Gaming Discussions

[Key-J]

Let's say you've built your first computer/updated your current computer/bought a new computer. You've been through your first boot and life is good!

Before you start installing your favourite games, what is some software that you highly recommend people install that will either:

1) Improve overall Quality of Life

2) Improve overall Performance

3) Does something pretty Cool or Fantastic

The one rule is that the software must be free to download for everyone.

Here are some that I know of to get things going:

Quality of Life - TechPowerUp GPU-Z | Have you wanted to know everything there is to know about the GPU you are running, including some information you might not have known before? This is it!

Performance - Unigine Heaven Benchmark | This is mainly for the people who are tinkering with OCs or want the absolute most out of their systems. This is how you can test where you stand!

Cool or Fantastic - OBS Studio | A lot of people think this is just for streaming, but honestly it is for so much more! Screen Recording, Game Capture, Streaming and more. It is a very smart software that can take a lot of the guesswork out for you.

So what do you recommend? Anything that you use to maybe help level your microphone if you're a streamer, streamline your PC if you're a gamer, change the visuals of your desktop? etc... Drop them in a reply below! What you might think is just another program, might be an amazing find for someone else!

[M0T1VE8]

For quality of life I would use come kind of hardware monitor ie: HWiNFO or HWMonitor.

Improve performance I would pair MSI Afterburner with your Heaven as well as a cpu stressor like Prime 95.  If you are on Ryzen get  AMD Ryzen Master.

A cool or fantastic installer for fresh installs would have to be using Ninite to get a one stop shop for installing multiple programs.

[Key-J]

---

@M0T1VE8 wrote:

A cool or fantastic installer for fresh installs would have to be using Ninite to get a one stop shop for installing multiple programs.

---

I completely forgot about Ninite. You're right, that should absolutely be included in this list. Can't tell you how much time that saves people on a fresh install. 

[BoloBoffin]

As a very new streamer, I used OBS and liked it, but I switched to Twitch Studio. TS really streamlined the process of building scenes, plus it automates alerts, something I could never figure out how to do with OBS. Maybe once I'm an affiliate and I'm pushing for partner, I'd level up to OBS again, but for now it's indispensable.

[tenzo23]

Definitely CPUID CPU-Z, HWMonitor and/or HWiNFO, Ryzen Master, Prime95, Cinebench R23 for OC'ing and stability testing new builds.

Latest Radeon Software and FurMark for GPU tuning and testing.

Firefox browser, Thunderbird email. Not suggesting they're the best, just my personal preference.

Malwarebytes Free for virus protection and CCleaner Free for junk cleaning.

Finally, my game library on Steam client and Epic Games Launcher!

Oh, Logitech G HUB too.

[darjeeling]

I love using calibre to convert and manage my collection of ebooks, so I can take them on the road at any time.

[M0T1VE8]

I would use glary utilities over ccleaner since they have been caught collecting data and were hacked in the past.  They are owned by avast who has also been hacked and caught collecting data. 

[GreatnessRD]

1. HWINFO64 

- It's just a godsend and shows most of the information I need

2. 3DMARK

- I like their software when I'm trying to OC GPUs

3. GPU-Z is cool and fantastic

[4bitAbundance]

Firefox, Sublime Text, terminal/cmd, vpn

[Chotch]

I've seen a lot of great replies for software I use regularly so I wont repeat those.

For me, QoL choice would be Chrome just because it has my browser experience saved the way I want it and goes with me no matter where I log in.

For Cool or Fantastic, I'd go with Medal. It really simplifies making clips of your games, allows you to edit them, stores/hosts them,  gives you a link to send to friends and is completely free!

[felixlucid]

This may be an unpopular choice but the must-have app on my PC is called "HWinfo" because it lets me easily adjust fan speeds for each and every component with a fan in my PC! But come to think of it, that same feature might be built into AMD Catalyst 🤔

[jamesc359]

1. Quality of Life: Irfanview - some times you just need to view or resize an image. Windows built in photo viewer is woefully underwhelming and slow. Irfanview is fast and has all the basic features covered.

2. Performance: Afterburner - even though I usually use the driver's built in overclocking, Afterburner's performance display is to powerful to ignore.

3. Cool: Wallpapers from Orioto - not a program, but it's a must that I have a cool desktop.

4. Honorable Mention: Libre Office - because MS Office is too expensive for the occasional document or spread sheet and Libre Office does everything I ask from it.

[Ultimvtum]

MSI Afterburner works super consistently and works with all video cards. Love using it as a baseline neccessity for at-a-glance performance metrics.

Going in to more depth, gotta love prime95, cinebench, hwinfo64, furmark, and nicehash for benchmarking and sustained stress testing.

With multiple computers in the house, teamviewer is a nice to have.

Other nice-to-haves include Teracopy, Process Lasso, and Notepad++

[thebeansoldier]

Definitely MSI afterburner.  Done right, it can make your gpu run cooler, pc draws way less energy, and keeps tabs on your most important readings.  Not every may like MSI, but I bet almost every pc gamer has afterburner installed.

[Icepop33]

I'll keep this short and sweet, like the program.

Deskpins by Elias Fotinis

This little pen source gem let's you put any program window on top of the others and keep it there while using the others, 

It wasn't supported on x64 architecture for a while but worked anyway and seems to have been recently updated.

Installed version.  Portable version apparently in the works.

Great for your encrypted password text file 😉 

[tredeuce]

Steam client and VLC media player. Also, apparently Windows, but I have tried other OS.

[Hard2Thrill]

Belarc Advisor - for computer, app, connected devices, network & network devices info (very comprehensive)

Greenshot - for very versatile and easy to use screen capture

WinPatrol - especially useful for automatically monitoring (& controlling) system changes made by apps (or sometimes malware)

(and Malwarebits free, mentioned by others)

[ssuamier]

I'm doing a lot of things and use different software, so the list really depends on the are I'm working with.
Now I as gaming / gfx oriented topic, I will give my opinion in this area.

