Tweak Windows and ALL Graphics drivers

Software and resources for improving and fixing Windows. …

After you have read Raynor’s thread on tweaking your UT settings, you may well want to tweak your Windows driver settings.
How to Get Rid of Lag
Here is a list of the extras you can use to unlock the power of your graphics card.

First make sure ALL your Drivers are up-to-date, including Motherboard chipset, sound and DirectX
www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=35
www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/idyp

Manufactures own tweak tools
Asus GPU Tweak
http://support.asus.com/download.aspx
MSI Afterburner
http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
EVGA Precision
https://www.evga.com/precision/
Zotac Firestorm
http://www.zotac.com/z-zone/zotac-firestorm.html

Older nVidia users (up to GeForce 500 series) should install nVidia’s own “System Tools” package for access to extra motherboard and GFX options (very useful for nForce motherboards).
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_system_tools.html
Find ideal settings for your nVidia card.
http://www.geforce.com/optimize/optimal-game-settings

ATI users should get RadeonPro
http://www.radeonpro.info
or ATItool
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/
Check the beta forum link for the newer version
Or ATI Tray (Access more options than you can believe!)
http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-tray-tools-/
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ATI_Tray_Tools
Or get GPUTool
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Tweaking/

Both nVidia and ATI users can also use RivaTuner
http://www.guru3d.com/content-page/rivatuner.html
http://www.guru3d.com/files_tags/rivatuner.html
More tools from Guru3D
http://www.guru3d.com/files_categories/videocards_overclocking_tweaking.html

If you have a laptop, or a card that you cannot install new generic drivers from nVidia or ATI (only the manufactures old installers work).
Then you NEED “Mobility Modder”  or “FLEM” utility to update.
nVidia – http://www.hardwareheaven.com/nvmodtool.php
ATI – http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php
ATI – http://digitalflem.mydiscussion.net

If you DO NOT have an nVidia or an ATI card, or even have an *ancient GFX chip with no modern support, then do not worry I have tools for you :yes:
:ninja: PowerStrip from EnTech (Actually, you should all get this one anyway)
http://entechtaiwan.com
Pre-historic GFX chips can also be configured with version v2.78 (95/98/NT/2000).
http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps2.shtm
*3dfx, Number Nine, Cirrus Logic, Rendition, S3, and Tseng Labs.
GMABooster will unlock mobile intel chipsets to run at full desktop speed.
www.gmabooster.com
You can find more help at http://gma500booster.blogspot.it
Intel have 2 overclocking tools
http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/gaming/overclocking-intel-processors.html
USEFULL TWEAK TOOLS
⭐ Cacheman – You can use it for free, but the auto-optimise is disabled. It will give you a dynamic drive caching system. Access to many windows registry options. and (my personal holy grail) sticky “task priority” settings. The context sensitive help file in this prog will teach you more windows info than you will believe!
www.outertech.com

Speedfan – This totally free tool allows you to change your bus speed via software (If you get it wrong, just reboot and everything is back to normal) in increments of 1 MHz! You set a “High speed” and a “normal/low speed”. You can literally over-clock your PC to within 1MHz of it’s life :bomb:
This does not seem to upset UT the same way as hardware based variable processor speed changes.
www.almico.com
NOTE: severe overclocking can slow your PC instead of speeding it up!

:ninja: Notebook Hardware Control (NHC)
Take complete control of your laptop/notebook.
Ideal if you lack the original OEM control software after a re-install, or just want something more flexible.
You can for example disable all the CPU speeds you don’t want, and lock it to a single speed.
http://www.pbus-167.com

SpeederXP – This is an odd tool (and will get you kicked from a server). As far as I can tell, this seems to adjust the timing of Windows instead of hardware, and can unlock insane speeds from your PC.
It may well play havoc with UT’s timing, so don’t push the slider all the way up. The site seems to have had a dodgy history, but I can find no issue with the actual software, and I have used it occasionally for 3 or 4 years.
http://www.speederxp.com
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/speederxp.com

⭐ Xteq X-Setup – The mother of all tweak utillities! This prog is now totally free as the parent company closed, but it provides an unbeatable interface and framework for tweaking windows and other software. All the VBscripts are viewable/editable. You can even make your own (some UT specific tweaks could be easily created for example)
http://www.xteq.com

⭐ Autopatcher – Get all Micro$oft (and more 😉 ) updates in an off-line installation package, that will install updates without the need of registration or WPA or WGA (Great for system admins like me).
http://www.autopatcher.com

