What Makes Your Game Slow? Here are The Top 10 Reasons Behind Lagging Gameplay

Ever found yourself stuck at a loading screen while enjoying your favorite gaming session? Or perhaps, you start facing constant stutter or delayed responses. Well, you’re not alone! There’s no doubt that slow game performance can completely ruin your experience.

Hence, you might be wondering what can be the potential causes behind slow and laggy game performance. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the top 10 reasons and provide actionable strategies to achieve a smooth, and seamless gaming experience. So, without wasting any more time, let’s get started!

Table of Contents

So, What’s Exactly Dragging Down Your Game’s Performance? Discover the Top 10 Issues!

Well, there can be plenty of reasons why you might be greeted with lag, stutter, and slow performance.

1. Outdated Hardware

Well, at the core of any gaming experience lies your hardware. Having insufficient specifications can lead to significant performance issues. For instance, if your CPU isn’t powerful enough to handle the game you’re playing, you may experience poor speed. Additionally, running an outdated graphics card can fail to handle high demands.

Moreover, when the processor gets overloaded, you may start witnessing issues like constant frame drops, making it cumbersome to keep up with the GPU.

Besides this, having insufficient memory (RAM) can lead to longer loading times and reduced frame rates, which may eventually result in constant slowdowns.

Solution: Consider upgrading your CPU or start playing games in lower CPU-intensive settings. Also, make sure you spend on upgrading your current RAM for better performance.

2. High Graphics Settings

Well, no doubt keeping your system at high graphic settings enhances visual fidelity, but it can significantly hamper the overall speed and performance. For instance, playing games at a higher resolution certainly demands more resources and processing power from your GPU. Applying effects like motion blur can result in low FPS, screen tearing, pixelation, and visual stuttering issues.

Solution: To fix these annoying issues, we recommend our readers lower their graphics settings, such as resolution, shadows, and so on. Additionally, consider upgrading to a more powerful graphics card can help enjoy seamless performance.

3. Your Internet Connection might be Acting Up.

While playing online, having a strong Internet connection is an absolute must-have. A fluctuating connection may lead to constant lag, high ping, and frequent freezing. Moreover, bandwidth limitations can also lead to buffering and interruptions while playing on the web.

Solution: To fix the issues while online gaming, we advise our gamers to switch to a wired Ethernet connection, close the irrelevant bandwidth-occupying applications, and consider upgrading their Internet speed plan. Doing so will certainly help them in witnessing boosted gaming performance.

4. Overheating

You probably saw this coming, right? Overheating is one of the most common issues that can throttle your system’s performance. Whenever your operating system’s components like CPU, and GPU rise to high temperature, you may start experiencing slower processing speeds, and overall lag during offline or online gaming. Moreover, you should keep in mind that continuous heating can also lead to hardware damage, ultimately reducing the lifespan of your computer’s components.

Solution: To ensure, your computer stays cool and works efficiently, we advise our users to take the help of a dedicated monitoring software like HWMonitor, MSI Afterburner, Core Temp, and so on. These applications work thoroughly to keep your system’s temperature maintained. Additionally, we advise you to adjust the fan speeds, so that it can dissipate more heat, especially during intense gaming sessions.

5. You’re running outdated drivers.

If you are an avid computer user, chances are you are already aware of the importance of having updated and compatible drivers for your hardware. Running them ensures your driver properly communicates with your operating system and executes all the processes without any interference. Hence, if your operating system is running old, missing, damaged, incompatible driver versions, chances are you might be facing constant crashes, graphical glitches, and poor performance.

Solution: To ensure, drivers are not the culprit behind the affected game’s performance, we advise our users to update their network drivers, display drivers, and graphic drivers using Device Manager or via third-party tools. Besides that, keeping your OS updated fixes the potential bugs and enhances the stability of your PC.

