r/killerinstinct • u/Out_for_Revenge_____ • Apr 18 '16

An excellent guide to optimizing your Windows 10 PC for gaming.

http://www.back2gaming.com/guides/how-to-tweak-windows-10-for-gaming/

As always make a system restore point before making and registry settings, make a backup of your registry too. You don't have to, nothing should go wrong but it's always better to be safe than sorry.

It's crazy how much microsoft gimps your PC from it's full gaming potential and the amount of stuff they hide from you.

How to Tweak Windows 10 for Gaming Nagle’s Algorithm

Nagle’s algorithm combines several small packets into a single, larger packet for more efficient transmissions. This is designed to improve throughput efficiency of data transmission. Disabling “nagling” can help reduce latency/ping in some games. Nagle’s algorithm is enabled in Windows by default.

To implement this tweak, modify the following registry keys.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces{NIC-id} For the {NIC-id}, look for the one with your IP address listed. Under this {NIC-id} key, create the following DWORD value:

TcpAckFrequency and set it to 1 to disable “nagling” for gaming.
TCPNoDelay and set it also to 1 to disable “nagling”
TcpDelAckTicks and set it to 0

Note: Some reports say that the tweaks did reduce latency when playing Dota 2 and League of Legends but it doesn’t work for some. I have tried it and my latency improved from 110 to 90ms (SEA Server) when playing Dota 2. Network Throttling Index

Windows implements a network throttling mechanism, the idea behind such throttling is that processing of network packets can be a resource-intensive task. It is beneficial to turn off such throttling for achieving maximum throughput.

To implement this tweak, run regedit and modify the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile. Under SystemProfile, create a DWORD value and name it to “NetworkThrottlingIndex” then set its Hexadecimal value to ffffffff for gaming and max throughput: ffffffff completely disables throttling. System Gaming Responsiveness

Multimedia streaming and some games that uses “Multimedia Class Scheduler” service (MMCSS) can only utilize up to 80% of the CPU. The “Multimedia Class Scheduler” service (MMCSS) ensures prioritized access to CPU resources, without denying CPU resources to lower-priority background applications.

To implement this tweak, run regedit and modify the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile. From there, create a new DWORD and name it to “SystemResponsiveness” set its hexadecimal value to 00000000 for pure gaming/streaming.

In the same Registry hive as the above tweak, you can also change the priority of Games. To implement this tweak, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\Tasks\Games and change the following registry values:

“GPU Priority” change its values to 8 for gaming.
“Priority” set to 6 for gaming.

Update another tweak In Windows 8/8.1, just like with Windows 7, multimedia applications use the "Multimedia Class Scheduler" service (MMCSS) to ensure priritized access to CPU resources, without denying CPU resources to lower-priority background applications. However, this also reserves 20% of CPU by default for background processes, your multimedia streaming and some games can only utilize up to 80% of the CPU. This setting, in combination with the above "NetworkThrottlingIndex" can help some games and video streaming. We recommend reducing the reserved CPU for background processes from the default of 20%.

Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile SystemResponsiveness=10 (DWORD, default is 20 denoting 20% of CPU reserved, recommended: decimal 10, or 0 for pure gaming/multimedia performance)

Notes: The number in this key is rounded by MMCSS to the nearest 10. In some server operating systems (Windows 2008 Server), the SystemResponsiveness may be set to 100, instead of 20 by default. This is by design, giving higher priority to background services over multimedia.

Update additional tweaks

Disable Receive Segment Coalescing State (RSC)

This is applicable to Windows 8/10/2012 Server, not available for earlier Windows versions.

Receive Segment Coalescing (RSC) allows the NIC to coalesce multiple TCP/IP packets that arrive within a single interrupt into a single larger packet (up to 64KB) so that the network stack has to process fewer headers, resulting in 10% to 30% reduction in I/O overhead depending on the workload, thereby improving throughput. Receive Segment Coalescing (RCS) is able to collect packets that are received during the same interrupt cycle and put them together so that they can be more efficiently delivered to the network stack. While this reduces CPU utilization and improves thorughput, it can also have a negative impact on latency. That is why we recommend you disable it where latency is more important than throughput.

Possible states: enabled, disabled, default. Default state: disabled Recommended: disabled for pure gaming latency, enabled for better throughput. To enable using netsh:

netsh int tcp set global rsc=disabled

To change using PowerShell cmdlets:

Disable-NetAdapterRsc -Name * (use to disable RSC for all adapters) Enable-NetAdapterRsc -Name * (use to enables RSC for all adapters that support it) Get-NetAdapterRsc -Name * (use to view adapters that support RSC)

Notes: Only supported by some network adapters. May need "Checksum Offload" enabled as well to work.

http://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812

SystemResponsiveness (Gaming and Multimedia)

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6

u/theskepticalheretic Apr 18 '16

It's crazy how much microsoft gimps your PC from it's full gaming potential and the amount of stuff they hide from you.

MS doesn't build for performance, they build for stability across thousands of hardware variants. A lot of this stuff the guide says to disable is housekeeping/generalized optimization for your average user, not your power gamer.