Clean-up and Defrag
PC Decrapifier – You have a PC full of stupid utilities supplied by the manufacturer, but don’t know what you can get rid of ? Then visit this site.
http://pcdecrapifier.com

SlimWare Utilities Good alternative to PC Decrapifier. These use cloud based decision making. Also the driver updater is worth checking out.
www.slimwareutilities.com

Should I Remove it? Guides you through how useful software is, based on other users feedback.
www.shouldiremoveit.com

⭐ jv16 PowerTools – The only registry cleaner worth downloading. I have been using this prog since its previous incarnation of “Regcleanr”, way back on Win95. It is simply the best. It will do far more than just clean your registry ! www.macecraft.com
www.macecraft.com/registry_cleaner_comparison2010/ – comparison with 176 other products 😉

Auslogics Disk Defrag – Excellent free disc defrag utility. Can be scheduled to auto defrag.
www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/ – Command Line Options

Defraggler and CCleaner – Excellent free disc defrag and clean-up tools
www.piriform.com/ccleaner/builds
http://singularlabs.com/software/ccenhancer/
www.piriform.com/defraggler/builds (Can defrag system files during bootup)
EnhancedDefragglerShell by RejZoR

System Ninja – An excellent system tweaker and remover of unwanted files, by the makers of CCEnhancer.
http://singularlabs.com/software/system-ninja

Power Defragmenter + Contig – Perfect if you already have the Sysinternals Suite, or you can copy these 2 small files to a new folder. Can defrag locked system files.
http://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals/bb897428
http://rejzor.wordpress.com/powerdefrag/

NOTE:
A very common issue I find on home-installed PC’s that I have to fix, is a lack of “Chipset Drivers“.
Your motherboard chipset drivers are extremely important for stability and full speed. These drivers should always be installed before your GFX and sound card drivers (The compatibility drivers installed during Windows installation will not do).
If you do not know what chipset your PC uses, then you can use PC Wizard to look inside your machine.
PC Wizard – See what is inside your PC, even if the drivers are not installed (it’s like a small free SiSoft Sandra).
http://www.cpuid.com

Overclocking and tweaking downloads and info at Guru3D
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=13

What is Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering ? nVidia tutorial.

EDIT I thought I should add more about effective drive usage.
Note on USB
I should point out that no matter how fast the potential speed of whatever USB device you use, you will be limited by the speed of the USB port, and also lacking DMA transfers will hammer the CPU with interrupts, thereby slowing everything during heavy file accessing.

I always partition my drives, and format depending on their usage.
Windows has a lot of small files in it. Data partitions tend to have larger files.
I always make a dedicated partition for TEMP data (ideal on a 2nd drive).
Here is a common setup I install on customers PCs;
C: System (Windows and CoDecs etc.)
D: Programs (and games)
E: DATA (Documents folder)
F: TEMP

If you point all Temp output to a separate partition, you will massively reduce the fragmentation of windows, and reduce the main wear on the drive to one partition (which is easier to map-out).
Things to redirect like;
Swap file, Widows temp, User temp, Internet browser temp, WinRAR/ZIP/ACE..etc, video/audio creation/conversion progs, streaming media progs and browser plugins, Steam, and anything that doesn’t clean up after itself!

This also gives a little more security, as any potential malware threat will arrive in a partition you don’t mind immediately quick formatting 😀
If Windows becomes irreparable, again you can pretty much get away with a quick format and re-install.
Games and game-saves safe in D: and music and videos safe in E:

You can disable indexing on the drives that do not contain your documents folder (or switch the service off completely).
It is also worthwhile switching off “System Restore” for drives you do not need monitoring.
The boot drive is the only important one. This will save space and reduce disk usage.

On drives containing lots of large data files, it can be worth over-riding Windows default block/cluster size during format.
Larger blocks equals faster sustained transfer rates, as the PC has to ask for data less often.
Another benefit is less space is required to keep track of the contents of the partition, so leaving more for you to use.

Setting the minimum and maximum of your swapfile to the same values, will also stop it from becoming fragmented.
On traditional mechanical hard drives the swap file is fastest located at the beginning of a drive. This is easiest to do with a second freshly formatted drive, as Windows will already be sitting at the front of the C: drive.
Some defrag tools can move it to the beginning of the drive later, but this is rare.

MiniTool Partition Wizard – This fantastic tool will make you wonder why it’s competitors are so large!
www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
Check the site for more free and powerful disk utilities.

:rip: If you have had a disaster, or your drive is failing, then I also have a page of Recovery Utilities.
https://vivaldi.net/blogs/entry/recovery-tools