6. If there are any Software Conflicts

There’s a high probability that certain third-party software might be creating an interference with your gaming session, eventually causing major slowdowns. Additionally, malware and viruses can also drastically hamper the game speed of your system by running malicious programs and background processes, occupying valuable resources that could be utilized for gaming. Oftentimes, you may start experiencing high CPU and memory usage even while your system is idle due to these software conflicts.

Solutions: One of the most renowned and tried and tested methods is running an in-depth virus scan using antivirus software. These applications are equipped with a malware database that holds the potential to automatically scan, detect, and remove any potential online and offline threats that might hamper your overall computing experience. Additionally, consider removing programs regularly that you no longer use or seems to hogging a lot of memory than they should.

7. Game Corruption

In case your game files become damaged or get downloaded partially, your games might get corrupted. Hence, causing your favorite game to run super slowly, visual glitches, or even crash abruptly. Besides this, if there are any hard drive errors or power outages, it can also damage game files. Additionally, there are chances that your currently installed antivirus software or system updates can interfere with game files, causing corruption issues.

Solution: We advise our readers to verify the game integrity of game files using Game launchers like Steam, Origin, or Epic Games Store. Utilizing this method will help in scanning your game files, and replace them with the fresh ones on the server. Additionally, you can consider reinstalling the game, which will eventually overwrite the corrupted files and also help avoid potential conflicts.

8. Fragmented Hard Drive

Whenever you edit, delete, and save files on your hard drive, it gets automatically stored in the contiguous sector. Over time, when you do this process, these sectors become scattered all across your drive, which may result in the fragmentation of your hard drive. This can significantly impact your gaming performance in a multitude of ways, such as increased load times, high memory consumption, constant frame rate drops or freezes. Fortunately, these issues can be easily resolved.

Solution: All you have to do is, use the Windows built-in Defragmentation tool that can help you reorganize your fragmented files. To utilize this tool, simply head towards the Control Panel, then click on the Administrative Tools, followed by clicking on the Defragment and Optimize Drives button. At this moment, you need to select the drive you wish to defragment and hit the Optimize button to complete the process. In case you don’t want to indulge in the manual hassle, we advise you to consider using an SSD. Upgrading to aSolid-state drive can help you achieve improved gaming performance than ever before while reducing loading times and stuttering.

These applications work flawlessly to enhance overall gaming performance in a few clicks.

9. A Cluttered System

There’s no doubt that a system packed with unwanted redundant data, duplicate files, caches, cookies, and other irrelevant files can significantly impact your computing experience and gaming performance. This could lead to reduced frame rates, slower load times, and increased latency in online games. If you are experiencing such issues, we advise you to execute the in-depth cleaning and optimization of your system.

Solution: There are several PC cleanup tools in the market that can help you scan the entire nook and cranny of your system and help you remove junk files, defragment your hard drive and optimize overall system speed and operations. Some of our favorite and preferred software that can help you keep in tip-top shape are CCleaner, Wise Disk Cleaner, and AVG Tune Up. Additionally, using Task Manager, you can disable unnecessary programs to improve your gaming experience and reduce constant stuttering and poor load times in no time.

10. Overclocking

Last but not least, if you are someone who overclocks increase the clock speed of your CPU, GPU, or other hardware components. While it can help boost speed beyond the default settings, it also introduces multiple risks that can impact your gaming performance. It includes instability, overheating issues, and reduced lifespan. Moreover, it can cause more frequent crashes than usual.

Solution: To ensure overclocking is not the culprit for making your gaming performance slow, we advise you to revert your overclocking settings to their defaults. Additionally, we advise you to keep a close eye on your operating system’s temperatures.

Bottom Line

By addressing these 10 problems, ranging from hardware-related limitations to software glitches and overclocking issues, you can instantly improve your overall gameplay experience. Our today’s guide is curated to empower gamers to locate potential areas for improvement. We hope our gaming audience can be helped with the aforementioned solutions and able to enjoy their favorite games to the fullest.