THE BEST TWEAK/FPS/OPTIMIZATION GUIDE FOR 2017

The ultimate guide how to Optimize Windows, BIOS, monitor and CS for low latency/input lag/responsive mouse.
* Tweak your computer for gaming
* Updated regularly with new content!

1. BIOS

Enter BIOS setup by powering on the computer and spamming the Del

Turn off/Disable:
Turbo Boost
C-States - C1E/C3/C6 (disables sleep/power saving features; might help with stuttering)
EIST/ Thermal Monitor etc.
1394 controller
xHCI mode / xHCI hand-off
On-board audio (if you got an external soundcard)
On-board video
USB 3.0
HPET (Some people get less suttering/lower latency with it OFF, some with it ON. Depends on your setup. Try what works best for you. You should never force it in Windows tho.)
In Windows, use bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock (in cmd) and let your OS decide on hardware timers.
Further reading: http://www.windowstimestamp.com/description

(Long story short: Turn off everything in BIOS that you don't use/need)

And while your'e in BIOS, check your Tempratures.
You might need to clean your computer from dust, using Gas duster[en.wikipedia.org], Cotton swabs[en.wikipedia.org] etc.
Dust causes heat and heat slows down your hardware because many computers throttle speed to cool down your hardware and prevent overheating.

2. Programs

All of these programs is free

HWMonitor[www.cpuid.com]
Monitor CPU/GPU/HDD temperatures, fan speeds, voltage etc.

Latencymon[www.resplendence.com]
Analyzes the possible causes of buffer underruns by measuring kernel timer latencies and reporting DPC and ISR excecution etc.
Measure of how ready, willing, and able your OS is to deal with requests from the user.
It's not a measure of input lag, but will give you a good idea of possible problematic devices.

MouseMovementRecorder
Included in MarkC's mousefix package.
See if the mouse and pointer movements are 1-to-1 and always the same.
We use this to look for acceleration and problem with mouse hz.
More info on MarkC's blogg[donewmouseaccel.blogspot.se]

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware[www.malwarebytes.org]
Detects and removes malware like worms, Trojans, rootkits, rogues, spyware etc.

Display Driver Uninstaller[www.wagnardmobile.com] Allways use this before installing a new display driver.
Is a driver removal utility that can help you completely uninstall AMD/NVIDIA graphics card drivers and packages from your system, without leaving leftovers behind (including registry keys, folders and files, driver store).

WhoCrashed[www.resplendence.com]
Comprehensible crash dump analysis tool. See what caused BSOD/freeze.

Driver booster[www.iobit.com]
Automatically scan & identify outdated, missing & faulty drivers

TechNet's autoruns [technet.microsoft.com]
Clean your startups!!!

Never use CCleaner (only if you know how to fix eventual problems)
Most of the things it does can easily be done yourself.
There are a lot of options which are checked by default, and most people have no clue what it does. Do your research before using it.

3. Drivers

Follow these steps:

1) Use Windows Update
2) Use Display Driver Uninstaller
3) Get offical GPU drivers ( AMD[support.amd.com] / NVIDIA [www.nvidia.com])

You can use Driver Booster to check for new drivers and try them out (after the steps above),
but be careful.
If the new driver gives you any problem or if youre not happy with it, the program will let you Roll Back to previous driver.

4. Windows (step-by-step)

First of all, uninstall all the programs you don't use/need and reboot!

For gaming i like a snappy, non bloated windows.
Thats why we remove/disable everything we don't need.

1) Rightclick "This PC" > Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings > Adjust for best performance. Now everything should be unchecked.
Then re-check the boxes you find necessary.
Click OK > Remote > Untick "Allow Remote Assistance..."

2) Turn off mouse acceleration
Control panel > Mouse > Pointer Options > Uncheck "enhance pointer precision".
(Pointer speed should be on the 6th tick, and not be touched)

3) Open the power icon in the control panel and change it to "high performance" -> reboot.

4) Let the system idle for a few minutes for every service to load, then open a command prompt and type "winsat formal".
It will configure your SSD, graphics etc. -> Reboot when done.

5) Start > search "defrag" > click "Defrag and optimize your drives" > Turn off scheduled defrag.

6) Start > search "Windows Defender" > Turn windows defender off.

