Games you keep reinstalling every year

Reposting with more detail after my last thread got no traction. The thing that keeps tripping me up is that everyone assumes you already know the basics, and the wiki is out of date.

I compared notes with a friend and we got completely different outcomes on similar hardware. Any pointers appreciated, even partial ones.

Worth checking first: this changed for me after the last patch, so older threads may steer you wrong.

Speaking as someone who got it wrong initially, you get most of the benefit from the first adjustment; everything after that is marginal.

This is the bit people miss — it depends heavily on your specific setup, so take any single number with a grain of salt.

Adding to the above: check whether an overlay is running before blaming the game itself.

Counterpoint: nine times out of ten it is a driver or a background process, not the thing you suspect.

Report back once you have tried it.

In my testing, nine times out of ten it is a driver or a background process, not the thing you suspect.

In my testing, the difference is real but small enough that you may not notice it while playing.

This is the bit people miss — do the cheap diagnostic first — it costs nothing and rules out half the causes.

Short version: the community guide covers this better than I can, but the summary is to prioritise the basics first.

From experience, measure before and after, otherwise you are just guessing whether it helped.

In my testing, keep a note of what you changed, otherwise you cannot undo it cleanly later.

That fixed it for me, at least.

Counterpoint: verify the files before anything else; it catches more problems than people expect.

Not the answer you want, but keep a note of what you changed, otherwise you cannot undo it cleanly later.

Not the answer you want, but give it a clean reinstall before assuming the hardware is at fault.

Not the answer you want, but it is almost always a setting rather than hardware, so try the free fixes before spending anything.

Worth checking first: that behaviour is intentional, even though it is poorly explained in-game.

Adding to the above: the community guide covers this better than I can, but the summary is to prioritise the basics first.

The usual fix here is temperature is the usual culprit when performance degrades over a session.