Adjusting the visual effects in Windows 10 allows you to control the trade-off between everything looking pretty and the best performance that your computer can deliver.

Table Of Contents

How to adjust the visual effects for best performance
Related questions
- How do I change Aero settings in Windows 10?
- Does disabling Windows Aero improve performance?
Conclusion

This also depends on the hardware specifications of your computer as to how much performance improvement you can experience from certain adjustments.

The adjustments are easy and require no specialized knowledge to get optimal settings for your requirements.

How to adjust the visual effects for best performance

1. Open advanced system settings

Right-click on the ‘This PC’ icon on the desktop. Left-click on ‘Properties’ and left-click on ‘Advanced system settings’.

If for some reason your ‘This PC’ icon is missing from your desktop, simply hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and tap the ‘R’ key and release the Windows key.

Then type in ‘sysdm.cpl’ (without the quotes) and click on the ‘OK’ button.

2. Open performance settings

Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab then click on the ‘Settings’ button in the Performance box. This will open the visual effects options window.

3. Configure the visual effects options

If your computer is desperate for a performance increase, select the radio button called ‘Adjust for best performance’.

In most situations, you will either need the adjustment for maximum performance or let Windows choose what’s best.

Tweaking settings on a granular scale (selecting individual checkbox options) is probably not going to bring about any real advantage. Yes, some specific adjustments improve performance slightly more than others, but a global adjustment is going to be best in 99% of situations.

The only setting I recommend you try once you have enabled the best performance option is ‘Enable Peek’. Try out the performance with it enabled and disabled.

How do I change Aero settings in Windows 10?

Follow the procedure above to get to the visual effects options. Then uncheck ‘Enable Peek’ or select the ‘Adjust for best performance’ radio button.

Does disabling Windows Aero improve performance?

Most likely not. Turning off Aero returns the UI processing back to the CPU instead of the GPU (disabling acceleration), so depending on your hardware, you may not experience any performance gain.

Conclusion

Adjusting the visual effects is just one of the many ways to speed up Windows 10. It will add a boost in performance, especially in the area of graphics performance.

So, if you have an outdated graphics card or integrated graphics processor, you will notice a far more snappy response when it comes to updating your display.

If you are encountering an issue where your display seems washed out, I recommend you go and read my other post about HDR causing a washed-out effect in Windows.