Daniel back in April 2009 reviewed the first Game Booster release and came to the conclusion that it reduced some of the performance issues he was experiencing while playing GTA4.
The developers of Game Booster have now published a beta version of the upcoming Game Booster 2, and boy have they changed the application. The most obvious change becomes visible right after startup: A new and modern looking interface that displays an overview on the start page, and the available features in the left sidebar.
game booster 2
Game Booster 2 displays advice on that page as well, listing the services that can be stopped and drivers that need to be updated.
The program’s main feature, the ability to improve game performance, is largely achieved by turning off services in Windows that are not needed while gaming. The number of services that can be deactivated in gaming mode depend on the operating system’s configuration. Users who never tweaked their services may find that Game Booster suggests to stop 20 or more services.
A click on details next to an entry under Advice leads to a configuration page. A click on details next to services will display the services that can be stopped in gaming mode. It is important to take a good look at the suggestions, to prevent that services are stopped that need to run all the time.
A checkmark next to a service indicates that it will be stopped if the game mode is activated.
game booster 2 services
Game Booster 2 does not stop here. Running processes are displayed that can be stopped in game mode as well. The processes are limited, and system processes are automatically excluded from the list.
The program scans the system for installed drivers, and will suggest driver updates if newer drivers are found in its database.
The page lists the driver name, installed version, new version and release date in the Game drivers section. A click on Go to download page opens the manufacturer’s driver download page in the default web browser.
game driver download
It again pays of to check the scan results prior to downloading and installing the suggested drivers. Game Booster 2 detected an update for the installed Ati Radeon 4870 video card to Catalyst 10.8, even though that version was already installed on the system.
Game Booster 2 integrates several additional features:
- Game Essentials: Download links to software related to gaming, at the moment TeamSpeak 3 and Xfire.
- Game Defrag: Offers to defragment game files and game directories only.
- System Tweaks: One click tweaks for top performance, will make changes to some Registry settings.
- Game Tools: Links to Windows tools related to gaming.
The effectiveness of Game Booster 2 relies heavily on the initial state of the operating system. It will not be that effective, or effective at all, on systems that have already been optimized for gaming or performance. Users who run their system with the default settings on the other hand may see improvements in gaming mode.
Game Booster 2 can be downloaded by clicking on this link, the official website can be accessed here.
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I’d never seen this program but it looks pretty interesting. I wonder though, does it have to run in the background in order to do its magic, and if so how is it on resources? Obviously, it could cancel any performance gains if it is a resource hog itself. I guess I’ll go check it out and see for myself.
Cheers
Looking at the screenies above put me in mind of a tip that might be useful to some.
For those of you that play old 256 color games like Starcraft from time to time, disabling the desktop window manager service solves the color palette corruption problem that you normally get in Vista or Win7.
I use the following in a .bat file….
net stop uxsms
pause
net start uxsms
I just run this as admin before starting the game in the usual way.
Alternatively just use Gamebooster :)
Great tip, thanks Womble.
yo martin. das werd ich mal antesten.
Huge step backwards in terms of GUI.