Right-click the Windows start button and hit Task Manager. You can also prevent these services from starting in the first place by heading to Task Manager. Some services are necessary for certain programs to function on your PC, so it helps to look them up before you disable them. Uncheck what services you don't want to run and hit Apply. Head over to the Services tab, check Hide all Microsoft services, and look through the list to see what's going on. Hit your Windows key and type run or right-click Windows and select Run. You can always prune that list down to the essentials to save some RAM and CPU usage. Chances are, you have a lot that automatically run when you start your PC. Your gaming PC might struggle simply because of how many applications you have running in the background. (Image credit: Future) How to clean up Windows services for better performance Choose Power & Sleep, then select Additional power settings near the bottom of the page. Right-click your Windows start button, hit Settings. The default balanced mode is totally fine for most uses, but if you want to change it to see if your PC will keep your CPU at a constantly high clock speed, then do this simple change. The actual impact varies a lot with different games. You can swap to the high performance power plan in Windows to improve your gaming experience a little bit, or a lot if you're on a gaming laptop.

How to turn on high performance mode in Windows Flip the switch to off and you won't have an overlay on your games anymore and you might see an increase of a few FPS depending on the game. Head into your settings by right-clicking the start button icon and selecting Settings.

'Record what happened' will do a lot more to your games than Game Bar will, but if you want it off. Like Windows Game Mode, Xbox Game Bar doesn't really affect your performance that much, at least not more than other overlays, like Nvidia's Shadowplay. (Image credit: Microsoft) How to turn off Xbox Game Bar

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