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Making Flash Games and Online Apps Run Faster on Windows 7

Ever been to a website which load slowly, or have flash, text + picture based games, Java, and php programs like games, and video players run very slow?

I have visited websites which run slow in Internet Explorer, but run better in Google Chrome. In my experience, Google Chrome seems to run Farmville, Fish Isle, Fishville, Blogspot, Youtube, Google Docs, and other websites with applications a lot faster then other web browsers like Internet Explorer 8, and Firefox 3.5. When I use Internet Explorer to run Farmville, and some other newer flash games, I notice IE uses almost all my RAM, but with Chrome Farmville uses less RAM. Also, Google Chrome is also less likely to be full of add-ons and toolbars like Firefox or Internet Explorer since typically people who use Google Chrome don’t install as many add-ons and extensions to Google Chrome because Google Chrome has everything you need for browsing and using the internet built-in.

Although, FireFox seems to work better for some games and computers since it uses less RAM then Chrome I notice. FireFox 8 seems to run most Flash Games in Facebook on Ubuntu Linux better then Google Chrome for Linux in my experience.

If you must use Internet Explorer or Firefox to play online flash games or use web apps, you can try uninstalling plug-ins, add-ons and toolbars since they can also use system resources, and make sure Internet Explorer and Firefox is up to date.

Google Chrome also has a way to turn-off add-on by going to the wrench icon then go to the tools submenu, and pick extensions which will launch the add-on/extension manager.

I notice playing flash games which require you to drag the screen or go from one area to another like FarmVille, CityVille, and MMO games where you have a lot of land to explore tend to run faster in Full screen mode instead of Windowed mode since I do not have to drag the screen or zoom out and zoom in as much from one area to another which tends to slow down my computer when changing screens, and zooming out and in the screen.  Plus, there are no ads, buttons, graphics on the sidebars, and top of the game when in full screen mode which can make the game slow if the ad is an animated or interactive ads which auto-updates. All you have to do is click the Game button in the flash game with two Squares on top of each other to play games in full screen mode. To exit full screen mode, you hit the button again, or press the ESC key on your keyboard.

I notice for some games, you can’t use the zoom and zoom out with your scroll wheel  on the mouse, so it is best to zoom in or out to a comfortable viewing size where you can see the text bubbles, or markers on top of people, houses, and animals before you go into full screen mode. When you are in Full screen mode, you can still zoom in and out by clicking the magnify buttons on the games.

If you are using onboard video which is built-in to your computer’s motherboard instead of using a PCI-Express or AGP card, you can see if you can set your memory limit higher in your computer’s BIOS/CMOS. You need to hit the set up key which could be F10, F1, or any other key on the keyboard during computer start up to enter your BIOS to change your Memory size for your onboard video. Set the memory size for the onboard video to the highest memory limit, or MAX DVMT if you are using a newer intel video chip on your motherboard. I notice setting the memory size of your onboard video could make some flash games faster. Although, if you don’t have a lot of memory on your computer, it might make it slower, and you be better off installing more memory on your PC then changing your onboard video memory setting to the highest, or just installing a faster AGP or PCI-Express video card depending on your desktop computer’s motherboard. For laptops, you typically can’t change the video card unless it is a high end gaming laptop.

Read your computer manual to learn how to go into your BIOS computer setup program to change the memory size of your video memory to a higher level. Also, go to your computer company website, and see if a new video card driver is available for download for your computer model.

You can also try updating to the latest version of Flash, and Java to see if it solves your performance problems when running online applications.

Disable or uninstall un-needed plug-ins or add-ons for your browser. Upgrade to the latest version of your web browser like FireFox, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Chrome. The Beta version of Internet Explorer 9 seems to run flash games faster then Internet Explorer 8, so you can also try using beta versions of your web browsers for increase performance.

TuneUp Utilities 2011 makes tweaking and customizing your computer for speed very simple. It has a one click turbo button which closes all your un-needed programs and services to free up your RAM and CPU resources to make your computer faster. It also has a program deactivater which deactivate your programs to also free up more computer resources to make your computer feel more responsive. You can also use TuneUp Utilities to stop auro-start programs from loading during start-up and slowing down your computer even more.

I also notice closing un-used programs like Media players, E-mail Clients and Word processors can free up some RAM and CPU resources.

Also, close tabs on your web browsers which you are not using since open tabs can also used some RAM as well.

I’m also using VIPRE Antivirus which uses very little RAM on Windows 7 according to Task Manager, so if your anti-virus and anti-spyware is using too much RAM switching to VIPRE might make your computer a lot faster because more free RAM/Memory is available on your computer to run flash games instead of being wasted running a slow anti-virus which slows down your computer.

