Not everyone is in a position to drop £400 on a GPU upgrade whenever frame rates start to feel sluggish. The good news is that a meaningful chunk of gaming performance is left on the table by default settings, background processes, and outdated drivers. Several of these fixes are free and take under ten minutes.

Here is a practical list, roughly ordered by impact.

1. Update your GPU drivers

It sounds obvious, but a staggering number of people are running GPU drivers that are months or years out of date. Driver updates frequently include game-specific optimisations that can improve performance by 5-15% in titles released after the driver was written.

For Nvidia cards: open GeForce Experience or download directly from nvidia.com. For AMD cards: use the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition app or download from amd.com.

One caveat: new drivers are not always better. If a driver release is flagged with known issues, wait a version. Reading the release notes takes two minutes and can save you from introducing new problems.

2. Enable your GPU’s upscaling technology

This is the single highest-impact change you can make to frame rates without changing hardware.

  • Nvidia (DLSS): If your GPU is RTX 20-series or newer, DLSS is available in hundreds of titles. Setting it to ‘Quality’ mode typically adds 30-50% to frame rates with minimal visible quality loss
  • AMD (FSR): FSR works on any GPU, including Nvidia cards, and is supported in a wide range of titles. Quality mode delivers a good balance of performance and sharpness
  • Intel (XeSS): Available on Intel Arc GPUs and increasingly in other titles

If you are not using DLSS or FSR in supported games, you are leaving substantial performance on the table. Enable it.

3. Lower the settings that hurt most and matter least

Not all graphics settings are equal. Some have dramatic performance impact with minimal visual change; others cost very little but look significant. Knowing which is which lets you reclaim frames without ruining the image.

High impact, low visual cost (turn these down):

  • Shadows: Shadow quality is one of the heaviest settings in most engines. Dropping from Ultra to High is often invisible at normal viewing distances and can add 10-20% performance
  • Ambient occlusion: Very expensive, the difference between High and Medium is subtle. Try Medium or SSAO instead of HBAO+ or similar
  • Volumetric lighting/fog: Expensive to render. High vs Medium has minimal visual difference in most games
  • Motion blur: Costs performance and many players prefer it off anyway

Low impact, leave these alone:

  • Texture quality: This costs VRAM more than GPU time. If your card has headroom, keep textures high
  • Anisotropic filtering: Almost free to run at 16x. There is no reason to reduce it
  • Field of view: No real performance cost

4. Set your power plan to High Performance

Windows defaults to a Balanced power plan, which throttles your CPU when it is not under load. Gaming absolutely puts it under load, but the transition lag can cause micro-stutters and inconsistent frame times.

Open Control Panel, go to Power Options, and select High Performance. If you have a laptop, be aware this will reduce battery life significantly; use it only when plugged in.

Alternatively, go to Settings > System > Power and set the power mode slider to Best Performance.

5. Close background applications

Browsers, Discord with video running, streaming software, and system tray apps all consume CPU and RAM. On a system with 16GB of RAM, background processes routinely consume 3-4GB before a game even launches.

Before gaming:

  • Close browser tabs (or the browser entirely)
  • Set Discord to a lower hardware acceleration setting in its settings, or close it
  • Disable anything in the system tray you do not need running
  • Check Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) for processes with high CPU or memory usage

6. Enable Resizable BAR (if your system supports it)

Resizable BAR (called Smart Access Memory on AMD platforms) allows your CPU to access the full GPU memory at once rather than in fixed-size chunks. On supported systems, it can provide a 5-15% performance improvement in titles that support it.

To check: enter your BIOS (usually Del or F2 on boot), look for Resizable BAR or SAM in the PCIe settings, and enable it. Your CPU and GPU both need to support it (Intel 10th gen or newer, AMD Ryzen 5000 or newer, paired with a recent GPU).

7. Check your RAM is running at rated speed

RAM frequently ships configured to run at a lower speed than it is rated for. A DDR5 kit rated at 6000MHz might be running at 4800MHz if XMP/EXPO has never been enabled.

Enter your BIOS, find the XMP (Intel) or EXPO (AMD) option, and enable the highest rated profile. This is one setting change and can meaningfully improve CPU-limited gaming scenarios. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, and most open-world titles are particularly CPU-sensitive.

8. Lower your render resolution (as a last resort)

Most games have a separate render resolution or resolution scale setting, distinct from your display resolution. Setting it to 85-90% renders the game slightly below native and then upscales to your screen. The difference is subtle; the performance gain can be 10-20%.

This is more of a last resort than a first step, but it is worth knowing it exists. Combined with a good upscaler, it is a more controlled approach than simply lowering the display resolution entirely.

How much can you realistically gain?

On a system that has never been tuned:

  • Updated drivers: up to 15%
  • Enabling DLSS/FSR Quality: 30-50%
  • Optimised settings: 10-25%
  • Power plan and background apps: 5-10%
  • RAM XMP: 5-15% in CPU-limited titles

The cumulative effect is meaningful. A system running at 45fps with defaults and outdated drivers can realistically hit 70-80fps after these changes. That is not a new GPU; that is an hour of configuration.

The GPU upgrade conversation is a different one, and there are absolutely situations where no amount of software optimisation substitutes for more hardware. But if you have not done any of the above, start here.