About Tier1Settings

Tier1Settings is a small independent site for competitive PC gamers who want more FPS, steadier frame times and less input lag, without the guesswork. It's run by a competitive player and Windows developer who also builds the site's free tools: Tier1Suite, Tier1Timer and Tier1Stretch.

The PC we test on

When a guide quotes a measurement we took ourselves, it comes from this machine unless the guide says otherwise:

• Intel Core i9-13900K
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
• 32 GB RAM
• 1920×1080 360 Hz monitor
• Windows 11 Pro (25H2)

It is a fast but ordinary gaming PC, and we don't pretend it is yours: where a result depends on hardware, the guide says so, and our tools measure your own PC rather than quoting ours.

Where our guides come from

Each guide starts from the question people actually search for, then works through the sources that can answer it: the game developer's patch notes and support articles, NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Microsoft documentation, and what players report on the game's forums. Where we can measure something on our test PC, such as the timer resolution benchmark, we publish the numbers and how we got them.

We try to say what a fix will and won't do. You won't find "double your FPS" here: most real gains are smoother 1% lows and fewer hitches, and some popular tweaks do nothing on modern Windows. When that's the case, the guide says so.

Keeping guides current

Games and drivers change, so guides go stale. When a patch, driver or Windows update changes the answer, we revise the guide and show the date at the top as "Updated". If you find something wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll check it and fix it.

Our tools

Tier1Suite is the app version of these guides: it scans your PC, scores it, and applies the same fixes with a one-click revert on every change. It's free, with an optional paid Pro upgrade. The standalone Tier1Timer and Tier1Stretch are still available. All three are code-signed.

How the site makes money

So you can judge our recommendations, here's every way the site earns:

• Tier1Suite Pro, the optional paid upgrade to our own app. We recommend our tools where they genuinely fit the problem, and the guides give the manual steps too.
• Ads on some guides, served by Google AdSense. Pages about our tools and downloads carry no ads.
• Amazon affiliate links on a few hardware-buying guides. These are marked, and nobody pays us to include or rank a product.

Details of what we collect are in the privacy policy.

Get in touch

Corrections, questions about a guide, and bug reports for the apps are all welcome through the contact page.