5 Common PC Gaming Problems (And How To Fix Them)

Playing a game on the PC usually provides a better experience than the same game on a console, with a few exceptions (Diablo 3, I’m looking at you). Yet many people still enjoy consoles, and it’s easy to see why. PCs are more complex and lack standardized components, which means there’s no guarantee a game will run, or run well.

While random strangeness does at time occur, must of the problems encountered by PC gamers fall into some familiar categories. Issues can usually be resolved as long as the source isn’t a bug in the game’s code. Let’s have a look at the five most common problems.

Artifacts And Glitches

Artifacts, or glitches, are a species easily identified by a graphical weirdness. Game geometry may be missing, inflated, or mal-formed, textures might appear strangely pixellated or colored, and portions of the screen may flicker, suffer from banding, or otherwise just look odd.

Problems like this are usually the result of the video card fumbling the information sent to it by a game. Outdated drivers are sometimes the culprit, and if you often run beta drivers, that too may be the cause. A quick Google search regarding the game displaying such glitches may point you in the direction of others who can tell you what driver version works best.

The other major cause is a graphics card that’s overheating and/or failing. Check your graphics card’s temperature using a tool like TThrottle; if your card is exceeding 100 degrees Celsius, it’s likely too hot. Should temperatures look fine, try downloading Furmark and running a stress test. If artifacts appear, your video card probably has one foot in the grave.