7) Controll panel > Date and Time > Internet time > Uncheck "Sync with an internet blabla".

8) Regedit > Hkey_Local_Machine > System > Current Control Set > Control > Session Manager > Memory Management > Prefetch Parameters >Change "EnablePrefetcher" & "EnableSuperfetch" settings to "0" (not needed for SSD).

9) Control panel > click the system icon > advanced system settings > system protection tab > click the configure button to turn off system restore for all drives.

10) (WIN 8) Open Internet Explorer 11> options > disable "smooth scrolling"
IE settings affect desktop movement in Win8.
Open the "about" menu > uncheck "automatically install new versions"

11) First, install another browser ( Firefox[www.mozilla.org] / Chrome[www.google.com] )

Then go Control panel > programs and features > "Turn Windows Features On/Off"

Uninstall the following:

• Internet Exploder 11
  
• Print and document services (if you don't use printer that is)
  
• SMB 1.0/CIFS file sharing support
  
• Windows Location Provider
  
• Windows Powershell 2.0
  
• Work folders client
  
• XPS services
  
• XPS viewer

12) Control panel > Administrative tools > Services > Doubleclick > Disable:

• Dmwappushsvc (related to the wint10 keylogging)
  
• Diagnostics Tracking Service
  
• Print Spooler
  
• Network connection broker
  
• Geolocation Service
  
• Tile data model server
  
• Themes
  
• Superfetch
  
• Human Interface Device Access
  
• All Hyper-V services
  
• Windows Error Reporting service
  
• Windows Search
  
• Xbox services

Safe manuall:

• Computer Browser (If your computer is not connected to any network)
  
• Diagnostic Policy Service
  
• Distributed Link Tracking Client (If your computer is not connected to any network)
  
• IP Helper (If you don't use IPv6 connection)
  
• Offline Files
  
• Program Compatibility Assistant Service
  
• Portable Device Enumerator Service
  
• Print Spooler (If you don't have a printer)
  
• Remote Registry (You can set it to DISABLED for Security purposes)
  
• Secondary Logon
  
• Security Center
  
• Server (If your computer is not connected to any network)
  
• TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper (If you are not in a workgroup network)
  
• Windows Error Reporting Service
  
• Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) (If you don't have a scanner)
  
• Windows Search (If you don't use Windows built-in Search feature frequently) (Check this)

13) Turn off Defender / Error reporting / Gadgets /Cortana / Data Collection / Telemetry

Press Ctrl+Winkey to open "run" window > type gpedit.msc > Enter

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Defender > Set "Turn off Windows Defender" to "Enabled"

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Error Reporting > Set "Disable Windows Error Reporting" to "Enabled"

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Desktop Gadgets > Set "Turn off Desktop Gadgets" to "Enabled"

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search >
Set "Allow Cortana" to "Disabled"

14) Remove Uninstallable metro apps:
Start > search Powershell > rightclick and run as administrator

Remove Windows Store:
Get-AppxPackage *windowsstore* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove Camera:
Get-AppxPackage *camera* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove Mail & Calendar:
Get-AppxPackage *communi* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove News, Sports, Weather:
Get-AppxPackage *bing* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove Groove and TV:
Get-AppxPackage *zune* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove People:
Get-AppxPackage *people* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove Phone:
Get-AppxPackage *phone* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove Voice Recorder:
Get-AppxPackage *soundrec* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove Xbox:
Get-AppxPackage *xbox* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove Maps:
Get-AppxPackage *map* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove OneNote:
Get-AppxPackage *onenote* | Remove-AppxPackage

Remove Alarm:
Get-AppxPackage *alarm* | Remove-AppxPackage

15) Disable hibernation:
Ctrl+R > Run CMD as administator > write "powercfg -h off" > press Enter.

16) Disable search indexing on your SSD/hard drive
This PC > Right-click on drive > "Properties" > untick "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed..." and wait a few minutes, ignore errors for system-protected files).

17) Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Ethernet > Properties > Configure > Advanced > Disable

• Energy Efficient Ethernet
  
• Flow Control
  
• Green Ethernet
  
• Interupt Moderation
  
• Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4)
  
• Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6)

Click "Power Management" tab, uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" > OK

18) (Experimental, leave feedback on this one)
Run CMD as admin
powercfg -attributes SUB_PROCESSOR 5d76a2ca-e8c0-402f-a133-2158492d58ad -ATTRIB_HIDE
High performance > Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings > Processor power management > Processor idle disable > Set to "Disable idle" > Apply/OK

Click "Power Management" tab, uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" > OK

19) (win 10)
Search privacy > privacy settings > turn everything off (location, camera, cortana, microphone etc)

Search display settings > turn off notifications, apps and features etc.

5. CSGO/Video Settings

Steam you will want to disable directwrite in the options menu of Steam because directwrite acceleration of text in browsers seems to bog down the cursor while they're open. Disable all the streaming options and other junk they're tossing in too.

Config settings (now under Steam > userdata > 50973775 > 730 > local > cfg)
cl_interp “0”
cl_cmdrate “128”
cl_updaterate “128”
rate “128000”
fps_max "0" (or 300)
m_mousespeed "0"
m_rawinput "1"

Launch options
-freq 144 -tickrate 128 -novid -console +exec autoexec

Change 144 to your monitors refresh rate.

For example if you want to run the game stretched you might need to lower your freq from 144 to 120, to enable Monitor stretching instead of GPU stretching.

Video settings:
Vertical sync: Off
Anti-Aliasing: Can have a big impact on performance, and whether to enable or disable it is pretty game specific, If you have the GPU headroom, go ahead and enable it, though take care not to put yourself in a GPU bottlenecked situation.
Anisotropic Filtering: Doesn't impact performance much - Try diffrent settings.
Ingame: All low/Very low
Digital Vibrance: 175-200% (cs got really poor colors)

Recommended settings:
low on all
2x MSAA
4x AF
disabled
disabled
disabled

6. Mouse & latency check

• Change your sensitivty with DPI settings (400,800 etc standard)
  
• Do not touch the Windows slider (should be 6/11)
  
• Disable acceleration
  
• Disconnect usb devices that you don't use while playing
  
• Use MouseMovementRecorder to check for stable hz

Put your mouse on its own IRQ/Less crowded:

"The IRQ Resource of the mouse is an important consideration. Before checking this, mine was on IRQ 16, which is the same as both my GPU and sound card. While I couldn't personally change the IRQ for the GPU or sound card because there's only 1 available slot for each on my mobo, you can change the IRQ Resource of your mouse by changing the USB port is plugged into.

After I tested a few ports, I got my mouse on its own IRQ 23. This not only made the mini-spikes in DPC latency checker and LatencyMon fewer and farther between, demonstrating improved input lag, it also polls much more consistently @ 1000Hz in MouseMovementRecorder. Before there was ~2 strange polling deviations around 900-950Hz and 1050-1000Hz every 50 polling measurements during constant high speed mouse movement, and now it sticks to 1000Hz +/- 5Hz like a laser beam.

Here's how I went about checking the IRQ resource and changing it:

1) Windows key + R, type devmgmt.msc and hit enter, then View > Devices by connection. Find your USB host controllers and open them up until your find 'HID-compliant mouse' as a 'USB Input Device'. Then right-click the USB host controller that you found it under ('Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller' if you're using the Microsoft driver), Properties > Resources tab, and look for the number in parentheses at the end of the IRQ line.

2) Windows key + R, type msinfo32.exe and hit enter. Under Hardware Resources > IRQs, you can see which other devices your mouse's USB host controller is sharing IRQ Resources with. Ideally, it would have an IRQ Resource all its own, but you definitely want to try and have it on a different one than your GPU, sound card, in-use network adapter, and possibly even USB keyboard (I use PS/2 to avoid this one altogether).

3) If your mouse is on a conflicting IRQ Resource, swap it to another USB 2.0 port** and repeat these steps until you find an IRQ Resource all its own or at least on the least-conflicting one available."

Now open Latencymon

• Press the green arrow to start it, and do what you normally do, play etc.
  
• Stop it and go to "Driver" tab.
  
• Check for "Highest execution (ms)", Non should be above 1.0 or so.
  
• Use this method to look for problematic drivers/devices.
  
• Fix them!

