How to Optimize a Gaming PC

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This article has been created by members of the Red Team Community and the AMD Community Management Staff.

It can sometimes be difficult to know which PC settings are best in terms of optimizing your gaming experience. Especially if you play a variety of games/genres and you’re not 100% sure which settings matter and which ones don’t.

Gamers on a budget may even have more of a desire as they’d like to squeeze as much performance out of their hardware as possible. For the sake of this article, I’m going to focus on a few important options that may help boost your Gaming PC’s performance to a level you’re satisfied with.

Now, for some of you, these may be technologies and tips you already know or have utilized, and for others, it may be a whole new world. The important thing to note is you really don’t need to use any of these as most gaming PCs (whether pre-built or owner-built) are good to go on setup after a few initial updates.

I, for example, have gamed on a PC without ever touching certain settings or utilizing software outside of my routine driver updates. Long story short, this guide is intended to highlight some technologies AMD has to offer and other tips for optimizing your gaming rig.

First and foremost, I’m going to run through a few technologies AMD has to offer its users.

AMD Technologies

AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM) – In conventional Windows-based PC systems, processors can only access a fraction of graphics memory (VRAM) at once, limiting system performance. With AMD Smart Access Memory, the data channel gets expanded to harness the full potential of GPU memory, utilizing the bandwidth of PCI Express to remove the bottlenecks and increase performance.

To enable AMD SAM, enter the System BIOS (which is typically done by pressing the DEL or F12 key during system startup), then navigate to Advanced Settings or Advanced Menu. Once here, enable “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR Support”.

System Requirements:

      Hardware                                                                                     Software

AMD 500 Series motherboards or newer	AMD Radeon Software Driver 20.11.2 or newer
Select AMD Ryzen™ 3000 series processors	Latest motherboard BIOS (Based on AMD AGESA 1.1.0.0 or newer)
AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series processors or later
AMD Radeon™ RX 5000 Series GPUs or later

AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR) – In short, FSR is designed to upscale your graphics while you game using cutting-edge technologies that help boost your framerates in titles that support FSR/FSR 2. It also delivers high-quality, high-resolution gaming experiences without having to upgrade to the latest and greatest GPUs, meaning your AMD cards can stay relevant longer!

FSR is supported on a broad spectrum of new and older GPUs, including integrated graphics, and also works on select products from any vendor, not just AMD. To activate FSR in a supported game, you can check the video settings in any supported game and look for the option to toggle on FSR. For a list of supported games, visit the FSR page here.

AMD Radeon™ Super Resolution – Radeon™ Super Resolution (RSR) is an in-driver upscaling feature that uses the same algorithm found in AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR) technology. RSR can be configured globally so the effects will be applied to all compatible games, and it can also be separately customized for individual games using AMD Software application profiles.

To globally enable RSR with AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™, follow these steps: 

1. From the Taskbar, click on Start (Windows icon), type AMD Software, and select AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ based on the best match.  

1. In AMD Software, click on Settings (Gear icon) then select Graphics from the sub-menu. 

1. In Global Graphics, RSR is disabled by default. Switch the option to Enabled. This also enables GPU Scaling under Global Display, and the screen will go blank momentarily.
2. On first use, a quick start guide should appear with instructions for configuring in-game settings to support and validate RSR functionality. Click Learn More to go through the quick start guide.
3. To configure RSR for individual games, navigate to the application profiles screen by choosing Gaming from the top menu, then Games from the sub-menu. Select the application profile for the desired game.
1. For information on how to create an application profile with AMD Software, refer to the article: Customize Graphics Settings with AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™.
4. By default, AMD Software automatically applies Global Graphics settings for RSR to the selected application profile on first use. Changing the RSR setting in the application profile applies to the selected game only.

System Requirements:

Operating System	Microsoft Windows 10 or 11 64-bit
GPU	AMD Radeon™ RX 5000 Series GPUs or newer
Driver	AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ 22.3.1

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ Technology – Since I mentioned AMD Software Adrenalin Edition™ above, now is a great time to highlight it! It’s a clean, modern, and easy-to-use interface for your AMD products where you can access software features, game stats, performance reports, driver updates, and more. Essentially, it’s the graphical user interface (GUI) for the AMD driver suite and its feature set.

You can even access AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ in-game by simply pushing the default hotkey ALT + R making it convenient to adjust features for your gaming experience. You can download the latest version of AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ here.

AMD Ryzen™ Master Utility (for Overclocking Control) – If you’re someone who likes to squeeze every ounce of power from your PC, you might be experienced with overclocking. If you’ve been on the Red Team for years, you may be familiar with the AMD Ryzen™ Master Utility. Every AMD Ryzen™ processor is multiplier-unlocked from the factory, so you can personalize performance to your taste. AMD provides the AMD Ryzen™ Master utility to access this powerful advantage.

