I play a lot of heavily modded skyrim and it will sometimes get a very bad performance drop I was just wondering what kind of programs are out there that will boost my game.
There isn't a program that magically makes your hardware better. That's what overclocking is for. Make sure you don't have a lot of programs running in the background while playing games. That is about it.
Yup, and any program that claims to, takes up resources itself.
Don't use Razer Gamebooster. Just make a .bat or something that closes unneeded processes, aero, etc.
Not sure if this will help, but you could try cpu core unparking.
http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/Disable-CPU-Core-Parking-Utility
Like people have said, theres no magic performance boost going on here.
Manually unparking your cores may be a solution if your game process does not do it by itself already. You may or may not see a performance increase.
Please, don't spread that unparking thing...... It was a problem with windows 7 not properly unparking cores when they were needed in certain scenarios. It only affected virtual cores and it isn't present anymore with windows 8 and 8.1. So, anyone with a modern i5 CPU or any other CPU without virtual cores, or anyone who is on windows 8 or 8.1 will simply NOT benefit from this at all. And the supposed performance increase with certain i7 CPUs on windows 7 are not well documented/verified. It's a placebo thing for most people.
To the OP, people have already given you most information there is for you: close all unnecessary applications, disable Aero, etc. Good luck.
So you are assuming OP has windows 8 and a cpu with no virtual cores? No further information was given so I simply said it might help.
And who said anything about placebos? He can open up fraps himself and see if there are any frame improvements.
That's exactly the point. We have no real information about his setup yet people start recommending a "fix" that is not proven to do anything for an issue that most people don't even have. And yes, there were times when a certain tech-illiterate youtuber was recommending that "fix" for everyone and his fanboys started flooding tons of forums about it, claiming amazing results (which they didn't get, hence the placebo thing). Quite a few people are really fed up with this.
Again, I agree with you. I never guaranteed him a "fix" or any improvements at all by using core unparking. It was just an option for him to try and see for himself.
I am unaware of any "flooding" of people trying this and claiming false improvements, but if anyone took two minutes to read the instructions they would know exactly what the utility was for and what situation to use it in. If they choose to blindly follow some youtuber's recommendation without knowledge or explanation, then that's their issue.
If you think I am recommending it just because I've heard talk about it, then no that's not the case at all.
I have tried this myself, specifically on BF4 shortly after release when it was still horribly optimized. For me, I've seen noticeable improvements in eliminating frame stuttering in this case, but generally on other games the results were negligible.
Point is, I am just giving the guy an option that he can try and see if it works for him.
if you are amd then the radeonpro utility does a lot of cool stuff from a single utility
http://www.radeonpro.info/
I dont know if there is an nvidia equivalent to it (rivatuner possibly?) but its ability to easily set processor affinity and force refresh rates is worth the install even if you are an nvidia user and dont use the other stuff.
i heard you like programs in your programs.