Optimise your computer for games with Iobit Game Booster

Getting the best performance from your computer can make a big difference when playing games, and can make or break your performance in multiplayer games. Iobit Games Booster is a systems optimiser that is designed specifically for playing games.

This utility is only available at no cost until the end of June. It will still work after that time but you won't be able to download it for new computers.

Installation is simple and it will try and detect games already installed on the computer. All detected games will be added to the Game Box. Game Booster will start working as soon as it detects any of these games running. Adding new games is as simple as dragging and dropping shortcuts into the Game Box.

It is possible to be selective with the programs that will be quit when a games starts. The list shows the Program names, a brief description, how much memory it uses and a rating of how unnecessary it is considered for gaming.

There are also keyboard shortcuts for enabling and disabling the game modes: Ctrl, Alt and B, and Ctrl, Alt and R respectively.

Clicking on Boost stops any active programs that Game Booster doesn't think are necessary for games. On our test computer this included Spotify, iTunes Helper and Adobe Reader. It also switched the power plan to high performance. When we quit the game mode, these programs were restarted. As we used to quit unnecessary programs by hand and then have to try and remember what they were after finishing with a game, this is quite a handy tool.

The diagnose tool is used to list the hardware in the computer, and other information that is useful when tracking down problems. This gives a single report that can be copied and pasted into forums when looking for help.

The report will include errors saved in the event log, which alerted us to some problems we didn't know about on the test computer. It also includes the Windows Experience Index scores.

There are three sections in the Tools section. Tweaks makes some changes to the system and Registry settings. There was nothing particulary obscure but it will reduce the time the computer takes to shut down as it won't wait as long for programs to quit.

It can be set to defragment game folders and check for new drivers available for your hardware. The defragment idea is useful if you want to quickly improve a game without having to wait for the entire disk to be optimised. It's probably better overall to work in a full defrag on a regular basis to improve Windows as well.