The Home dashboard is BRUTAL Optimizer's live cockpit: real-time CPU, GPU, RAM and game-FPS gauges, a one-number Performance Score, your hardware tier, Guardian status and quick actions — all updated once per second from real Windows performance counters, with no fake numbers anywhere.
What the four big gauges show
The semicircle gauges at the top refresh every second:
- CPU — total processor usage (Windows
% Processor Time, all cores combined), 0–100%. - GPU — the sum of 3D-engine utilization across every GPU process, exactly the way Task Manager reports GPU load. If your system can't expose the GPU counter, this reads
N/A rather than a made-up 0. - RAM — physical memory in use as a percentage, with the exact MB used and total below it.
- FPS — the real game frame rate, but only while a game or emulator is actually running. On the idle desktop it shows a dash and No game. See How the FPS counter works for the full story.
Below the gauges, the System load strip is a 60-second sparkline of CPU history — the latest reading sits on the right edge and the graph grows left as the last minute fills in.
The Performance Score
The big number in the score ring is a 0–100 measure of how much headroom your PC has for gaming right now. It is pure live load, weighted:
- CPU headroom — 40% (100 minus current CPU usage)
- GPU headroom — 30%
- RAM headroom — 30%
- plus a small tier bonus: +10 for ULTRA hardware, +5 for HIGH, none for MID/LOW.
So a quiet, idle system scores high, and a system pinned by background apps scores low. The label and colour follow the number: Excellent (90+), Good (70+), Fair (50+), Needs Optimization (30+) and Critical below that. The three bars beside the ring break the score down so you can see whether CPU, GPU or RAM is dragging it down.
Why FPS is deliberately left out of the score. Frame rate is only meaningful while a game is running, and a render rate must never be allowed to inflate a system-readiness number. (An earlier version accidentally let the dashboard's own ~60 fps repaint pin the score near 100 — that's fixed.) The score is honest headroom only.
At-a-glance tiles and top memory users
The lower cards give you context the score can't:
- Uptime — how long Windows has been running since the last boot.
- Processes — the live process count, refreshed about every three seconds.
- Top memory users — the four apps using the most RAM, grouped by app name (so a multi-process browser shows once with its combined total). The bar is that app's memory against your total RAM; the MB figure beside it is the precise number.
- Hardware — your CPU, GPU, VRAM, RAM and detected hardware tier, with check/cross marks showing what you'd need for the next tier up.
- Status cards for Security, Privacy, applied optimizations and your licence.
Quick actions on the dashboard
- Boost Now — runs a safe, one-pass optimization (system tweaks, free memory, clear junk, harden privacy). It creates a restore point first and every change is reversible from Restore All.
- Aggressive — applies every tuning module suitable for your hardware, including deep tweaks that lower Windows security (VBS/Spectre) and boot/timer changes that need a restart. Best for a gaming PC you own and control.
- Clean Memory — trims working sets and purges standby memory, then tells you how many MB it actually freed.
- Restore Defaults — reverses optimizations, Defender hardening and privacy toggles back to Windows defaults.
Both Boost buttons show a live progress rocket whose altitude tracks the real percentage complete — it's not a decorative timer.
Best practice
- Glance at the score before launching a game. If it's already low while idle, open the benchmark or close background apps first.
- Use the top memory users list to spot a runaway app rather than guessing.
- Run Clean Memory if RAM is high but you're between games — it's instant and reversible by nature (Windows refills the cache as needed).
Common issues / troubleshooting
- GPU shows
N/A. The Windows GPU Engine counter is missing or disabled on your system. CPU/RAM still work; this is rare and harmless. - FPS shows a dash. That's correct unless a game is running and Guardian has detected it — see the FPS article.
- Score sits low even when idle. Something is using CPU/GPU/RAM in the background. Check the top memory users and process count, then optimize.
FAQ
Does a higher Performance Score mean better FPS?
Not directly. The score measures spare CPU, GPU and RAM headroom — how much room your system has to run a game smoothly. More headroom usually helps FPS, but actual frame rate depends on the game and your GPU. That's why FPS is shown separately and is not part of the score.
Why does the GPU number differ from a single process in Task Manager?
BRUTAL sums the 3D-engine utilization across all GPU processes, which matches Task Manager's overall GPU figure. A single GPU-engine instance is usually an idle process reading 0%, so summing is the only honest way to show real GPU load.
Is the dashboard safe to leave running during a competitive game?
Yes. Every reading comes from standard Windows performance counters and the anti-cheat-safe FPS counter — no game injection, no kernel driver, no overlays forced into the game.