On some flash games like Farmville, and other flash games there are settings which allow you to turn down the quality, a button during startup which says “Load game faster”  so you can run the game faster on slower computers. The settings are usually found on the game shortcut menu or in the right click menu. In Farmville, you can turn down the quality by pressing on a icon which looks like an Eye. In other games like Social City, the performance settings shortcut looks like gears.  Turning off the sound effects and background music by going to your games settings, or clicking on the speaker, and music note icon may also make your game feel faster, or less annoying if you don’t like the music and sound effects.

I also read online that selling or putting away your animals in Farmville can also speed up your game, but I don’t like this option since it means I’m not having as much fun having a huge farm with tons of plants, vegetables, tress and animals.

Also zooming into your flash game by pressing the zoom in button or using your mouse scroll wheel to zoom into your game’s video may also make your game feel more smooth since there are less characters, buildings, and stuff to animate in my experience.

Visit google.com/chrome to download and learn more about Google Chrome.

The Latest version of Google Chrome has the latest version of Flash Built-in according to get.adobe.com/flashplayer .

If your computer is still slow when running online programs, consider upgrading your RAM, or video card.  Upgrading your CPU is also possible, but it can be expensive and hard to do for the average user.

Also make sure your computer is free of viruses, and malware which can also slow down your computer.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Full Version is one of the best Anti-malware I used for Windows from preventing malware and spyware infections from slowing my computer down.

You can also use a system utility program called Gamebooster by Iobit to temporary disable un-needed software during playing flash and computer games . Learn more about Gamebooster at iobit.com/gamebooster .

Diskeeper 2010 Professional is a great disk defrag software because it is compatible with Windows 7 and it is set it and forget it which means whenever your hard drive is fragmented, Diskeeper 2010 will automatically defrag your hard drive to make reading files faster on your drive.

Switching or Dual Booting to Ubuntu for faster Flash Internet Games Performance Speeds

If you are willing to try a non-windows operating system for faster performance on your computer, I recommend you try Ubuntu 10.10 since it only uses about 180-190 MBs of RAM with Firefox Web Browser running compared to Windows which uses 450-700MBs+ of RAM when idle. Ubuntu also does not use the Swap or Page file as much compared to Windows.

I been used FireFox which is installed by default on Ubuntu to play Flash games on Facebook like Fishville, Farmville, and Social City, and it had been great . I experience less slowness compared to Windows 7 on my older computer with 1GB of Ram and a 1.8 GHz CPU.

The benefits of Ubuntu is you do not have to do disk clean ups and disk defrags to maintain your disk read speed health. Plus, there are not as many programs like anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, and other software which tends to slow down your computer like Windows which can have tons of startup programs and toolbars, plug-ins, and add-ons on Internet Explorer or Firefox which can really slow down your computer’s performance to a crawl.

Google Chrome is available for Ubuntu as well, but I notice Flash games tend to crash more in Ubuntu when using Google Chrome compared to Firefox. However, Firefox seems to work a lot better running flash games since the scroll wheel on my mouse does not work in Google Chrome for Flash Games in Ubuntu, but works in FireFox.

I notice Flash video and games also load a few seconds faster in Ubuntu 10.10 vs Windows.

 

Regularly update Ubuntu with Ubuntu Update Manager for improve performance and stability. Here is a video which teaches you how to Update Ubuntu 10.10 manually which I made.

Now you can use Ubuntu to play flash games on the internet, and use Windows for playing Windows Games or doing office work.

There are some tutorials which say you can run Ubuntu from a CD or from a virtual machine PC within Windows. Running Ubuntu from within a CD or Virtual PC like Virtualbox, Vmware, etc are both slower then running Ubuntu on its own by using WUBI, or installed physically on your computer. Don’t do CD or virtual pc tutorials for Ubuntu since they both probably be slower then running flash games in Windows since CDs and virtual pc are slow. Although, if your CD or DVD drive is very fast you will not notice much slow down when loading Ubuntu vs using a virtual PC.

If you rather use a flash drive to save space on your hard drive, it would be faster then a CD, but start up won’t be as fast compared to Ubuntu which is physically installed on a PC . Using a USB flash drive to load Ubuntu is good for school, work, or other people’s computers where you are not allowed to installed software on their computer. If your friends, work, or family members can not boot from a USB startup flash drive, your only option is using the Ubuntu start up CD to run Ubuntu off of.

