How to Optimize Games for Any PC and Hardware

Optimize Games for Any PC

The huge variety of PC hardware options is often a nightmare for game creators, as they have to deal with a huge variety of hardware configurations. We explain how they do it and what tools they use to optimize their games and look and run in the best possible way.

One of the thanks of PC Gaming is that we have a multitude of different hardware options to configure them, but at the same time this is a complication to optimize games, since there are different architectures with various strengths and weaknesses that differentiate them.

How do they do it to optimize games on PC?

Optimizar Juegos PIX

For this they use a series of applications, commonly called performance analyzers , which measure the workload of each and every one of the hardware elements that participate in the execution of an application in real time.

Thanks to the information provided by developers, they can optimize their games by optimizing the code related to each part of the hardware, for example, if a GPU is stressed when applying certain graphic effects, they can replace them with less precise versions that run more. Quick.

This allows them to create various configuration files in the games for different hardware configurations , which is crucial because it not only allows them to optimize the games but also to see which workloads are causing performance and even operational problems.

It all started on video game consoles

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The first tool of its kind appeared in the development kits of the first PlayStation with a tool called Performance Analyzer, an idea that was seconded very early by Microsoft at the launch of its first Xbox console with the PIX tool.

On PC for years, developers did not have a tool of this type , until pressure on Microsoft from different development studios to have a tool of this type took effect and PIX that was only available in the XDK of the Xbox made the leap to tools for DirectX on PC.

In the case of hardware manufacturers, we have the case of the NVIDIA NSight , which is the tool used for Game Ready configurations that can be activated through GeForce Experience .

They have become an indispensable tool

Cyperpunk Gameplay

The recent controversy about Cyberpunk’s performance and the fact that the game is not optimized on PC is proof of how important these tools are.

Keep in mind that a game can take years to hit the market and the evolution of the hardware may not be what the developers expect , usually it is much more disappointing. That is why what are called downgrades are produced in the final version of these, since what they usually present initially is a vision of how they expect the final game to look that they cannot always fulfill.

For this reason , performance analyzers become indispensable tools , since they not only allow them to measure the performance of their games but also to take advantage of the latest technologies in the best possible way to achieve the greatest visual impact.

It also serves to optimize games for more modest hardware

Fortnite Gráficos en bajo

In the case of certain titles, over time we have seen versions and even configurations for more modest or even low-end systems appear.

Normally when games are released, especially on PCs, they tend to have the patronage of one of the graphics card manufacturers , so they include a configuration that gives them an advantage in performance in those newer graphics card models, but with the time they end up appearing configuration files that optimize the games for more modest systems.

In any case, and finally, it must be clarified that developers do not have time to test the games in all the possible configurations that are on the market and they usually test them only in the most common ones. In any case, it is possible that that game that was going bad for you on your PC or not at all well now works much better than the last time you tried it.