Playing on a PC offers more freedom than consoles because you can pick and choose how to build them, but that also means more complex problems can arise. Whereas a console comes as-is with the necessary hardware to play all of its games, a PC doesn’t and may require some tuning to function. Here are the most common PC gaming problems you can fix.
Extreme Lag During Online Play
Lagging in games refers to the delay between your imputed action on the keyboard or mouse to the screen. This can get frustrating very quickly during online competitive play because you’ll lose opportunities to strike against your opponent. The quality of your internet connection will affect your online experience.
First, upgrade your internet connection through your provider. If that doesn’t fit the problem, switch to an Ethernet connection rather than Wi-Fi, so you have a direct link from your computer to the modem. If you are playing at an online casino in NZ, for example, you wouldn’t want to lose a hand of poker or blackjack because you couldn’t respond quickly enough.
Visual Glitches and Artifacting
Graphical glitches are common in video gaming, but if it affects the way you play, those glitches will affect the quality of your experience. Artifacting is when the graphics distort heavily, causing weird textures, deformed elements, and odd geometry throughout the interface.
Your problems may come from your GPU and your graphics card, but if you’re positive those are up to date, there’s a possibility your system is overheating. Clean your PC from dust buildup around the fans and see if that improves anything. Be sure your graphics card runs between 60 to 85 degrees Celsius while playing a game; anything above that is too hot.
Hanging and Freezing
Freezing is kind of like lagging, except the game grinds to a complete stop rather than continuing to run, albeit poorly. If you notice the game needs to catch up after a play, or the game seems to glitch until it reaches a point, then there’s something inhibiting the speed of your computer.
If you don’t have the right amount of RAM (32GB), then close every other program you have opened on your computer. If you have little or no disk space left, delete some applications, so the game has room to operate. It’s more likely that your current system can’t run the game effectively because it’s not reaching its minimum requirements.
Crashing
An occasional game crash is likely from your CPU overheating, but if a game is continuously crashing when there’s no plausible reason, then you could have a big problem on your hands. Crashing implies that your computer cannot handle the game whatsoever.
Ensure you have the latest drives installed that meet the video games requirements, or restart your PC because sometimes that solves the issue. If this doesn’t work, close all current software running and play in administrator. Reinstalling the game may be your last resort. When all else fails, consult Google to see if there’s a workaround or if this issue is common for the specific title you’re playing.
Screen Tearing
Screen tearing is when a part of the game shows multiple frames of a game at once or splits them to a point where they don’t line up. Screen tearing is incredibly frustrating because there could be numerous reasons why this occurs (besides the game itself glitching).
Screen tearing often occurs because the feed from your video card doesn’t sync with your display’s refresh rate. The game loads another frame before the previous frame finished loading. Go into the game’s option and enable V-sync if available – but this may cause input lag. It’s better to have screen tearing in a multiplayer game than input lag, so decide whether or not you want to implement V-sync for better graphics to sacrifice timing.
