Tip Windows 11 has built-in settings to reduce CPU bottlenecks. Use them Speed up Windows 11 without new hardware by offloading CPU work with tricks like hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling. , PDT Nvidia Open Device Manager using the Win-X key combination and select the relevant entry from the context menu. Now expand the Network Adapters section. Right-click on the relevant adapter and select Properties. Next, in the Advanced tab, check for entries such as Checksum Offload, Large Send Offload, and Receive Side Scaling. Enable the options in the drop-down menu next to them and apply the changes. Now test whether the CPU usage drops during downloads, streaming, or large file transfers. If connection issues arise, undo the last change. Note that names may vary depending on the manufacturer. For games, the DirectStorage option can help, as it enables data to be transferred more directly from an NVMe SSD to the graphics card. This reduces CPU overhead when loading large assets. Requirements include Windows 11, an NVMe SSD, and a compatible graphics card with up-to-date drivers. Furthermore, the game in question must actually support DirectStorage. You can check basic availability via the Xbox Game Bar, for example, which you can open using the Win-G shortcut. Look under the gaming features. In practice, the benefit usually manifests itself more in shorter loading times and fewer I/O-related stutters than in a blanket increase in frames per second. Additionally, you should keep Hardware Acceleration enabled in important applications. In Chrome or Edge browsers, you’ll find it in the settings under System or Performance. In creative and video programs, this is usually found in the preferences under Performance or Hardware Acceleration. Restart the relevant app after making the changes to ensure that decoding, effects, or rendering are reliably offloaded to the GPU. If your system has both an iGPU and a dedicated GPU, go to Settings > System > Display > Graphics in the resource-intensive program and set the performance under GPU Settings to Maximum Performance. This prevents Windows from unnecessarily routing tasks through the integrated graphics unit and using the CPU as well. These adjustments have the greatest effect on systems that process many tasks in parallel such as multimedia, creative work, and modern games. Go through the steps one by one and check briefly after each change to see if the load curve improves. Simply distributing tasks consistently is enough to make your Windows PC run more efficiently and feel faster without the immediate need for new hardware. This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German. : Friedrich Stiemer, , Recent stories by Friedrich Stiemer: How long do USB flash drives really last? It’s annoyingly complicated Two SSDs are better than one in your PC. Here’s why Meet Windows 11’s Dev Drive, the gaming speed trick hiding in plain sight