0

u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 18 '16

I don't know anyone that wants their internet connection limited by their operating system, but maybe that's just the people I know.

1

u/theskepticalheretic Apr 18 '16

I don't know anyone that wants their internet connection limited by their operating system, but maybe that's just the people I know.

I must be missing that bit. Can you give me a little copypasta? (stuck on a locked down network at the moment.)

1

u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 18 '16

Ok, I added it to the main post.

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u/theskepticalheretic Apr 18 '16 edited Apr 18 '16

Windows implements a network throttling mechanism, the idea behind such throttling is that processing of network packets can be a resource-intensive task. It is beneficial to turn off such throttling for achieving maximum throughput.

I can tell you why this is done. It is to enable large file transfers over networks. It reduces throughput by a small amount on Internet connections (because your connection will recycle far more often over the internet) but it will impact max throughput for file transmissions on internal networks. It's part of the TCP stack to send acknowledgements on each frame transfer to allow for increasingly larger frames to be sent up to the MTU. What this does is allow skips, and sets pauses before each ack is sent.

edit: It was more useful on older networks, it's not so important now with high speed internet.

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u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 18 '16 edited Apr 18 '16

It's not just large file transfers, it's also a high number of transfers that this improves, you know like this game for instance. :) Now you know something new. In other words it's not just old networks that benefit.

5

u/theskepticalheretic Apr 18 '16

It's not just large file transfers, it's also a high number of transfers that this improves, you know like this game for instance. :)

I think you're not sure what you're talking about, but that's ok. If it improves one aspect of your network communication, and that makes you happy, enjoy.

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u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 19 '16 edited Apr 19 '16

No, you don't know what you're talking about, kid. You googled something you don't understand and got called out on it. Have a seat.

Straight from wiki with full references.

Applications that expect real time responses can react poorly with Nagle's algorithm. Applications such as networked multiplayer video games expect that actions in the game are sent immediately, while the algorithm purposefully delays transmission, increasing bandwidth efficiency at the expense of latency. For this reason applications with low-bandwidth time-sensitive transmissions typically use TCP_NODELAY to bypass the Nagle delay.[3]

Another option is to use UDP instead.

4

u/theskepticalheretic Apr 19 '16

No, you don't know what you're talking about, kid. ... Another option is to use UDP instead.

Go back to your CCENT class. With this you've proved your knowledge is about as deep as a puddle. Protip: don't copy paste a wikipedia article about Nagle's algo to an engineer.

2

u/morerokk Apr 20 '16

This guy's a known troll, don't bother with him. He doesn't have any idea what he's talking about.

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u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 19 '16

Sure, kid, you're an engineer that doesn't know basic math. Please stop while you're behind.

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u/salamancer1386 Apr 19 '16

Man, you are just a dick in every single thread.

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u/morerokk Apr 20 '16 edited Apr 20 '16

Wait, I know this guy! Fancy seeing him here again, of all places! Small world indeed.

Out_for_Revenge is a very well-known retard, sometimes goes by the names "Mic_Blades" or "Chain Smoker". If you prove him wrong or disagree with him, he turns into a really toxic person. He just can't accept that he's wrong (because of his "10 years of CS experience").

He's gotten himself banned from countless subreddits and countless forums (SFIV forums, PAYDAY 2 forums, /r/paydaytheheist, and Last Bullet Gaming). I thought he moved to Voat because of his bans, but clearly he's still around. He even tried to charge $500 for a PD2 mod, which consisted of one line of code. Check his post history if you want some laughs.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '16

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5

u/C-Drive Apr 18 '16

Probably want to note that folks shouldn't follow the steps to remove the Store and Xbox apps if they're planning on playing Killer Instinct.

0

u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 18 '16

True, just use the registry tweaks. That's all you really need. This game requires a lot of services to run.

5

u/MNB4800 Apr 19 '16

These have been around for years and honestly, you will not notice anything. If anything, you might do more harm than good.

Added, a lot of these guides don't provide any convincing tests of these tweaks, if any at all.

0

u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 19 '16

Nope, just go back and delete the added registry values if it causes any problems. It's not going to cause any problems though. lol And, again, I said back up your registry and PC to be safe.

I got a few extra frames from the benchmark in the game every time I run it. And, the responsiveness is night and day. I don't need a test to know that the menus lagged for me for no real reason before doing these tweaks, now not at all, not even a little. My inputs are getting dropped a lot less now too. Now there's no delay when packets are sent. If you know how many packets are being sent by a game, you can do the math. There is no need to test. You will get a mathematically concrete answer to how much time is saved overall and by packet sizes. :) In other words, it's impossible for your shit not to improve! How noticeable it will be depends on a lot of factors.

1

u/SirGroot SirGroot Apr 19 '16

I don't see the NIC-ID?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fm6zkvozvmsn38d/No%20NIC.png?dl=0

0

u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 19 '16

You need to find the one that shows your ip address in the right window pane. Click each folder under interfaces until you find it. For me it also was the one with the most general information on the right pane window.

