from limited RGB to full – you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise.
Defragment Your Hard Drive
Over time, your hard disk becomes fragmented with use. Sections of files are spread out all over the disk drive, leading to a severe hit in performance.
The performance drop happens because the hard disk will need to gather all the scattered sections before it can read the game file properly, thereby slowing game load time. Of course, if you get some of the best HDDs for gaming, you won’t encounter these problems that often, if at all.
The larger the file, the longer it takes to gather its fragmented parts – and most games take up several GBs. To ensure that your game files can be read continuously, you should consider defragmenting your hard disk.
To defragment, visit the Start Menu >> All Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Disk Defragmenter.
Defragmenting your hard drive improves its read rate by organizing all the stored files properly. It also enhances loading speed.
Upgrade to An SSD
The speedier read and write rates of an SSD means you get significant performance advantages when you upgrade your hard drive to an SSD.
Although a solid-state drive won’t affect your in-game performance, it is flash memory structure means faster load times for large files and games boot faster. The cost of acquiring one has also gone down considerably over the past few years, increasing its appeal amongst gamers.
Upgrading and choosing the best SSD for gaming you can get guarantees you an immediate boost in the game boot and load times. Pro Tip: if looking for an SSD, first research the differences between SATA and NVMe storage types.
Shutdown Unnecessary Processes During PC Startup
When you start your PC, a host of applications and third-party services launch and run automatically in the background.
These applications and third-party services tend to slow down your game’s load time, as they take up a portion of the memory your game needs during startup. It also gets worse as the PC ages.
To improve load times and reduce the performance of your PC, you will need to prevent specific programs and processes from launching every time you restart your PC.
To achieve “clean startup,” hold down the “Windows” key on your keyboard and press “R” >>> type in “msconfig” >>> click “OK” >>> Click the “Services” tab >>> check “Hide all Microsoft services” >>> click “Disable all”.
Reboot your system once done.
“Clean startup” prevents services installed by third-party programs from launching and running in the background during PC startup.
Alternatively, if there are background programs that you’ll need to keep, you can manually disable the services you don’t need from the “Services” tab. Always remember to reboot once done.
Optimize Your NVIDIA/AMD Software Suites
Both Nvidia and AMD provide bespoke software suites for optimizing your graphics cards’ settings. Taking advantage of these applications can up in-game performance significantly. Furthermore, you might be encountering the issue of your GPU fans not spinning, which hurts your in-game performance.
The Nvidia GeForce Experience and AMD Gaming Evolved software suites can be a competitive advantage to any gamer if utilized correctly.
How to Optimize Nvidia GeForce Experience for Gaming
The Nvidia GeForce experience application automatically configures your game’s graphics settings for you.
Not sure what texture filtering level to set in Fortnite? The GeForce application uses the detailed information gathered at the Nvidia cloud data center to find the best balance of performance and image quality for your PC.
It achieves this by testing thousands of PC hardware configurations using data gathered from various gamers and PC users.
It then automatically configures bespoke graphics settings according to your PC’s GPU, CPU, and display.
How to Optimize AMD Software for Gaming
Depending on which GPU you are using, AMD’s Gaming Evolved (Radeon Settings) might be what you’re looking for. Again, there isn’t much work to do here.
AMD also automates this process for you, just like Nvidia.
Aside from using AMD’s software as showcased in the video above, you can film and subsequently share your gaming videos on social media or save them directly to your PC.
Conclusion
Are Macs Good For Gaming
Gaming on a poorly optimized Windows PC can be a hellish experience. Thus, optimizing your gaming PC ensures your games don’t suffer from slow load times, lag, stuttering graphics, crashing and other performance-related issues.
Mac For Gaming Computer
Still, you might want to upgrade to at least a $600 gaming PC if you want to be able to run modern video games.
These six tips mentioned here are necessary steps to getting your machine working at peak condition, ensuring your games load and run noticeably faster.