Much is said about fast graphics cards, fast hard drives, fast memory, and fast processors, but here are 7 things you can do to tweak a computers game performance for free.

1. If the game is a full screen game, then try lowering your resolution. Less pixels to move around on the screen means less horsepower needed.

2. Defragment your hard drive, but more importantly defragment the folder the game is in. I like Power Defragmenter, which is a front end to the sysinternals command Contig. It's very easy to use, and can be downloaded here: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Power_Defragmenter_GUI_d4647.html

3. Clean up your startup programs. When you are gaming you really don't need quicktime, iTunes, and 50 other little applications running in the background, so I suggest using the tool CCleaner This program has a great registry cleaner, but the tool you are wanting is under tools>Startup. This will allow you to disable all those annoying programs that start on boot.

4. Get the latest drivers for your video card. Performance in video cards is as much about the drivers as it is about the hardware. Also with newer drivers you may have better luck if you are having a problem with blue screens.

5. Remove unnecessary services. You probably don't need Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop services (if you do, you already know you do), so go to your start menu, then run, and type services.msc. Double click on those services, and disable them. Also you can stop them now without restarting using the stop button at the top of the window.

6. Use Spybot Search and Destroy to remove any spyware running in the background.

7. Sometimes CD writing software can disable DMA for compatibility, but that can kill your drive performance. Enable DMA. Go to Start>Control Panel>"system icon">Double click Hardware tab>choose IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers> On both IDE devices do the following> Right click> Properties>Advance Settings> Transfer Mode = DMA if available (on both devices). >Click OK to save your settings.