Tweaking Intel HD Graphics for Better Gaming Experience.

Intel’s new graphic chips have advanced by time over past few years, but in comparison of NVIDIA and AMD graphic chips, it’s still not enough fast. Here are some tips to tweak your Intel HD Graphic chip for maximum performance. Graphics chips like Intel HD Graphics is not made for high-level gaming, so if you are a hardcore gamer who likes high-end games then it’s really not for you. But still, there are numerous games that can be played with Intel Graphic chip.

Update Your Intel Graphics Drivers

Dedicated Graphics chips such as NVIDIA and AMD receives driver updates too frequently and it’s very important for chips as well. Updates include new optimizations and upgrades for new coming graphic games and performance. So you should always install latest driver updates. Usually, windows automatically update graphic drivers, but windows are too conventional about graphic driver updates as only high-performance users and gamers require such updates.
To update drivers for Intel chip use Intel Driver update utility. This tool will identify the chip and show you the latest updates available, just select them all and install it time to time.
In some computers or laptops if the graphic chip is customized by seller then Intel update utility will not automatically update the driver and notify you for that. In cases like that then you will have to go to the manufacturer website and download the suitable drivers to install.

Tweak Performance Settings in Intel’s HD Graphics Control Panel

Once you update the drivers you can then access the Intel Graphics control panel to configure the settings and optimize the graphics. To open control center right-click anywhere on the desktop and click on Graphics Properties. Another way you can open the start menu and search for Intel Graphic and open control panel from there.
Once the control panel is open click on 3D and another window will open for 3D settings. Make few changes as following to get most out of your graphics.

• Enable the “Application Optimal Mode” enabling this options optimizes and increases the performance in most of the games.
• “Turn off- Multi-Simple Anti-Aliasing”. This option ignores the request to reduce the separated application edges and that helps boost the performance by the price of separated application edges.
• “Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing- Override Application Settings.” Following is the advanced option for the previous point. It improves the graphic performance for faster and smoother experience.
• General Settings- Performance. This option will select the best performance optimized settings for anisotropic and V-Sync. If you select Custom Settings then you can tweak those settings by yourself too.

Different graphic hardware could have different settings and software options. So if you can’t find any of the settings then simply click on question mark button and a help box will pop up with detailed information about each setting.
In the Control Panel, you can find power options for Intel Graphics. By default Intel sets the settings to save power, you can always tweak settings for better performance by choosing the performance type when on battery or Plugged in for charging.

RAM Tweaks

Dedicated Graphics like NVIDIA or AMD comes with own RAM or VRAM inside the card itself and is optimized for better graphics and textures. Unlike dedicated graphics onboard chips don’t have extra RAM, instead, it occupies some of the main RAM and uses it as VRAM.
So while tweaking the main RAM if you allocate more RAM to your onboard graphic chip then you will have less RAM for general use. You can customize RAM allocation settings from the BIOS or UEFI settings. This is a tricky tweak because it works in very few cases like if you are playing a game that requires an amount of VRAM that is sufficient by your graphic chip then it doesn’t require anymore RAM so it will slow down your PC as allocated space will then be useless. In other cases, if your Graphic Chip needs RAM badly then allocating more RAM will help speed up the performance.
To tweak this setting, restart the PC and enter BIOS by pressing the F2 button (F1, F10 or F12 in some models). Once entered look for Integrated Graphic settings and tweak the settings regarding the memory allocation. If anything goes wrong you can always reset the BIOS settings to default.

Adjust In-Game Settings

This is a major tweak you can use for a game to run faster and smoother. Find the settings in your game and look for Graphic settings. Here you can change the settings related to graphic resolution, texture details, and Screen limiter etc. optimize the settings to lowest or until you get the best performance. Some games also come with an option to auto detect where it can automatically detect the appropriate graphic settings for you.

At the end of the day, there is nothing more we can do to run Intel HD Graphic chips faster or compete with NVIDIA or AMD chips. Latest High Graphic games might not run as smoothly but most of the old games still can be played with the same chip. If you have a desktop device then you might consider upgrading the computer for better graphics and performance. Find a professional Computer upgrade service near you and make the best out of your non-gaming PC.