1) QOL: CPU-Z definitively important software, for me my browser (mainly firefox) is the most important software, where I get most informations (reddit, this forum and some others) on my games.

2) Performance: Complex topics, but there is definitively a lot of cool software that can improve game performance a lot. I love modding skyrim, so a bundle of mods that improve performance (and stability) is a must-have for such games.

3) Cool or fantastic: A lot of tools that automate work for you like mod sorting (LOOT), mod manager (WRYE BASH), mod editing (SSEEdit) are essential tools for me. For editing textures I prefer GIMP (and rawtherapee in some case) over commercial tools. For meshes I prefer Outfit Studio over other mesh editing software.

4) Development: For coding I prefer QT Creator supporting a lot of languages over VStudio. If you are into C# I do not see a way around commercial tools like Rider. Notepad++ is also very important as general purpose editor for me since it's plugins.

[Ashley_AMD · Accepted solution]

Love this thread! I think everyone's covered the recommendations I'd suggest personally. Also seeing a lot of software I wasn't aware of, and am looking forward to checking out - thanks for the suggestions y'all. 😁

[Key-J]

I was just about to say the same thing (had to wait for my post timer to run out :P)

It's always so interesting to find out what knowledge people have out there that they can share. There is definitely some great software out there!

While I have people commenting, I'm wondering if anyone has a recommendation on great software for tuning your voice coming through your mic. Just a little bit of post-processing.

[M0T1VE8]

What kind of post processing voice tuning you going for?  Most natural sounding would be melodyne.  Auto tune is good over all but a free version you can use is from melda productions in their free bundle.  What sound are you going for?

[Key-J]

---

@M0T1VE8 wrote:

What kind of post processing voice tuning you going for?  Most natural sounding would be melodyne.  Auto tune is good over all but a free version you can use is from melda productions in their free bundle.  What sound are you going for?

---

Going for something a little more natural-sounding, not looking for auto-tuning or voice changers.

Just overall mic quality improvement for spoken word.

[M0T1VE8]

The best natural sounding would be melodyne.  Since you are working with a monophonic source all you need is essential.  What software are you using to edit your audio?  NLE or DAW?  If it is spoken word voice tuning won't be as important as EQ, compression, and saturation.  Maybe de-essing too and clip gain reduction on plosives too.

[Key-J]

---

@M0T1VE8 wrote:

The best natural sounding would be melodyne.  Since you are working with a monophonic source all you need is essential.  What software are you using to edit your audio?  NLE or DAW?  If it is spoken word voice tuning won't be as important as EQ, compression, and saturation.  Maybe de-essing too and clip gain reduction on plosives too.

---

😛 

[Key-J]

Hey,

Just want to say thanks to the people in the thread, I've actually ended up downloading some of the software you suggested and it has been pretty fantastic to discover some of their capabilities!

Thanks for sharing!

[johnnyenglish]

Quality of Life - Alexa APK, because I can control my whole house in my computer, I can even listen my bedroom echo or see if the kid is ok during the night while I'm editing in the living room.

Performance - It might sound weird or cliché but I enjoy the Adrenalin profiles for each game, I can fine tune my GPU power exactly where I want, triple A game, ok, OC the Strix card to insanity. A FPS capped game with little to no benefit, a mild OC, old games? Underclock and undervolt so the fans won't start at all.

Cool or Fantastic - Hated by many, loved by very few. I need the Armoury Crate from ASUS to control the RoG Stuff and create profiles for sound, RGB, DPI settings, Fan settings and key macros. The profiles kick right in when I start the game/app.
The AC is hated so much because its very temperamental, the updates are mandatory and they tend to brick something in the process, keep windows system restore near by. LOL
Now for the fun part, AC is code is provided by NVIDIA LOL

But the BEST software is neither of the above. The Software I really need right now is Davinci Resolve for editing my channel videos, free to an extent and very powerful although the learning curve is not exactly the best for everyone.

[Ld]

I have a number of programs that are my go to installs. A key factor for almost all of them is "cross platform" availability. I run both Linux and Windows 10, so I look for software that can be installed on both OSes, wherever possible. It makes life so much easier. 

Libreoffice, Freeplane, Gimp, and many other programs and utilities meet that standard. A recent addition to the very long  list is 0 A.D.

[SubtleIQ]

Notepad++

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

(is one of the first installs on any new pc)

Lightshot

https://app.prntscr.com/en/index.html

(only had to try it once)

MPC HC

https://mpc-hc.org/

(sadly this media player is no longer under development, but is still a very nice)

[TR2]

I have programs I use all the time so whether they are the must haves I am not sure. I have always liked free and open GL software so here is my list.

SpyBot ( everyone should read the story of how this software came about and to whom it was dedicated)

Audacity, Gimp, Handbrake, Easeus Partition Manager, 7zip, Foobar, Tixati, CCleaner, EAC, Malwarebytes, HWinfo, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, Rufus, Firefox, Thunderbird, ImgBurn, VLC and for trouble shooting I always keep a copy of UBCD (some progs don't work well with UEFI).

All of these are free but some want to add junk for the unwary( always custom install if given the option)

[SubtleIQ]

MPC HC

https://mpc-hc.org/

(sadly this media player is no longer under development, but is still a very nice)

Correction:

https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/releases

OMG my favorite media player been updated !  I can not believe I found this...

And then I discovered...

https://www.winamp.com/

I had given up on this, did not even know they released 5.8....

Now there is 5.9.9999... released on the 26 July 2022 and currently working on an update...

I am so happy to see this return.