7. Monitor / Blur reduction & Lightboost (120/144hz only)

ICC Profile
A color profile is a set of data which defines a device working with colors, and how this device displays colors. Such devices are monitors, printers, scanners, etc. Each device has its own way of managing colors. Therefore, without the correct color profiles being installed and used, it can happen that the colors of an image you view on your monitor will be very different from those you see if you print the image. To make sure such differences do not occur, and you actually see the real colors used in an image, you need to install the color profiles for the devices working with colors on your computer.
Download a ICC profile HERE[www.tftcentral.co.uk]

Install your new profile:

• Control Panel > Color Management
  
• In the Device drop-down select you monitor
  
• When you have the proper monitor selected, click "Add"
  (If a color profile is already installed for the selected monitor, the Add button can be is disabled. Check the box that says "Use my settings for this device".
  
• Add > Browse > Select the downloaded ICC profile > Set as Default Profile

Blur reduction
http://www.blurbusters.com/
Got all info you need on this topic.
Transforms your monitor into an CRT! :)

My monitor is BENQ XL2720Z, and i use the Blur Busters Strobe Utility[www.blurbusters.com]
It made this monitor beast.
With blur reduction + some tweaking (VT Tweak), everything is bright and nice!

Your monitor need Version 2 firmware or later for this application to work.
My monitor didn't come with this version, but i used THIS guide [forums.blurbusters.com].
With Linux+VGA cable you can upgrade the firmware yourself, no need to spend money.

If the program dosn't start: Rightclick > Run as administrator

More threads about blur reduction:
How to take your BenQ Z Series monitor to glorious levels

Recommended settings:
1920x1080
front porch 48 pixels, 3 lines;
sync with 32 pixels, 5 lines
Horizontal total 2080
VT 1500

BLUR REDUCTION TOOL SETTINGS:
007 / 043

With 120hz and VT 1500 tweak, Maximum strobe phase + maximum strobe duty add up to 050. Use that to set your desired brightness.
so, 044+006, 041+009, 049+001, etc.

For CSS/ GO, Strobe phase 000 is NOT ideal. it will have 8.3ms HIGHER input lag than blur reduction off, OR a maximum strobe phase.
The maximum strobe phase for 120hz WITH a VT Tweak is 49. Without a VT tweak its 100 (please don't ask me why. it's in the other thread I linked. It take too long to explain why).

Now set your strobe phase to 049. The screen will get very dim as it increases. 50 shuts the backlight off. Now you need to REDUCE the strobe phase until its bright enough. I recommend for you, Strobe phase 043.

Then set the STROBE DUTY to 007.

043 strobe phase limits the maximum strobe duty to 007 (part of this is because 043+047= 50 and 50 shuts off the backlight).
This will give you the SAME input lag as blur reduction DISABLED, with the normal vsync on or off lag (depending on if u use vsync or not). You will have a little crosstalk at the bottom of the screen. but its ok for CS:Go.

8. UPDATES

Some usefull links:
Disable ULPS (win 10 crimson)[www.overclock.net]

Win-raid[www.win-raid.com]

Driveridentifier[www.driveridentifier.com]


Update 1:

Unpark CPU Tutorial Steps
Copy the following registry key entry between the brackets [].
Select your start button.
On the search bar type in “regedit”.
Go to edit->find->find next.
Paste this registry key but without quotes “0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583” and click find.
Once it has located it, look for the keys on the right hand side labeled MinValue and MaxValue.
Double click on each value and make sure they are both set to ‘0’.
Close the registry editor and shut down your computer.
Power the computer back up.
Core Parking should now be disabled.

[Melody [Digital Harmony]]

You should mention the DELAY_FLIP_BY_FLIPMETERING tweak for NVIDIA as it's insanely useful.

[☘rayxx☘]

So good

[13xforever]

Makes you wonder why there’s no comments on this guide since 2016, huh 🤔

[Silenius]

Changing usb ports didn't change my irq for standard enhanced pci to usb host controllers at all.
Btw usbport.sys has high dpc latency, because it doesn't support msi-x unfortunately.
On some motherboards disabling legacy usb support may help, but it can make your mouse out of control.

[ANOTHER BOT]

Thx :)

[will]

What exaclty do the prefetch parameters do?

[will]

Very nice guide, ty for the info.

[snuskblad]

Thx for feedback. Let me know if i can help you with anything :)

[Nirax21]

+rep very helpfull ^^

[hypeR]

Nice Guide, my friend! Helped me a lot!