Everything You Need To Know About The MSI Gaming App

The MSI gaming app is a great tool for serious gamers, providing several features to improve your gaming experience. It was designed to let you quickly make changes to your system for maximum computer performance. The app gives you options to track CPU and GPU frequency, adjust LED effects, establish peripheral device function buttons, and link the app to your cell phone.

Important Game Performance Terms

Before you download the app and start making changes to your processing speeds and adding macros to your keyboard, make sure you understand a few important terms.

• Clock speed refers to the number of pulses per second generated by an oscillator that affects the processor. Most PCs today run at hundreds of megahertz, or MHz, and some run at more than one gigahertz, or GHz. Clock speed is just one of the factors affecting your computer’s performance level. Adjusting your clock speed, along with other hardware settings, can bump up the processing speed. Beware of increasing clock speed without upgrading other components; you could shut down your processor entirely.

• A CPU cooler is necessary to protect your PC. Swap out the standard fans for something that can stand up to the extra speeds and the heat computers generate. Many gamers recommend water cooling. Please don’t try to overclock your laptop.

• CPU frequency refers to the speed at which your central processing unit is running. It is an indication of how quickly the CPU reads instructions from RAM, decodes the instructions, and executes the desired actions. Many gamers rely on CPU frequency alone to make performance judgments, but this is just one factor at play.

• FPS, or frames per second, can result in great graphics for your game or leave you feeling sluggish. With more frames per second, your game motion will feel smoother, and with fewer, you’ll feel like you’re being jerked forward from one scene to another. Many computer video formats only run at 15 frames per second. Gamers may want to increase this for better video action. (FPS also stands for the first-person shooter, so keep this in mind while reading through game improvement articles.)

• The GPU clock sometimes referred to as an engine block, is the graphics processor unit’s clock speed. Just like the CPU frequency, the GPU clock speed is measured in megahertz. If you want to increase your FPS, you’ll probably also need to adjust the CPU frequency and the GPU clock speed. These changes are factors in overclocking your graphics card or computer.

• LED lighting doesn’t necessarily affect your gameplay, but that ambient lighting can certainly help you feel like you’re in the action. A lot of motherboard vendors today have included lighting around the board, illuminating tiny details of the surface. This lighting inside your monitor can definitely affect eye strain, for good or bad, and affects what you can see on the screen.

• Overclocking your computer means turning up its performance levels beyond what the manufacturer had in mind. Gamers often do this to boost their enjoyment and experience while playing. The downside is that affected hardware typically crashes much sooner than if it had run at factory settings. For many serious gamers, however, graphics cards are replaced regularly, anyway.

• The main voltage value tweaked during the overclocking process happens in the CPU Vcore. You’ll need to have enough going on here to supply power to your processor for increased performance.

• VRAM is video RAM and is used by computer display cards to store image data. It’s sometimes called a frame buffer because it acts as a buffer between your computer processor and your display.

What’s Available From the MSI Gaming App

There are three different settings in the app: OC mode, gaming mode, and silent mode. Your graphics card was probably installed and ready to run in gaming mode. With help from the MSI gaming app, you can switch your performance to OC mode for gaming sessions that are more demanding and much more satisfying. If there are days when you limit your game time, silent mode provides you with quieter performance and less wear on your computer.

Let’s take a closer look at these three modes as well as the pros and cons of each.

Game Mode

In Game Mode, you have the option of optimizing the CPU ratio and the GPU clock without much trouble. The gaming app will do it for you automatically if you choose this option. Switching to Game Mode directs more bandwidth to those apps vital to your gaming experience. It may not provide a big jump in MHz, but it could give you enough of a difference that your graphics run more smoothly.

Overclocked Mode

OC Mode allows you to up the CPU frequency to a turbo and your GPU frequency to overclocked. A lot of gamers like to take this step so their processor speeds are higher (you’ll notice a big jump in MHz) – and pretty much everything else is also faster. If you’ve done some research into how your computer works, and you understand the risk of changing voltage settings and messing with your fan rotation speeds, overclocking your computer may be okay. If you don’t know how to adjust your fan speeds, you may not want to risk the OC mode of play.

Silent Mode

Gaming Mode and OC Mode both take their toll on your computer, but you can use Silent Mode to reset the CPU ratio and the GPU clock to their default settings. When you’re not logged into your favorite games, choose this setting.

Other MSI Gaming App features

Dragon Eye

This application may be one of the most exciting features on board. Every gamer gets to a level or battle that seems impossible. Rather than pausing your game, switching to a different program and screen to watch the YouTube tutorials check out the MSI Dragon Eye. This lets you pull up your YouTube or Twitch walkthrough. You can adjust where you put the video, how big it is, the transparency of the tutorial, and how loud or quiet it plays. With a few adjusted hotkeys, you can also quickly pause and restart the video or stream as needed.

Customize monitor lighting

If you want to make adjustments into your own hands, click on the Customize tab. To Customize monitor control brightness, contrast, gamma and level separately or all at once. Use the following settings for easy and one-click adjustments.

Eye Rest

Eye rest mode offers a selection of options. You can cut down on the amount of blue light to gives your eyes a break from the monitor’s blue light in the evenings. Click on the eye icon and choose “eye rest mode” for a reduction in the output of blue light.

Gaming Mode

There’s generally a default level of lights for your game or graphics card. Use the MSI gaming app to adjust the lighting for more contrast. This helps you identify your targets more quickly. It also results in higher contrast and more intense colors.

Movie Mode

When you’re ready for a break from games and ready to tune into a movie instead switch over to movie mode. This helps you see the action in the movie clearly even during scenes shot in the dark by adjusting dynamic gamma levels and tweaking contrast ratios.

Gaming Hotkeys

Do you like to use hotkeys for speedier control of your system? The Gaming Hotkey tab lets you create, define, and delete hotkeys as well as toggle the keys on and off as desired. The Mouse Master gives you similar control over your mouse with a macro function that lets you assign hotkey functions to coordinate with mouse manipulation.

LED lighting adjustment

The newest MSI Gaming graphics cards often come equipped with an MSI Dragon LED light. Flip over to the LED tab for some fun effects. A wide range of colors, animation options, and music can set just the right ambiance for your computer enjoyment. Within this tab, you can control segments of LEDs across your motherboard and graphics cards and separate the functions for each segment. You can also choose to influence on-screen LED lighting according to the beat of the music.

On-screen system information

Any time you start making changes to your voltage, fan speed, temperature, and frequencies, you run the risk of burning through graphics cards and other components. The on-screen system display allows you to track your clock speeds, FPS and other system options to protect your hardware while boosting your gaming performance. Customize this display to show those components of your CPU, GPU, and VRAM that are most important to you.

Prioritization of applications

Everything you load onto your computer demands some bandwidth. Use the settings in your MSI gaming app to give your games priority access to that bandwidth. You may be able to customize the traffic priority for most of your applications.

VR accessibility

Modern gaming experiences are involving more virtual reality settings than ever before and there’s surely more to come. Get your personal computer ready for these new adventures with the VR Ready setting. In addition, switch your most important components up to their highest performance settings and protect them from the interference of other software applications. You’ll have access to graphics settings such as environmental quality, FX quality, Terrain LOD blending, and ambient occlusion.

Where To Find the App

The app is conveniently available on the driver and utility software disk that comes with the MSI Gaming graphics card. Also, it can also be downloaded from the MSI website. This gives you easy access to the gaming features that bring a lot of improvement to graphics and performance. There are multiple versions available, so reach out to the MSI company to determine which is best for your gaming configuration. Click on the appropriate link and hit download. The installation wizard will walk you through the process.