How To Optimize Mac For Gaming

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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. Mac For Gaming- Best Hacks To Optimize Your System Apart from being preferred by professional users, they make a great pick for gamers as well. But even the best systems require regular. While ClearVPN will give you the best gaming experience your Mac can handle, you can make your Mac handle even more. The best way to increase your Mac’s performance is to regularly (e.g. Once a month) use high-quality software devised for that purpose. You can’t optimize your Mac for gaming in the same way as a PC. Since Apple controls the manufacturing of all its devices, third-party upgrades are impossible. Another way to optimize your Mac for gaming is to free up as much disk space as possible by using the optimized storage feature of your Mac.

Macs are great for two things: creative and business work. When it comes to gaming, people generally stick to PCs because Macs usually have limited AAA titles and Apple hasn’t invested much into optimizing the MacOS for gaming.

But thanks to platforms like Steam and Humble Bundles, more games are available for Macs. Still, Macs are known to under-perform when gaming – even when rigs meet the minimum system requirements. Tweaking your machine can help make things run a little more smoothly.

Related: Steam controller review

Here’s how to optimize Mac for gaming.

Update Your Software

First, make sure that your Mac is up-to-date. Updates can optimize your machine’s performance and ensure that you have all of the latest security patches installed. To update your system:

  • Click the Apple Icon at the upper-left corner of your display.
  • Select App Store.
  • Click Updates at the top.
  • Choose Update All.

Along with your MacOS, the process will also update most of your apps.

Free Up Space and Clutter

Games are resource intensive, so the first step to optimizing your Mac is to clean things up. The goal is to free up some space and get rid of system clutter.

Gaming

Start by uninstalling apps that you don’t use or don’t want anymore. Take a look at your startup apps and disable any that are resource-intensive.

MacOS Sierra also introduced a new feature that helps clear up space: Optimize Storage. Here’s how to access this tool:

  • Click the Apple Icon.
  • Choose About this Mac.
  • Click Storage.
  • Select Manage.

There are several options here (which you can go through on your own at a later time), but the most important one is “Optimize Storage.” Clicking the Optimize button will automatically remove iTunes movies and TV shows that you’ve watched on your machine.

This step is really the most useful if you consume a lot of media on your Mac. Even if you don’t, you can still take advantage of the other options on the Manage window, like:

  • Reduce Clutter: Allows you to sort through and delete documents and other items stored on your machine.
  • Store in iCloud: Allows you to store files and photos in iCloud to save space.
  • Empty Trash Automatically: Saves space by automatically erasing items that have been in the trash for 30 days.

To reduce the load on your processor, start by launching the Activity Monitor.

  • Click the Go menu and select Utilities.
  • Double-click Activity Monitor.

The Activity Monitor will display all of the opened apps and processes, and it will also tell you the amount of resources each process is using.

Close out programs that are hogging a lot of resources.

To close a program:

  • Select the program on the list.
  • Click the Force a Process to Quit button at the top-left corner.
  • Click Force Quit.

Clicking Force Quit instantly stops the app from running and taking up resources. Follow the above steps to close out any programs that are unnecessary or using a lot of resources.

Just make sure that you don’t quit any essential programs, as this can make the operating system unstable.

After you’ve reduced the load on your processor, you can start closing unimportant apps that are taking up space.

Take a look at your Dock. Do you see any apps with a small black dot under their icon? That black dot means that the app is open and occupying space in memory. Many Mac apps will stay open even if you close their interface, and that can hinder your machine’s performance while gaming.

To free up some memory:

  • Right click an unimportant app in your Dock.
  • Click Quit on the menu.

Doing this will close out the app and free up the memory it was using. Repeat this process until you’ve closed all unimportant apps that are running in the background.

Adjust Graphic Settings and Try Different Window Modes

Adjusting a game’s graphic settings will have the biggest impact on your Mac’s performance. The higher the graphics settings, the more resources the game will demand.

Check out our guide on how to get Fortnite to run better on mac.

Whenever you launch a game, whether it’s through Steam, directly or through another platform, you typically have the option of adjusting the graphics settings. Some games have “high,” “medium,” and “low” settings that will make adjustments for you automatically. If not, you’ll need to make the adjustments manually for each setting.

Choosing lower settings will reduce the load on your machine, making it easier for games to run smoothly.

Most games will allow you to save your settings so that you don’t have to readjust them every time you launch them.

