Solve screen tearing with Vsync

Once in a while, you might encounter graphical glitches like screen tearing, where the edges of objects fail to line up in a game.

This happens when a newly rendered frame is overlaid on top of an old frame without synching with the monitor's refresh rate.

Solving this problem is easy as most games allow you to turn on the graphics option, Vsync.

This forces your video card to stop refreshing the screen until the monitor has finished its current refresh cycle. If the option is not available in the game, most graphic cards come with software that allows you to set this option manually.

One typical scenario where screen tearing occurs is when you play old games on a new PC, where your graphic card updates so often it far exceeds the monitor's refresh rate (typically 60Hz).

For new games, which demand graphics card power, turn on Vsync only if you are experiencing screen tearing. Otherwise, do not touch this option because it will slow down the PC, causing the frame rate to drop.

80 Decrease ping time

You do not want to die because of a lag spike while playing an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) or a shooter on the Internet. The frustration alone will kill you.

This is usually a technical problem that has nothing to do with gaming skill. Often, the issue resides in the ISP and its connection to the game servers, which are typically hosted in the United States.

If you are unsure of your home network latency or speed, do a ping (to check if a server is alive) or a traceroute (typically to check the path the PC takes to a particular server, so that you can fix the problem at the source).

One of the best resources for this is DSLreports (www.dslreports.com), a collection of free networking tools that diagnose network problems.

Otherwise, scour Internet forums for a software mod or hack - this will likely be available for popular games - that might help with your latency problems.

Each game-specific mod does this by streamlining the network data that is sent to the game server. Warning: there is less lag but you get fewer updates or the game might crash. So, back up first before you try the mods.

81 Tweak frame rates

Many of today's new games tax the graphics card's power. If you find the frame rate stuttering to a point which irritates you, tweak the graphic options.

These include anti-aliasing, shadow and water effects, as these are options that can gobble up a lot of the graphics card's processing power.

Changing options like resolution and draw distance will often bump up the frame rate quite a bit but visual performance will be noticeably impaired.

Other options like antisotropic filtering - where textures are preserved on angled surfaces - are handled well by modern graphics cards, so changing this option may result in performance rev-ups.

Many of the graphic options are dependent on the particular game, so experiment to see what works. Many games - especially shooters - come with tools that monitor frame rate, so use this to decide how to tweak your graphic options.