If you like Ubuntu, you should physically install it on your computer by starting your computer from the Ubuntu install CD, and pick install. However, this can be more risky since you are messing with your partition sizes if you plan on creating a dual boot, but Ubuntu will run faster when installed on an actual disk partition vs a Windows disk partition.

Puppy Linux is also a good CD based operating system for you to run Linux off a CD on your older computer by starting your computer from a CD, and Puppy Linux will load itself to your RAM, and you can use Firefox or Opera to play flash games on Facebook, and flash games sites.

In most cases, you do not have to upgrade to more RAM, a faster CPU and video card to speed up your flash games in Windows or Ubuntu, but if you are playing a MMORPG flash game like Farmville, Social City, Fishville, or games with a lot of stuff or things moving a lot in it, then upgrading your computer hardware will help. I notice more and more newer flash games use more computer resources especially 3D flash games.

You can also use remote desktop software to login to your more powerful computer at home via the internet at school or work to play games on your faster home computer if your work or school computer has a fast internet connection, and remote desktop software like Windows Remote desktop, Teamviewer, logmein, etc.

Newer Tablets like the Blackberry Playbook, iPad, Samsung Galaxy tab, etc are also capable of remote desktop, and playing some flash games if your Tablet has flash built-in, or the Flash game maker make a version of the game which is compatible with HTML5 browsers like Apple Safari which the iPad uses.

Also, some flash games might have an HTML5 version in the future, so HTML5 versions of the game might run faster then Adobe Flash games since Adobe Flash is known to use a lot of system resources when playing big files.

20 comments… add one
  • Richard August 31, 2010, 5:21 am

    ya i agree with u google chrome, its a great software for browsing…

  • Johnson Yip August 31, 2010, 3:03 pm

    I think Google might be able to become number 2 or 1 in the web browser market since it is so fast, reliable, and works on Linux, Windows, Mac, etc.

    Plus, from using Chrome, I find it to be a great web browser for using online Apps coded in Javascript, Flash, php, and many other web languages. I think Google is one of the few companies which understand that web applications like Google Docs, and Facebook Apps are the way of the future, and installing apps on a computer hard drive is not as convenient since you have to worry about free disk space, and hardware compatibility while using a web app only requires you to have a up to date browser, Java plug-in, flash plug-in, etc.

  • Flash Games September 10, 2010, 3:36 pm

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  • Johnson Yip September 10, 2010, 5:55 pm

    Glad my Data help you immensely. Nice Flash games website!

  • Jim@PC Computer Games September 11, 2010, 9:21 pm

    Anyone heard of the upcoming star wars MMO? It looks amazing. I’m completely siked. Thanks so much for the link. I like your blog.

  • Johnson Yip September 11, 2010, 10:14 pm

    I heard ot the new Star Wars MMO on Electric Playground. I agree, It looks amazing!

  • Web Design Peterborough September 12, 2010, 10:33 am

    Yep, I agree with Johnson, I’m sure Chrome will be come the 2nd place browser by market volume. Also worth a consideration is Safari, I use that all the time of my CMS backend work.

  • Johnson Yip September 12, 2010, 4:53 pm

    If you count the mobile browser market, Google Browsers will be in most mobile devices since I read online that the Android Operating system is very popular for smart phones, and tablet/slate PCs.

    Chrome OS for Netbooks will probably be more popular then the early Linux Netbooks which were kind of hard to use for Newbies. Plus, Chrome is one of the few Firefox alternatives for most Linux Operating Systems like Ubuntu 10.04.

    Thanks for the comment!

  • Miniclip Games September 26, 2010, 6:59 am

    I agree with you that Google Chrome load faster but I think Firefox still on TOP of other web browsers because of tons of plugins that are very useful specially to webmasters.

  • Johnson Yip September 26, 2010, 6:19 pm

    Chrome is starting to have a lot of useful add-ons like FireFox, but I agree FireFox has the most browser add-ons.

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  • Distribuidor de Computadores May 19, 2011, 10:26 pm

    Chrome stills young and we can expect great things coming (I believe) for the moment my fav. stills being Firefox, but I must admit I use Chrome 30-40% of the time…

  • Y8 June 15, 2011, 8:49 am

    Thank a lot for this step by step guide on making flash games and online apps run faster on windows 7. Don’t know much about technical things in computers but with this guide it help me a lot thanks…

  • Johnson Yip June 15, 2011, 3:24 pm

    No problem, Y8. Some of these tips might work on Linux and Mac as well though they are less likely to slow down since Apple computers usually tend to have better hardware because you pay the high price for a more expensive product, and Linux can run quickly on most computers, so Flash apps shouldn’t really slow down a Linux and Mac PC.

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