If your gaming PC feels slower on Windows 11 than it did on Windows 10, you're not imagining it. Out of the box, Windows 11 ships with a fistful of background features — VBS, Game DVR, telemetry, indexing — that can each shave a few frames off, and they stack up. The good news is that almost every one can be tuned off or down in a few minutes. This guide walks you through the Windows 11 gaming optimisation checklist we use at our Edinburgh workshop, in roughly the order we apply it on customer machines from Murrayfield to Livingston.
Before you start, take a baseline. Run a benchmark or play your usual game with an FPS overlay on (NVIDIA App, AMD Adrenalin or Steam's built-in counter), note the numbers, and you'll know which of the steps below actually moved the needle on your hardware.
1. Update Your GPU Drivers (Properly)
The single biggest no-effort performance gain on any gaming PC is a current GPU driver. Windows Update will install a driver, but it's usually months out of date. Grab the latest direct from NVIDIA App, AMD Adrenalin or Intel Arc Control, depending on your card. If you're upgrading between major versions, use the "clean install" option — it wipes leftover settings that often cause stutter.
If a driver install fails halfway, leaves you with no display, or triggers a crash loop, that's usually a wider issue we cover in our software troubleshooting service.
2. Turn On Windows 11 Game Mode
Go to Settings > Gaming > Game Mode and switch it on. Game Mode prioritises CPU and GPU resources for your active game and pauses background tasks like Windows Update and driver installs while you play. It won't double your frame rate, but it does smooth out 1% lows — the moments that feel like stutter.
3. Disable Xbox Game Bar and Game DVR
Game DVR records your last few minutes of gameplay in the background — useful once a year, costly every frame. Disable Xbox Game Bar under Settings > Gaming > Xbox Game Bar, then turn off Captures > Record what happened. For a deeper kill, open the registry, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\GameConfigStore, and set GameDVR_Enabled to 0.
4. Switch the Power Plan to High Performance
Open Control Panel > Power Options and select High Performance. On laptops you may need to type powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61 in an admin command prompt to unlock the "Ultimate Performance" plan. While you're there, plug the laptop in — battery profiles aggressively throttle the CPU and GPU regardless of in-game settings.
5. Turn Off Memory Integrity and VBS
Virtualisation-Based Security (VBS) and Memory Integrity ship enabled on many new Windows 11 installs and can shave 5–10% off your CPU performance in games. To check, type msinfo32 and look for "Virtualization-based security" — if it says "Running", it's on. Disable Memory Integrity under Settings > Privacy & Security > Windows Security > Device Security > Core Isolation. Only do this on a personal gaming machine you're not using for work or banking — VBS is a real security layer.
6. Set the Game's GPU Preference
Under Settings > System > Display > Graphics, find each game's executable and set it to High Performance. On laptops with hybrid graphics (Intel iGPU + NVIDIA dGPU), this single tick is the difference between 25 FPS and 90 FPS — we see it constantly on machines coming in from Glenrothes and Glasgow.
7. Enable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling and Auto HDR
On the same Graphics page, scroll down to Default graphics settings > Change default graphics settings. Toggle Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling on (small but real latency reduction on modern NVIDIA/AMD cards) and, if you have an HDR display, Auto HDR for retrofitted HDR in older titles.
8. Trim Startup Programs and Background Apps
Every Discord overlay, RGB controller and cloud-sync agent in your system tray steals memory and CPU. Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) > Startup apps, and disable anything you don't need before launching a game. Our guide to disabling startup programs walks through which ones are safe to switch off.
9. Set the Refresh Rate to the Monitor's Maximum
Windows 11 occasionally defaults a 144Hz or 165Hz monitor to 60Hz after a driver update. Open Settings > System > Display > Advanced display and confirm your refresh rate matches the panel's rated maximum. A high refresh rate panel running at 60Hz is the most common "my gaming PC feels slow" complaint we get at the workshop.
10. Optimise Storage — SSD Trim and Game Install Location
Games on a slow HDD will stutter no matter how strong the CPU and GPU are. Make sure your library lives on an NVMe or SATA SSD. In Windows 11, type "Defragment and Optimise Drives", select your SSD, and click Optimise — this triggers a TRIM pass that keeps writes fast. If you're still on an HDD and your card can handle modern titles, an SSD upgrade is one of the highest-impact changes you can make, and one of the most common jobs we do under hardware upgrades.
11. Tame Windows Update and Telemetry
Set Windows Update active hours to cover your usual gaming sessions so it can't kick off a forced download mid-match. Under Settings > Privacy & Security > Diagnostics & Feedback, set diagnostic data to "Required only" — full telemetry runs background uploads that fight your network for bandwidth on busy evenings.
12. Don't Forget the Hardware Side
Software tuning has a ceiling. If your PC was assembled three or four years ago and is still struggling after every step above, the bottleneck is hardware. The most common upgrades that transform an older Edinburgh gaming rig are: doubling RAM to 32 GB for modern titles, swapping a SATA SSD for an NVMe drive, repasting the CPU, and — if the budget allows — a current-gen GPU. We design and quote these as a package under custom PC builds and hardware upgrades, with installation included.
And if your gaming life leans toward console as well as PC, our console repair team handles PS5, Xbox Series and Switch fixes from the same Edinburgh workshop.
Still Not Hitting the Frames You Expect?
If you've worked through this list and your gaming PC still feels off — random stutter, sudden FPS drops, a fan that screams in the menu screen — there's usually something underneath the OS layer worth checking: thermals, a failing SSD, or a power supply that can't hold a clean rail. Gaming PC repair across Livingston and the wider Edinburgh area is one of our most-booked services. Book a workshop slot online and we'll diagnose it properly.