GERRY WAHYU P

All computers eventually start to creak in their old age, but with a few quick tweaks and techniques, you can prolong their life for years – especially if you're willing to lose a bit of modern glitz to play the games that work them the hardest. Here's our guide to enjoying the best entertainment, without necessarily spending a fortune on new hardware. 1. Clean your PC Like all applications, games benefit from a clean system. Before you even think about buying new hardware, do some spring cleaning. Even Windows 7 benefits from a slash-and-burn reinstall every few months to get rid of the cobwebs, memory-resident apps and other shackles that so easily accumulate over time. If games are running slower than they used to, it's a very good first step to take. 2. Install more memory Any major component of your PC can be a drag on your system if it isn't powerful enough. Memory is one of the cheapest to upgrade, and the easiest – you simply pop in new sticks and you're done. If you have 4GB RAM and a 64-bit version of Windows installed, you should be good for anything on the market. If you're not sure what you should buy, you can visit www.crucial.com and run its System Scanner tool. This will tell you both what memory to buy, and how much you need. 3. Change your video card If you didn't buy a dedicated gaming PC, or your PC is a couple of years old, the graphics card in it is likely to be mediocre to terrible. Any 3D game relies on having a powerful graphics card to crunch the numbers, but buying one isn't necessarily as easy as just plugging one in. Graphics cards can be incredibly big, and your case needs both the space and the cooling to handle that. They also need to be connected to your PC's power supply, and if that's not powerful enough, the card won't work even after you fit it. Be sure to check all the specifications before ordering. Given a choice between ATI and Nvidia cards, we currently recommend Nvidia. 4. Update your drivers It's easy to forget, but the best video card in the world will struggle without the most up-to-date drivers. If you have trouble with a game, updating the drivers should always be the first step – it'll expect you to have everything ready for it. This can be a pain, but a necessary one. 5. Boost your CPU If you don't have a decent video card, there's little that any CPU will do for you on its own. However, it still plays a key role in determining how fast your system performs. Dual-core is fine for the overwhelming majority of modern games, but quad-core is obviously better if you can afford it. You don't realistically need anything more than that at the moment, though. 6. Forget about overclocking It may sound like heresy, but overclocking your CPU is unlikely to make any real appreciable difference to most games – a difference, yes, but generally one that will be measured in a few extra frames. If you plan to try it anyway, make sure your cooling can stretch that far. Generally, though, overclocking has become something you do because you enjoy overclocking, and it can safely be avoided if you're not comfortable getting your hands that dirty. 7. Clean up On the other hand, if you don't mind a little dirt, this is a great time to check the state of your case. If it's full of dust and the airways are blocked, it won't be getting cooled properly, which can seriously affect the performance of your components. To clean it out, switch the power off and use a can of compressed air to clear away the dust. This is especially important if your PC is on the floor. 8. Consider solid state drives With all the pieces in place, it's time to look at your hard drive. This is the perfect time to look at a solid state drive for both Windows and your game files. They're smaller than regular drives, but the performance more than makes up for that. We recommend having two drives, the second one a nice, big, traditional terabyte model to hold things like videos and photos, leaving the main drive entirely for the applications it does so well. You'll want a large one though – modern games are incredibly big, and they're only going to get larger as the graphics improve. 9. Cut back If your games are still running slowly, it's time to start switching things off . Be aware that when you do this, you're going to notice the effect of it much more.A lack of something like anti-aliasing is incredibly obvious when you're intentionally staring at a jaggy object. When the bullets are flying, you're unlikely to notice as much. As a case in point, many console games don't bother with it at all. 10. Check your PC's v-sync settings Now for the mysterious v-sync. This is vertical-synchronisation, and when it's switched off , you can encounter problems if your graphics card is churning out data faster than the monitor can display it. This gives an effect called 'tearing', which can make it look as though the game is stuttering or lagging when it's actually performing above and beyond. Leave v-sync alone.