Can Software Increase My Graphics Card's Gaming Performance?

Wouldn’t it be great if a single piece of software was available that would improve your computer’s graphics capabilities? Rather than spend money on a potentially expensive graphics card, the software would do the job and let you play games that your computer normally struggles with.

Such utilities are known as video card boosters – although they might not quite be what you imagine them to be.

While a video card booster won’t improve the capabilities of your graphics card, it will enhance the performance of the computer’s video output by helping to prioritise video processing ahead of other processes.

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If the graphics card is designed to be unlocked and overclocked then video card booster software might provide this functionality. However such software commonly ships with the graphics cards these days as overclocking has become as much a part of gaming as plugging in a gamepad.

As such it is more likely that video card booster software utilities optimize your computer for gaming by disabling various background tasks and desktop graphics enhancements (such as Windows 7’s Aero glass look) in order to afford extra video processing to the game. Utilities that offer such functionality include the freeware Game Fire tool from www.smartpcutilities.com.

While most video card booster tools deliver optimisation to your PC by prioritising graphics processing tasks and apportioning suitable memory, a really top quality tool will also manage and disable various background tasks and desktop graphics. This is what Game Fire does, and if you're looking for the best game optimization tool then this should be your first choice. The utility is free, easy to configure and can be used to switch into "gaming mode" at the click of a mouse button.

One thing you should note, however, is that Game Fire may not restore your Windows 7 glass effect after use, which might necessitate a reboot.

If you're running a game straight after booting your PC, you might expect the game to run without any problems. However this is unlikely to be the case as you will find by checking Task Manager (right-click taskbar, select Start Task Manager) that many processes are running. Some of these might be server processes, for instance, or other services that use vital resources.

While Game Fire is the best choice for managing this, you might also consider running through the processes and stopping them yourself. This is really a task for advanced users to tackle, although the same effect can be gained from using the evergreen End It All 2.0 utility (available from Softonic) which enables you to "bulk close" any processes that are slowing down your PC, and by extension your gaming experience.

• Screenshots and references from Game Fire