Video Games on the Home Computer: When Things Get Ugly

Having issues with a new computer game that just doesn't perform well? Games have a few common settings that you can adjust to boost performance without having to spend extra money on new parts. A few definitions will help us get started:

Pixel: The smallest unit of display on a monitor, composed of 3 sub-pixels (red, green, and blue).  Together these colors are used to control the overall color and brightness of a pixel.  Modern monitors are capable of displaying millions of pixels.

Frame Rate: Frame rate is usually measured in frames per second (fps). This is the number of times per second that a new image is being drawn on the monitor. Very slow and choppy movement on your monitor is a symptom of inadequate frame rate.

Resolution: The number of visible pixels across and down on your display. For example, if a monitor is 1920 pixels across and 1200 pixels tall, its resolution is 1920x1200 and it displays 1920 * 1200 = 2,304,000 pixels at a time.

So what can be done to correct the performance problem?  Refer to your game manual for instructions on how to get to the Video/Display options and tweak the following settings to get things running smoothly in no time:

• Video Quality: If there is an overall video quality meter at the top of the options interface, try turning it all the way down.  This will adjust the other game settings automatically.  Resume play and see if performance has improved--chances are it has improved dramatically.  If things are running ultra-smooth after changing the settings, you might try to turn them back up slightly.
• Resolution: Turn the resolution down to 1024x768 and see how the game performs afterward.  More strain is put on your computer when it is trying to update millions and millions of pixels per second.
• Texture Quality:  Turn to low.
• Anti-Aliasing: Turn this to 2x or off.  Anti-aliasing helps the edges of objects look smoother but is not essential to gameplay.
• Texture Filtering/Anisotropic Filtering: Turn off.  This kind of filtering is very costly and you probably won't notice much missing.
• Anisotropic Filtering: Turn off.
• Shadows: Turn off.

If your performance still doesn't improve after tweaking all of these settings, you might start looking at adding a stick of memory or replacing the video card in your machine with a new one.  Happy gaming!