He pulled up the overlay. His GPU usage was sitting at a lazy 30%, while his CPU was screaming at 100%. It was a classic bottleneck—the digital equivalent of trying to pour a gallon of water through a cocktail straw.
The fans began to hum—a low, confident growl. The usage climbed: 80%, 90%, 98%. The warrior on screen suddenly blurred into fluid, high-definition motion. Leo leaned back, the 144Hz smoothness finally washing over him. The bottleneck was broken.
"It's 2022," he whispered to his empty room. "I shouldn't be playing in 'slideshow' mode."
The real culprit, however, was hiding in the shadows: a dusty "Power Saver" plan buried in his Windows settings from three years ago. He switched it to , restarted the game, and held his breath.
Leo went into a caffeinated frenzy. First, he dived into the , flipping the Power Management Mode to "Prefer Maximum Performance." Then, he hunted down the Windows Game Mode settings, making sure the OS wasn't "helping" by throttling his hardware.