Along with adjusting the graphics settings, you can try playing games in both Windowed Mode and Full-Screen Mode to see which one works best. Some users find that Windowed Mode makes things run more smoothly, but performance is typically game-dependent. Give both options a try with each game you play to see which one works best for each title.

While your Mac will probably never compare to a Windows PC for gaming (that’s not what they’re designed for), you can still optimize your machine to make gaming more fun when you’re on-the-go or you don’t have access to a PC.

How

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How To Optimize Your Mac For Gaming

How To Optimize Mac For Gaming

If you use your Windows PC to play games, you know that it can be a constant, and expensive battle, trying to keep up with the ever increasing demands new games put on your hardware. It can seem that the only solution is to spend money on a new graphics card, more RAM, a bigger hard drive, or even a new PC. However, there is a lot you can do before you get to that stage to improve your computer’s gaming performance without buying hardware.

Here are some ways to speed up a gaming PC and save yourself some money.

Update graphics card drivers

This is probably the simplest way to improve gaming performance on Windows 10 and the one that’s likely to have the biggest effect. You should update drivers directly from your graphics card manufacturer’s website, rather than relying on Windows to tell you when there’s an update available. Go to the website, like amd.com or geforce.com and locate the driver updates section. Find your video card model and download the latest update. Follow the instructions to install it. You should definitely check for updates whenever you buy a new game, as new games will benefit most from the updates and fixes in the latest drivers.

Tweak graphics card settings

Both Nvidia and AMD cards have control panels for their drivers that allow you to make changes to the settings. So, for example, if you want to improve performance in 3D games, look for the panel in the controls that deals with 3D games. It’s worth noting that tweaking the settings in GPU drivers is a trade-off: boosting frame rate will probably reduce image quality. It’s worth experimenting and discovering which settings work best for you.

Free up CPU and memory

Other than the graphics card, CPU and memory resources are the two factors that will have the biggest effect on gaming performance on your PC. So making as many of those resources available for the game you’re playing as possible is key. Of all the things you can do to free up resources, preventing programs launching automatically at startup is going to do the most to help performance. Some of these applications, like antivirus tools, are important and should be left to run. Others, however, including programs like Spotify and Steam don’t need to launch automatically every time you boot your PC and can be safely disabled.

The easiest way to remove startup applications is to use CleanMyPC. It allows you to see and quickly remove startup items, as well as perform several other tasks that will make your PC run more smoothly.

1. Download CleanMyPC and launch it on your computer

2. Choose the Autorun tool in the left hand sidebar. You’ll see a list of startup items. Those that are enabled had their switch set to the on position.

How To Optimize Mac For Gaming

3. Choose which items to disable and set the switch to off. You can switch it back on again at any time.

How To Optimize Mac For Gaming

To remove an autorun application permanently, so that it can never startup automatically again, check the box next to it and choose Remove at the bottom of the window.

As you can see, with CleanMyPC you can manage your startup programs faster and easier than doing it manually.

Adjust in-game settings

This is another one that will have a dramatic effect on performance and speed up PC games. 3D and graphics intensive games usually have a section where you can adjust settings to improve performance. For example, you can usually set the DirectX version, change the resolution, and set the quality of features like textures, shadows, and reflections. If you find your PC is struggling to run a game smoothly, reducing the quality of textures, shadows, and reflections will free up graphics processing power to be used to improve the frame rate.

Prevent your PC from overheating

Mrmacright How To Optimise Your Mac For Gaming

Most PC’s, when they overheat deliberately cut the power to the CPU and GPU, causing both to run more slowly, but avoiding damaging them. The easiest way to stop your PC overheating is to keep it clean and free from dust. Dust particles clog vents and stop fans from working more effectively, meaning your PC is more likely to overheat. Get into the habit of checking for and removing dust regularly.

How To Optimize A Mac For Gaming

Change power settings

How To Optimize Mac For Gaming

If you’re using a laptop, it’s likely that its power settings have been configured to preserve battery life, rather than maximize performance. To optimize your PC for playing games, you should change that In Windows 10, go to Settings then System Power and Sleep and select Addition Power Settings. Change it to High Performance

There are a number of things you can do to boost your gaming PC without resorting to spending lots of money on hardware. From updating graphics card drivers and tweaking their settings to disabling autorun applications, each one will have an effect on the performance of the games you play. Together, the tips above should make a noticeable difference and make playing games on your PC much more fun.

How To Optimise Your Mac For Gaming

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