Tips for Improving Framerate

[tykin]

Tips for Improving Framerate

If you have a low end computer like me, you are probably getting very choppy framerates when playing the game. Well, after tweaking some settings on Windows and my graphics card, I can say that the game now runs smoothly and fluidly on my computer.For reference, here are my specs:Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz1.2 GB DDR RamRadeon 9800 250 GB HarddriveWindows XP Sp 2 So how are the steps I took to improve my game's performance. These start as simple things, and gradually get more complicated:1. Update my drivers - that's a given. You should frequently check your manufacturer's website for updates2. Close all unnecessary programs - Goto Start --> Run --> type msconfig --> goto Startup. Unclick all the things you don't need. If you're not sure if you need it, you probably don't need it.3. Run the game in windowed mode - This just seems like common sense to me. I'm running the game at 800 x 600, so why have it stretched out over the whole monitor? The way I see it, less pixels to refresh means faster refresh times4. Set Windows towards optimal settings - Right-Click on My Computer, Click on Properties --> Advanced Tab --> Performance --> Click on button "Adjust for best performance." Windows uses alot of RAM just running the OS, there's no need make it run more than is necessary. 5. Increase Virtual Memory - Right-Click on My Computer, Click on Properties --> Advanced Tab --> Performance --> Advanced Tab --> Virtual Memory. A good rule of thumb is to have your Virtual Memory be at least twice your RAM. Mine is set at 3000 MB.The Next Steps I took involve ATI Cards with Catalyst Control Center installed.6. Goto the advanced settings on your CCC. You'll see the "3D" dropdown box. Expand that box and you'll see "Standard Setting, Anti Aliasing etc." Set all these to the lowest settings. Also, I disabled Catalyst A.I.7. While still in the CCC, goto the SmartGart dropdown box and disable Fast Write. I'm not sure what this is but I heard that is can cause problems on low-end computers. From what I've read. It makes you AGP Card act more like a PCI card. I don't know what that means but it just sounds like a useless operation, so I disabled it.I hope this helps you all out! If you have any other tips, please post them here!

 

[dinantes]

Nice post Tykin. Very thoughtful of you.

 

[pauwncheaux]

#3 is not entirely sound reasoning. It is fine to run the game at 800x600 but windowed mode actually slows down your framerate in many cases. Double buffering of graphics is only possible while the game is fullscreen. You still have the same resolution to refresh so your graphics card should handle it fine at fullscreen, but with double buffering you get a much smoother display of frames. One physical pixel is not necessarily the same as an "in-game pixel." Unless my memory is worse than I believe, in which case I am just speaking complete nonsense. Otherwise a very good post though.

 

[tykin]

Yeah, my reasoning for #3 is probably not entirely accurate, but one thing I can attest to is that the game seems to run much better in windowed mode than out of it. I've also read several other posts claiming that windowed modes crashes less than full screen. So, whatever works, I guess.Oh, one thing I forgot!8. Run Defrag - According to Wikipedia: Defrag is "physically reorganizing the contents of the disk to store the pieces of each file close together and contiguously."

 

[herethos]

If you're going to do #2 click hide all ms services then simply select unmark everything and do the same for autostart. You can't get a cleaner boot than that without disabling windows services. Oh yeah disable Indexing Service, its a resource hog, you can do it in admin tools or use the msconfig. Doing a clean boot will leave you without a bunch of tools like firewall (windows built in will still be there), antivirus and other things that load up with windows. So do a windows update and get all the security fixes first. You can easily shave off 300+mb of the memory usage by windows, which can be used for Witcher instead.

 

[frostythebush]

#9 Use a proper defrag utility (JkDefrag for example) this should help loads when loading a new area etc.

 

[jableskage]

ok i turned off the grass effect and my game played dead smooth! try fiddling with the graphics options! ;D

 

[raptorrvl]

Lightning, shadows and grass are the ingame settings you wanna turn to low or off to get more frames. Especially shadows and grass seem to be heavy on the system.Grass might not appear that heavy at the start, but in the swamp for example the grass can bring down your computer fast.About #6, wouldn't tunrning on catalyst-ai give you more frames instead of turning it off?I've found an article about it on driverheaven when it first came out.In short, what is it?:

ATI believe that whilst doing this they maintain the correct image quality and in some cases can even improve IQ. Cat AI does this by analyzing individual textures as they are loaded in order to choose the best and fastest way for them to be displayed. Settings available to the user are Off, Standard and Advanced. By default the drivers are set to Standard. In most cases Standard should be sufficient as it uses less CPU overhead than Advanced and its up to the end user to decide which option works best on their system in each particular game or application. There should be no IQ difference between the two settings however in games where there are frequent texture loads or when using a slower system the extra computations may cancel out the performance increases gained by using the Advanced algorithm.

