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Overwatch is another game that made everyone its fan. It is one of the most played online games. It was released in 2016, a project that had been in development for about seven years.
It is a game in which teams play. It creates two teams of six players, every player is of unique style and has its own role in the game. All the team members have to play together to keep the control points secure. Moreover, they have to take the payload across the locations on the map within the specific time period. The Players receive rewards in it. It has different game modes.
The developers of the game have updated and added new features to it after the release. You can play this game on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows. The game has great graphics and keeps the gamer involve for long hours.
The laptop or the desktop system that you are using should have all the necessary specifications. Keeping the laptop specifications accordingly will make the game run smoothly. Here are the recommended requirements.
Recommended Requirements:
The game will run on any modern laptop but for a better and efficient run of the game, it should have the recommended requirements I am listing below:
- Operating System: Windows® 7 / Windows® 8 / Windows® 10 64-bit (latest Service Pack)
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i5 or AMD Phenom™ II X3 or better
- GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660 or AMD Radeon™ HD 7950 or better
- RAM: 6 GB RAM
- Storage: 30 GB available hard drive space
- Internet: Broadband internet connection
- Display: 1024 x 768 minimum display resolution
To compare the list above with the basic laptop, therefore, below is the list of specifications of the basic laptop.
- Operating System: Windows® 10 64-bit (April 2018 Creator’s Update)
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00 GHz
- GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 1070
- RAM: 16 GB
- Storage: 1 Terabyte Solid State Drive
Now you can make changes to your existing laptop, or you can build a laptop for yourself from scratch. Now that specifications are out of the way, there a few other things that you can do and make the game run amazingly. Let us see what are those factors.
Make Changes in the Settings:
Check the current resolution if it is 1280×720 you are fine, but it is higher or lower change it. Open the graphics quality tab and make sure every individual setting is set to low.
Most professional players will bring down the video settings to get as fast a frame rate as possible and as low a SIM rate as possible. SIM rate is the simulation or the amount of time your game client took to process a tick.
A system that is running with high-graphic settings will often find their SIM rate to run in the tens of milliseconds. This may not seem like much, but it can affect how fast your inputs respond much like the connection latency in your game. Render scale should be set to a minimum of 75%. Play the game in full screen because it will run faster than the windowed mode or borderless window mode.
Measure the SIM rate:
You can measure the SIM rate by using the Network Graph in Overwatch. You have to click on the Training Range, and after selecting a hero, tap the following key combination: Ctrl + Shift+ N
It will open a graph on which you will see a shaded area with a bunch of moving lines from right to left. There look for the upper white line and value to read your SIM rate. The lower it is, the faster your game will perform. You can further check the rate by playing the game and make certain moves.
Background programs should be closed to Run Overwatch better:
When you are playing the game make sure all the other programs in the background are closed.
It will make the laptop RAM lighter and run the game more efficiently. Other than that just close every window that is open, you should go to the Task Manager (shortcut to task manager is: Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and close those programs by clicking on those programs then clicking “End task”.
Usual culprits of this are browsers and antiviruses like Google Chrome and Malware bytes. Close the Battle.net app after you have launched Overwatch. The Battle.net usually occupies about 70MB of your RAM.
This step will not give you drastic performance gains but it is still useful nevertheless. Now that your laptop RAM has more space you will feel the difference.
Update your graphics drivers to Run Overwatch Better:
If your laptop is using integrated graphics or a discrete graphics card, it is important that you keep your graphics drivers updated to keep your system at best performance.
If you use Intel integrated graphics, you can download your drivers from the Intel Download Center here.
If you are NVIDIA users, you can visit this website to download GeForce Experience or to manually download your drivers. Keeping your graphics drivers up-to-date is a good practice. The new driver is always of some advantage to your laptop.
Type of Storages:
It is recommended that Overwatch and Blizzard App Launcher is installed in the same storage drive/partition as your Windows® Operating System. When the app and game are installed in the other drive it will not work the best.
There are a few other changes are there that can make the game run great that is use a solid-state drive as your primary storage drive. A solid-state drive (SSD) is a storage device that uses integrated circuit devices to store data and uses no mechanical components. It is not like a traditional disc Hard Disk Drive. Data transfers quickly and fluently.
Optimizing your Internet Connection to Run Overwatch Better:
It is common knowledge the more load on the internet connection the weak it will run the Overwatch. There are a few things that you should do to increase the stability and decrease the latency.
There is no such thing that you need a big Mbps connection it can just fine with the normal small Mbps connection. What happens is the Online games like Overwatch send very small amounts of data.
Applications like video streaming from Netflix, YouTube, and file synchronizing from cloud storage applications are often taking most of the space and create lags.
Therefore, running those applications can possibly cause an undesirable increase in latency especially if the bandwidth is not big. Furthermore, the more devices on the same local network that uses the internet at the same time will decrease the overall available bandwidth.
So whenever you feel your game is not running smoothly check on the factors and make changes you will see the difference.
If you try to make all the above mention changes, you will see a great difference in the game. The above mention details are small but it makes a huge difference.
The games always feel great to play that gives smooth and lag free playing time. Lagging and slow laptop can ruin the experience of the game no matter how great the game might be.
Therefore, to have the best experience of playing an online game you should always give attention to the requirements a game need and other complementary factors. It will not only make you enjoy the game more, but also the game can be played to its full capacity.
Daniel Levi is the Senior Editor at LaptopsGeek. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University and boasts over 15 years of experience in laptop reviews. With his extensive knowledge and expertise, Daniel provides invaluable insights into the world of laptops, ensuring that LaptopsGeek readers stay informed about the latest advancements in technology.