Tips on increasing Graphics performance

The correlation between screen resolution and VRAM:

Screen resolution settings dictate the amount of information that is displayed on the screen in pixels. For example, a resolution of 1920x1080 is a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels, and a vertical resolution of 1080 pixels. The higher the resolution, the sharper the image, but more processing power and memory is needed to process the extra information. For this reason, graphics cards will often advertise the speed and amount of dedicated memory the card has. Faster memory allows for faster loading of textures and higher resolution images to refresh at a suitable framerate (>30fps)
 

 

Updating drivers:

Updating drivers is an important factor in how well a GPU performs, it is important to update drivers regularly as they improve performance and efficiency dramatically, this is especially true if a new game has been released. Drivers can be found at the manufacturers websites.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download - AMD cards

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-uk - Nvidia cards

 

 

 

 

 

Multi-GPU solutions:

If your motherboard has multiple PCI-e x16 connections available, it may be possible to run multiple GPU’s to increase frame rates, the GPU’s need to be of the same model (unless running an NVidia GPU as a dedicated PhysX card)

Multi-GPU solutions work by splitting the work load between both cards, essentially, one GPU will render half of an image, whilst the other GPU renders the other half. GPU's are connected via an SLI bridge (Nvidia) or Xfire bridge (AMD) at the time of publishing this article, it is possible to have up to four cards working in either crossfire or SLI.

 

 

 

Overclocking:

Overclocking a GPU is a lot simpler than overclocking a CPU, unlike CPU’s, GPU’s are usually overclocked from within an operating system using programs such as msi afterburner. By increasing the core clock speed, and memory clock speeds. You can increase the performance of the graphics card dramatically, a word of warning however, increasing clock speeds will also increase the thermal output of the card, as well as the power consumption of the card, if core clock and memory clock values are set too high, the GPU may become unstable and cause graphical artifacts to occur, and as such, it is important to have sufficient cooling solutions for your graphics card, as well as a quality PSU and suitable GPU voltage settings. I advise stress testing any component after overclocking to ensure stability both electronically and thermally, by using either of the following programs:
Msi Kombuster (stress testing GPU)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/MSI-Kombustor.shtml

Prime 95 (Stress testing CPU) - http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=205