Adjusting Visual Effects for Best System Performance

Windows 7 and 8 have a wonderful set of visual effects that you can adjust like shifting wallpapers, transparent windows, and other features that make the operating system aesthetically better than its predecessors (XP and Vista).

However, enabling all these visual effects makes your system behave slower because of the system resource (RAM) space it takes up. This is where you need to choose between appearance and performance. Would you want a prettier Windows or one that looks less attractive but is far better in terms of speed and performance?

If you have a faster machine, you don’t need to face this relatively tough decision but if your PC is just barely powerful for the demands of the Windows 7/8 operating system, it will be useful if you adjust these visual effects so it takes smaller RAM space to ensure that your system is performing at its best for you and the tasks that you usually do on your machine.

You can disable some of these visual effects by choosing the ones that won’t really affect your machine’s good looks. There are about 20 of these visual effects that you can actually take control of like the transparent glass windows, the way Windows and menus open and spread and whether shadows appear at the background of each character that appears on the screen.

To adjust your machine’s visual effects for best performance, just follow these steps:

1. Open your machine’s Performance Information and tools. Just click the “Start” button.
2. Click on “Control Panel”.
3. Type Performance Information and Tools on the start menu search box.
4. Then choose Performance Information and Tools by clicking on it from the search results.
5. Click on “Adjust Visual Effects”, if a prompt appears asking you for a password or confirmation then provide the password and conformation to proceed to the next process.
6. Click on the “Visual Effects” tab then choose “Adjust for best performance” then click “OK”. You can also choose “Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer” for less drastic changes.

That’s it! You now have an attractive machine as well as a fast performing system that will surely do the tasks you want to do in it.