Windows & performance glossary

A game is a fast series of still pictures called frames. FPS is how many of them the PC draws each second. Around 30 is playable, 60 feels smooth, and fast monitors (144 Hz or more) can show even more. The number goes up and down with what's happening on screen.

Mentioned in: Monitor Stuck at 60Hz · FPS Drops While Gaming · Games Stuttering or Freezing on PC · How Hot Should My GPU Run While Gaming · Graphics Card Coil Whine · GPU Fan Loud

At 60 FPS each frame takes about 16 milliseconds. If frames arrive evenly, the game feels smooth. If one suddenly takes 100 milliseconds, the picture freezes for a moment: that's a short freeze (a short freeze). This is why a game can show a high FPS number and still feel jerky. Tools like MSI Afterburner can draw frame times as a graph, where these short freezes show as spikes.

Mentioned in: How to Monitor CPU and GPU Temps While Gaming (Free, Step by Step) · Games Stuttering or Freezing on PC

Shaders are small programs that draw lighting, shadows and effects. Many modern games prepare them for your exact graphics card and driver, either on a loading screen or while you play. When it happens during play, you see short freezes the first time each effect appears. They usually fade once the game has stored them, and come back after a driver update.

Mentioned in: Games Stuttering or Freezing on PC

An overlay is a layer a program draws on top of the game: a chat window, an FPS counter or a temperature readout. They're handy, but several running at once (Steam, Discord, the graphics driver, recording tools) can occasionally cause short freezes or stop each other from showing.

Mentioned in: How to Monitor CPU and GPU Temps While Gaming (Free, Step by Step) · Games Stuttering or Freezing on PC

Windows can favor saving energy or performance. On a desktop the default is usually fine. On a laptop, running on battery or using a saving mode can cut performance a lot, and gaming laptops also have their own maker's app (such as Armoury Crate or Legion Space) with performance modes.

Mentioned in: FPS Drops While Gaming

The processor works out what happens in each frame (characters, physics, what to draw) and then the graphics card draws it. In busy scenes, such as crowded cities or big battles, the processor can become the slow part. The graphics card then waits, its usage falls below 100% and FPS drops, even on low settings.

Mentioned in: FPS Drops While Gaming

When something goes so wrong that Windows can't safely carry on, it stops everything, shows a full-screen message and restarts. That's a blue screen, often called BSOD. It protects your files from damage. Since the second half of 2025, Windows 11 shows the same screen in black, but it means exactly the same thing and still shows a stop code.

Mentioned in: Blue Screen on Your PC

Every blue screen shows a stop code: a name in capital letters with underscores, like WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR or DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION. Some screens also show a line saying "What failed" with a file name. Together they are the best clue to the cause, and you can find them again later in Reliability Monitor if the screen disappeared too fast.

Mentioned in: Blue Screen on Your PC

At each blue screen Windows tries to save a small report of the crash in the folder C:\Windows\Minidump. Free tools such as WhoCrashed or BlueScreenView can read it and show which driver file was involved. If the folder is empty, Windows may not have had time to write it, or saving crash information may be turned off.

Mentioned in: DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION · Blue Screen on Your PC

Reliability Monitor is part of Windows. Type "reliability" in the Start menu and open "View reliability history". It shows a chart with a red mark on each day something crashed. Click a day to see the details, including the stop code of each blue screen and which apps failed. It's the easiest way to see a pattern.

Mentioned in: Blue Screen on Your PC

WHEA stands for Windows Hardware Error Architecture. When the processor or another part detects an error in its own work, it reports it, and Windows logs it as a "WHEA-Logger" event. Small errors are corrected and only logged; serious ones end in the WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR blue screen. They usually mean instability (an overclock, voltage or a BIOS setting), and less often a failing part.

Mentioned in: WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR

TDR stands for Timeout Detection and Recovery. If the graphics card takes more than about two seconds to answer, Windows resets the graphics driver: the screen flickers black and comes back, sometimes with a message that the driver recovered. If the reset fails or keeps happening, Windows stops with the VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE blue screen.

Mentioned in: VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE

A normal driver update installs over the old one, and leftovers can cause crashes. A clean install removes everything first. The usual tool is Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), which works best in Windows Safe Mode with the internet unplugged, so Windows doesn't install its own driver in between. Then you install the driver downloaded from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel.

Mentioned in: VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE · Blue Screen on Your PC

Faulty or unstable RAM causes crashes with many different stop codes. Windows has a quick built-in test (Windows Memory Diagnostic), and MemTest86 is a free, more thorough test that starts from a USB stick. Let it run several full passes; even one error means the RAM, its speed setting or the way it's fitted needs attention.

Mentioned in: Blue Screen on Your PC

Overclocking makes the processor, graphics card or RAM run faster than standard. XMP and EXPO are a mild, common form for RAM. Some motherboards also turn on automatic boost options (such as MCE on Intel or PBO on AMD), and many graphics cards come with a small factory overclock. When a setting goes slightly too far, the result is random crashes and blue screens, often only in some games.

Mentioned in: VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE · WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR · Blue Screen on Your PC

If Windows files get damaged, for example by a crash during an update, Windows can repair them itself. Open Terminal or Command Prompt as administrator and run "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth", then "sfc /scannow". It takes a few minutes and doesn't touch your own files.

Mentioned in: DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION · Blue Screen on Your PC