The Farrier, which checks your gaming PC is set up to play at its best

What the Farrier does#

The farrier shod the manor's horses: a horse badly shod runs below its best, however good it is. A gaming PC can run for years with its memory below the speed it was sold at, Game Mode off, or background recording eating frames, and nobody says so. The Farrier does.

It holds the Reeve's office on a gamer's PC, with the Thatcher behind it, which keeps your apps up to date. On an everyday PC, the Thatcher holds it.

The Farrier comes with the Household license. It uses no AI.

What it looks at#

Every 6 hours, and whenever you press Look now, it looks at how the PC is set up. A look takes a second or two and changes nothing.

• Memory running below the speed it's sold at: a desktop's DDR4 or DDR5 with XMP or EXPO off in the BIOS. The speed it's sold at is read from the kit's part number (Corsair, G.Skill, Kingston FURY and HyperX, Crucial, TeamGroup). A laptop's memory, or memory on the board, is set by its maker and isn't flagged.
• Game Mode off.
• Background recording (Xbox Game Bar's) on.
• Optimizations for windowed games off.
• Enhance pointer precision (mouse acceleration) on, which makes aim inconsistent.
• The power plan at Power saver, or the power mode at Best power efficiency on mains power.
• Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling off on an NVIDIA RTX 40 or 50 card, which needs it for DLSS Frame Generation.
• Resizable BAR off on an NVIDIA RTX 30, 40 or 50 card.
• Memory Integrity on. It's a security trade-off, yours to weigh: the Farrier opens Windows Security for you, and never turns it off itself.
• Games on a hard drive when the PC has an SSD they could be on, from Steam, Epic and GOG Galaxy.

Setting it right#

Each finding comes with what sets it right:

• Fix, for Game Mode, background recording, windowed games, pointer precision and the power plan. It changes your own Windows setting, and nothing needs an administrator. The Farrier keeps what was there, so Undo puts it back.
• Open, for the Windows page where you change it yourself: graphics settings, power settings, Windows Security.
• The steps, for what's set in your PC's BIOS (memory speed, Resizable BAR), or how to move a game in its launcher.

It changes nothing until you press. Leave it as it is stops a finding being suggested again, and Suggest again brings it back. If a setting it fixed changes back (after an update, say), it tells you.

Its page#

The Farrier's page is at http://farrier.localhost:21919/, and Open on its card in Castellan goes there. It shows what it found at its last look, and what it set right.

Its settings#

What it can't do#

• Resizable BAR is read on NVIDIA cards only. On AMD and Intel cards it says "not read".
• Memory from another maker is judged by the speed the module reports, which is its standard speed, not its XMP or EXPO profile.
• Games are found in Steam, Epic and GOG Galaxy. The Xbox app, the EA app, Ubisoft Connect and Battle.net aren't read yet.
• It doesn't change your BIOS. It gives the steps.