Have you ever been playing your favorite game when suddenly it starts playing out like a slide show? If you're a gamer, you're likely very familiar with that experience.

The good news is that this is something that you can improve upon by following some troubleshooting steps for both software and the physical hardware in your computer.

You should first make sure that your motherboard's BIOS is up to date. You can visit your motherboard maker's support site and cross reference the BIOS that's on your board with the one that's listed on their support site. In order to identify the BIOS version you're on, use CPU-Z and look at the Motherboard's tab, looking at the BIOS section.
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*Do note that with some platform's you're instructed to update a particular driver/firmware prior or post BIOS update. For Intel's platform's, you are advised to update the MEI firmware prior to moving onto a latter BIOS version/stage. For AMD's Ryzen platform, you're sometimes advised to update the chipset drivers prior to a BIOS update.

The next thing to do is make sure you're on the latest version of your OS, when working with Windows 10(and 11). With the latest OS environment, an OS update tends to either break or leave some drivers/device functions half dead.
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Following that, check and see that your chipset drivers are also up to date. In spite of the OS downloading and installing drivers it thinks is right, you're advised to manually download and install the drivers. While installing you should do so in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.
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Following that, you should download the latest GPU drivers from your GPU manufacturer's site.

You can find the latest drivers for your AMD graphics card from here: https://www.amd.com/en/support
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You can find the latest drivers for your Nvidia graphic card from here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/
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Once the drivers are downloaded from your GPU maker's support page, we're going to need one more tool to rid your platform of older drivers.

You can download the latest version of Display Driver Uninstaller aka DDU from here: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html
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Once downloaded, use DDU to remove all traces of your current GPU's drivers. It'll ask you to reboot the system.

It's a good idea to disconnect from the internet to prevent the OS from downloading drivers on it's own.
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Same story with installation of drivers by running them in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

If you haven't regained the frames per second that you once had, your final option would be to uninstall and reinstall the game to see if the game had a glitch or a bug on it that might've reared during a particular OS update.

If you're sure that the hardware in your system is intact (and not limited due to age) then the above steps should get you back up to those bone crunching frame rates.
 
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Another great guide!
With the latest OS environment, an OS update tends to either break or leave some drivers/device functions half dead
Don't Update Drivers

I assume Win11 has the same facility as Win 10, that you can turn off driver updates as part of the monthly Windows Updates?

Everyone should do that. Drivers are very advanced software, real cutting edge stuff dealing with comms between hardware parts and Windows, and therefore are the most susceptible to failure. Don't update drivers if you don't have a clear need.

If you do have a clear need, go to the part manufacturer's site for the driver—they will often be more up-to-date than what Windows has.

Most importantly, make a disk image before updating drivers. With that, you're less than an hour from recovery is a new driver bricks your system—guide in my sig below.

Reduce graphics Settings

I'm only a novice re advanced graphics settings, but I am good at collecting expert tips :)

Reduce following:
Ray Tracing
Anti-aliasing
Ambient occlusion
Shadow quality
Resolution—last resort

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