If you’re playing games on a mobile phone, tablet, or even a laptop, then a little bit of optimisation can go a long way. Online gaming is often about more than just a stable, strong internet connection; obtaining the best experience often means ensuring that resources are not being spent on other processes while you’re trying to play. This applies whether you’re playing casually, or in a competitive setting.
Keep Your Device and Software Up to Date
When you’re gaming offline, you can get away with keeping your system and your games frozen in time. This is, after all, how older systems did it, back when the internet wasn’t as widespread as it is today.
When the game is constantly being patched, updated, and revamped, however, it’s essential that we keep pace. That means updating the operating system, and the device more generally. There are good security reasons to do this. When a vulnerability is detected in a system, a patch will tend to be swiftly released in order to address it. But if you don’t download the patch, you’ll remain vulnerable.
Performance improvements in things like graphics drivers can also help to keep applications performing as they should be.
Reduce Background Processes and Resource Usage
When your machine is trying to do other things while your game is in progress, you might find that you experience drops in frame rate, and micro-stuttering. Your machine’s resources might be consumed when your operating system attempts to do something in the background. Make sure that you understand how to review your processes and see when something is resource-intensive.
In many cases, it’s the browser itself that’s responsible for drops in performance. Make sure that you only have the tabs open you need. Those online rounds of Bingo can be as smooth as butter, if they’re the only thing you’re running.
Improve Network Performance for Online Play
When you’re gaming online, the reliability of your connection really matters. While modern WiFi is more robust than it once was, the ideal connection remains a wired one. If you must use WiFi, make sure that you’re well within range of your router, and that your network offers enough bandwidth to satisfy everyone. You might find that you suffer a noticeable increase in latency when the entire household is connected at the same time.
Adjust Game and Device Settings for Better Performance
The application itself might offer a number of options for dialling back graphical fidelity, in order to achieve smoother performance. Depending on the bottleneck you’re dealing with, it might be that only some of these options will allow you to find performance improvements. For example, if you have a weak GPU, it might be that dialling down the draw distance, or the resolution, yields good results.