Reading that correctly I think putting catalyst-ai to 'normal/low' is the best bet to gain a few extra fps. On a dutch website (tweakers.net) I've read that the catalyst-ai is also linked to game specific optimalisations. So perhaps in some time this option can get us a few fps more who knows.

 

[herethos]

On my system that I used to play Oblivion on which has an ati card I really got a performance increase by just uninstalling the old drivers, and using driver cleaner to remove old files and settings in the registry then rebooting and just installing the video device driver without the whole catalyst control center with wdm and stuff.

 

[tykin]

Lightning, shadows and grass are the ingame settings you wanna turn to low or off to get more frames. Especially shadows and grass seem to be heavy on the system.Grass might not appear that heavy at the start, but in the swamp for example the grass can bring down your computer fast.About #6, wouldn't tunrning on catalyst-ai give you more frames instead of turning it off?I've found an article about it on driverheaven when it first came out.In short, what is it?:

ATI believe that whilst doing this they maintain the correct image quality and in some cases can even improve IQ. Cat AI does this by analyzing individual textures as they are loaded in order to choose the best and fastest way for them to be displayed. Settings available to the user are Off, Standard and Advanced. By default the drivers are set to Standard. In most cases Standard should be sufficient as it uses less CPU overhead than Advanced and its up to the end user to decide which option works best on their system in each particular game or application. There should be no IQ difference between the two settings however in games where there are frequent texture loads or when using a slower system the extra computations may cancel out the performance increases gained by using the Advanced algorithm.

Reading that correctly I think putting catalyst-ai to 'normal/low' is the best bet to gain a few extra fps. On a dutch website (tweakers.net) I've read that the catalyst-ai is also linked to game specific optimalisations. So perhaps in some time this option can get us a few fps more who knows.

I tried both turning it on and turning it off. Oddly enough, The Witcher seems to run better with Cat AI turned off, while Team Fortress 2 ran worse when it was turned off. It could just be a thing with my computer, but I recommend trying both and seeing which gives you better framerates.As for cleaning out the old drivers, is there a program I can use to do that?

 

[herethos]

http://www.guru3d.com/Look in downloads then Generic Utilities.

 

[mako_deamon]

Thanks for the tips. Here's my contribution: When you've started the launcher, Open Task Manager and give Witcher High Priority in the process box. I don't know if it helped a lot but I think It reduced my loading time with a few seconds. Sadly I don't know how you could save this setting, you have to give the game priority everytime you open it...

 

[psd122]

Just bumping the post for its usefulness. I'll also add that using omega drivers instead of standard ati drivers helped me. My laptop specs are:2g ramDual 1.83 processorsx1400 ati card(I can list the specifics later on when I double check).With that gear, do you think I can get Witcher to perform smoothly? I have all settings to low & 800x600 res and Act 1 works fine. However, the prologue was a little choppy and I'm scared when I get to the infamous trade district my comp will explode.

 

[squishy]

About Virtual Memory Swap Files;Make sure you create the Virtual Memory file ON THE DISK WHICH YOU'VE INSTALLED THE WITCHER!!(I have a Virtual Memory Page Swap file on all my disks (C,D,E,F...))

 

[raptorrvl]

About Virtual Memory Swap Files;Make sure you create the Virtual Memory file ON THE DISK WHICH YOU'VE INSTALLED THE WITCHER!!(I have a Virtual Memory Page Swap file on all my disks (C,D,E,F...))

Ehh no, the other way around. It's better to have the swapfile on a physical other disk than where you have e.g. the Witcher and/or Windows installed.If you have it on the same disk it has to load the Witcher from the disk ánd has to do the swapping on the same disk which is slower.

 

[dragster]

Hi guys, I have a little problem with understanding frame rate issues with my computer, which isn't in low-end comp;ASUS P5B- premium mainboardIntel core 2 quad q66004 gb ddr2 (but I'm running it in XP)ASUS eah2900xt 512mb graphic cardetc.My drivers are up to date too, XP are few days ago reinstalled..I'm running game on 1680x1050 with high textures, but most of advanced graphic is downgraded (anti-aliasing is turned off, shadows to medium, even low, anisotropic filtering to half..), and I have often drops of framerate, even i some places constantly below 30 fps (like trade quarter)..I've tried with tuning my GPU with riva tuner, optimising CPU with all kind of s***, but it keeps running poor.My power supply is Antec True550p (550W) so I don't know is it supply problem, but in whole monitoring process I didn't spoted it (and temp. is kind of normal, too).Could anybody give me some useful advice (maybe I missed something) cause is very frustrating to get new computer (I think good one) and then get this kind of problems..