As the technology has evolved to support a diverse set of CPU products and features, and more users have been interested in tinkering with overclocking, the interface has grown too. Because of this, AMD has developed two different “views” of the interface: Basic View and Advanced View.

• Basic View: This view provides you with the ability to automatically overclock your CPU, manually control how much overclocking you wish to apply, and give you a view of important system parameters like CPU temps, speed, and voltages.
• Advanced View: This view provides up to four profiles to store custom user-defined configurations for both the Ryzen™ CPU, integrated Radeon™ graphics, and DDR4 memory. You can adjust performance parameters for the active cores, integrated graphics frequency, and adjust memory timings. You can even optimize for general performance or fine-tune the settings for your favorite applications.

You can download the AMD Ryzen™ Master Utility here.

System Requirements:

The AMD Ryzen™ Master Utility will only install on a Microsoft Windows 10 (or above) PC running AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper or AMD Ryzen™ CPUs

Upgrade your system motherboard to the latest BIOS offered by your motherboard manufacturer

Other Tips/Advice

Now that I’ve run through what AMD has to offer, and you’re still with me here, let’s move on to some other helpful tips!

Update your Drivers – Your first step in any PC configuration should always be ensuring your drivers are up to date. Updating your GPU drivers are always important, but don’t neglect the rest of your system – especially your CPU!

For AMD hardware, you can simply update your drivers using AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™. Outside of that, many of your PC’s drivers can be updated from your Device Manager and even Windows Update in some cases. However, it can sometimes be best to download a driver straight from the manufacturer for whichever hardware you’re looking to update. You can navigate to the product page for your device with a simple Google search as most manufacturers have webpages dedicated to Support/Driver Downloads.

Set your monitor refresh rate – Windows doesn’t always default to utilizing the maximum refresh rate for your monitor. If you happen to have a higher-end gaming monitor with a high refresh rate, you might need to turn the setting on both the monitor and in Windows – otherwise, it may default to 60Hz.

To adjust:

1. Right-click on your desktop and click “Display Settings.”
2. Scroll down until you see “Advanced Display Settings.”
3. Scroll down to “refresh rate” and click the dropdown. Then, select your monitor’s maximum refresh rate.

Note: If the refresh rate you’re expecting doesn’t show up as an option, you might be using the wrong cable. Some displays might only output the maximum refresh rate with a DisplayPort cable or HDMI 2.1.

Adjust Windows Start-up Settings – Many applications installed will automatically force themselves to boot on start-up. This means when you turn on your PC and log into Windows, these apps will be running in the background which can sometimes waste processing power and resources.

Luckily, it’s easy to disable these settings.

1. Press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC to launch the Task Manager
2. Look for the “Startup” tab and click it.
3. Search through the list of apps and look for anything that you don’t use often.
4. Right-click on any apps you don’t want to automatically run on start-up and click disable.

Tweak In-Game Settings – As gamers, we all know there are so many settings available to tinker within the Video/Graphics settings in any given title. Typically, these settings auto-adjust to what it believes is optimal after detecting the hardware your PC is running. However, for some games (like First-Person Shooters), it can sometimes be best to lower some settings to cut out the excess details (i.e., shadows, environmental details like grass/foliage, sun shafts, particle effects/density, etc.) to get the most frames-per-second possible.

Notes:

• AMD Radeon™ Super Resolution (RSR) works great with games that allow exclusive full-screen mode at lower resolutions. For games that run lower resolutions in borderless windowed mode only; set the native display resolution in-game and lower Windows desktop resolution while maintaining the aspect ratio.
• For games that have built-in support for AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR), it is recommended to use FSR as game-specific optimizations may provide better upscaling results over RSR.
• Certain gaming features in AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ are mutually exclusive with RSR and cannot be enabled at the same time. For example, when RSR is enabled, AMD Software will automatically disable Radeon™ Boost, Radeon™ Chill, Radeon™ Image Sharpening, and Integer Scaling.
• It’s recommended that you keep RSR disabled for any game title that supports FSR if you plan to use FSR – using both upscaling technologies at the same time will double the work and could result in some degradation in image quality.
• AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution is “game dependent” and is supported on certain products if the minimum requirements of the game are met.

A special, fuzzy, “Thank you” to @blazek @johnnyenglish @filinux @red5 @jamesc359 @Weber462 @mengelag @BigAl01 @Axxemann @Amber_AMD @cpurpe91 @petosiris  and Top Chef Enthusiast @Sam_AMD for helping me prepare this article!