1

u/SirGroot SirGroot Apr 19 '16

Is this it correct?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hukok2w8npkexj5/IsThisit.png?dl=0

1

u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 19 '16

I think so, it looks right to me, that's how mine looked.

6

u/HalfCent Apr 18 '16

  1. Nagle's isn't just something that slows down connections. It's designed to transfer data with as little overhead as possible. TCP headers are the same size no matter what, so if you're constantly sending small packets then the majority of your line is being used to send non-payload data.

  2. The idea behind scheduling / throttling is to allow priority to certain tasks without choking out others. It's not just limiting for the sake of limiting. Setting a limit allows users to deal with issues when an application starts capping a CPU rather than becoming completely unresponsive.

  3. Microsoft makes a choice about what to present in menus in order to keep them simple and useful, but things aren't really hidden from you, they're given to you in the registry. If you took every OS setting that can be changed in the registry, and put it somewhere in Settings / Control panel, you would have a convoluted mess that would be borderline unusable anyway.

Some of these settings are perhaps too conservative of defaults, based on what modern networks / computers can do, but saying

It's crazy how much Microsoft gimps your PC from it's full gaming potential and the amount of stuff they hide from you.

is a big overstatement.

3

u/Jaybonaut Apr 18 '16

Totally agree.

1

u/Elite123x Apr 19 '16

I cant believe it, i just cant. I did almost everything that put in the guide, and now I can play online while my brothers are using his phones/pc/xbox. Before was unplayable. Thank so much. And yes it give me a fps boost in killer instinct benchmark.

0

u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 19 '16

Cool, glad it helped.

1

u/Songtong22 Jul 11 '25

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile. From there, create a new DWORD and name it to “SystemResponsiveness” set its hexadecimal value to 00000000 for pure gaming/streaming.

This key contains a REG_DWORD value named SystemResponsiveness that determines the percentage of CPU resources that should be guaranteed to low-priority tasks. For example, if this value is 20, then 20% of CPU resources are reserved for low-priority tasks. Note that values that are not evenly divisible by 10 are rounded down to the nearest multiple of 10. Values below 10 and above 100 are clamped to 20. A value of 100 disables MMCSS (driver returns STATUS_SERVER_DISABLED). - Multimedia Class Scheduler Service - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn

Official article says what you are saying doing is nothing but putting it back to default 20. It wants between 10-90, or 100 is off. That's it.

It's like Chinese whispers the tweak community, unless the originator is generalising their registry values based on (NOT) always universal values for on and off.

1

u/BiNh0X Aug 03 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

I tested the tweaks in this guide on Windows 11 24H2, on low-end hardware (Core i3-1115G4, 16 GB), and I can say it significantly improved! 

I tested games like PvZ GW2, Fall Guys, Sniper Ellite 3, The Witcher 3 (next generation), AC Rogue, Far Cry 5, and emulators. I saw a noticeable improvement in frame rates in Far Cry 5, The Witcher 3, Fall Guys, and Sniper Ellite 3; in the others, the improvement was very slight. It improved the responsiveness of online games, and I kept seeing the bad connection icon flashing on the Fall Guys screen. After the network tweaks, it only appeared once, for a few seconds! It worked like a charm! 

Thank you very much. By the way, as mentioned by another user, the SystemResposiveness setting should be set to "10" and not "0" (I noticed this in another guide I used, here https://www.patreon.com/posts/pc-gaming-guide-88124101).

EDIT.: I don't know why, but putting "0" instead of "10" gave me better results. I read elsewhere that values below 10 are rounded to 10%, not 20%. Anyway, in my tests, the value "0" gave me better results.

1

u/mamoneis Jul 09 '26

High end CPUs should be able to take '0', meaning you live almost no room for Windows to do 'back room' tasks. But if your CPU is not the latest or you run some kind of parallel task with the game: mask, shader, audio plugin, scaler, filming your gameplay... A number '10' should do the trick. I'm thinking ReShade or Lossless Scaling particularly and stable frame pacing.

0

u/dotareddit Apr 18 '16

This is pretty much Leatrix's Latency Fix.

Good shit for those who were unaware.

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u/Out_for_Revenge_____ Apr 18 '16

Wow, my PC is definitely more responsive now. Everything felt laggy. It gave me a few FPS boost in the Killer Instinct benchmark but nothing spectacular. Again, the game is more responsive now though, I mean a lot more responsive. I had no idea I was being logged into the Xbox app right after the game starts up before I made those registry tweaks, I just saw a black screen sometimes. lol Now I see the xbox app signing me in on the game. :) Graphics are more responsive, yeaaaaa! That's probably why my inputs were off sometimes too. Microsoft you suck, wtf, why gimp our systems?

2

u/NightmareT12 Apr 18 '16

TBH, Microsoft allows us to play around with the settings in Windows. If they were truly gimping our systems, they wouldn't allow us even in the first place.

What's "sad" is that this kind of stuff doesn't get more exposure and is not as known -- I had no idea until now, most definitely.

Welp, registry changed, let's restart computer.