What Affects Your Mac Gaming Experience & How to Improve it?

A majority of users believe that Macs are not designed for gaming, but that’s certainly not true. With little tweaks and optimizations, you can make your Mac computers and MacBooks optimal for a better gaming experience. 

In the technologically advanced world, there’s no one single answer to any computer-related problem. So if your computer is running slower than usual, there must be one or more reasons behind the cause. 

Outdated OS or Apps

The chances are that the operating system or the applications installed on your computer have become outdated and have fewer bugs. There might be security gaps that are causing slowdowns, so you need to update them. 

Heavy Visuals

Although Apple has done a lot of work on visuals, it still includes default effects that put a burden on hardware, making it bulkier. The fancy visuals influence the performance and hinder gaming as resources are pre-allocated to other elements. 

Background Processes 

Whether you are using a Windows PC or a macOS computer, they do a bad job in letting you know that multiple apps are running in the background. These apps consume system resources such as memory, storage and affect the CPU cycle.

All these factors alone or altogether can affect your gaming experience. If you are playing online, you might need to check your internet connection too. 

So, is it your internet connection that’s slow?

Before you take any action, check your internet connection to ensure if it is the source of your issues. There might be a problem with your router or the Wifi itself, due to which you are not able to play uninterruptedly. Any problem with the router or internet connection means your Mac is not at fault. 

Diagnose your internet connection thoroughly before you perform any workaround on your Mac. Run a speed test online to check the internet speed. If the speed is fine, reset the router or move your device near it. 

Clear browser history, delete cache, clean cookies, remove web junk, and terminate any program that might be affecting the internet speed. You should clean other storage to remove junk and duplicate files from the system startup disk. If you are thinking about where you should find other storage, click here for more information. 

Is low storage responsible for poor gaming?

Well, this may be the case. If loading screens are taking more than usual, it indicates that the low storage is influencing your gaming experience. That’s something you can’t avoid, but there are several tricks that you can follow. 

Swap your computer’s hard drive to a solid-state drive (SSD) for overall productivity. This will improve gaming to a great extent, and you will be able to play even high-end games without experiencing any performance lags. 

If you are an avid gamer, switch to anything more than 250GB SSD for an uninterrupted gaming experience. 

Do you need to pay attention to power settings?

Effective power management is essential for optimal gaming, particularly when you are playing on a laptop. Regularly adjust the power settings and observe consistently if the laptop is plugged in the wall outlet so that you don’t run out of battery when the game is on. 

Only high-end laptops can run for longer hours while in active mode. If you wish to tweak power management settings on your Mac, click on the Apple menu and tap on About This Mac. Next, click System Information, then click on Power, and select System Power Settings. 

Adjust the settings as per your preferences and requirements. Customizing the hibernate mode can help speed up the Mac. 

Are you still using a Hard Disk Drive?

The older Macs come integrated with hard drives that run over magnetic storage technology and take time to read and write data to it. This makes gaming a bit slower, due to which you experience lag while playing high-end games. 

So, if your Mac allows you to upgrade its hardware, you can consider replacing the hard drive with an SSD (solid-state drive). Most of the latest Mac computers and MacBooks are not upgradable, so you have to carefully check your computer before you buy any additional hardware. 

The SSDs store data in integrated circuits, which makes it easier to insert and retrieve data in a fraction of a second. This amplifies your gaming considerably. 

Do you play more Windows-specific games?

Windows gives you a wide variety of gaming options in each category, be it a brain game, a board game, an action series, or a car race. Though several high-end Windows games are not available for Mac, you can still enjoy them on your Mac computer. 

Install Windows operating system on your Mac computer using Apple’s native Boot Camp Utility. Alternatively, you may use third-party apps that allow you to use Windows on your Mac computer. 

Once you finish installing Windows, you can download your favorite games on the Windows partition and enjoy gaming.