Quote Originally Posted by Bacent View Post
I was wondering if any could provide some tips for me getting my computer to run a bit better for Stormblood. I got about 8300 for my score ...
The three things you can do to improve the score marginally (like in maybe double digits)

1. Turn off the computer wait about 30 minutes, blow the dust out with compressed air, slowly. Don't use a vacuum, and don't hold compressed air down too long or it will freeze components. If anyone smokes, has pets, or just has an exceptionally dusty environment, you need to clean it out more often.

2. Just close the web browser honestly, when you leave it running, things like ads, videos, and javascript (eg twitter, tumblr, reddit, disqus) will just keep bleeding your computer for memory. If you have a mobile phone or tablet and need to keep checking things, use that instead.

3. Uninstall software overlays. Geforce Experience, Steam, MSI Afterburner, etc. Basically anything that overlays also adds input latency due to the compositing requirement. It's very tiny, but noticeable when you turn on video capture.

More to the point, if you are trying to squeeze more out of the same hardware, just upgrade the cooling system. Most OEM systems (Dell, Alienware, etc) use the cheapest parts possible, that's why they make so much noise. If your system doesn't sound like a jet engine, then you're good. If it sounds like a jet engine taking off when the game runs, then the CPU/GPU is working too hard and probably needs a better cooler. That's the cheapest thing you can do.

Anything else involves replacing the GPU. That then may require replacing the Chasis and PSU if you pick something too big.

You can get a little more performance if you use a tool to change the CPU affinity for the game to avoid hyperthreaded cores, but that's so trivial that it barely matters except for people on i3 systems.