Batman's Optimization Thread Of FPS!

[IM BATMAN]

NOTE: This is a heavily modified/updated repost from a community I used to be in.
Team Fortress 2 is probably VALVE's prettiest and unique game but also their most demanding game to run. Why? Well, Team Fortress 2 uses a smoothing process called phong. That means nearly every hat, misc, prop, tooth, player, and pretty much everything has to be phonged. That is a lot of phong!

Another problem is lack of Level Of Detail models (for example heavy uses less polygons when he walks away and the farther he gets the more polys he looses) on alot of the newer weapons.

So if you are lagging the first option you should turn off is VSYNC. That just keeps your refresh rate at 60 Frames Per Second and keeps your screen from tearing, totally useless if you are under 60 Frames and can lag. Then lower shadows to medium. This majorly helps most people due to shadows still being a very taxing effect on most PCs.

Then disable High Dynamic Range. High Dynamic Range is kind of like that effect you get when you walk outside and everything is really bright for a moment. Some really old GPUs don't even support HDR!

If by then you are still lagging then lower water and test, lower particles and test, lower shadows and test, and lower shaders and test. If THEN you are still lagging then lower textures and repeat.

Why not lower Model Detail and Texture Detail? Well really because most people even on very low end computers can handle both of those fine! Only lower Model Detail if you are still lagging even in DirectX 8.

Ok, if you are still lagging and all the major options are down there is still hope! You can lower your DirectX level by going into prefrence on the TF2 entry on steam and then hit advanced. Type in -dxlevel 81 . If you are still lagging by then change it to -dxlevel 80 . This removes most of the phong and fancy effects. Some people even prefer its visuals to DX9!

And if you are still lagging even by then try to download a low poly and/or no phong pack from any skinning website.

[align=center]Options Explained[/align]

FPS: How many frames of animation are displayed per second. 60 is the target here, and if you got more then 60 it would be ok to enable more options, if any. 30 is ok, and is what most console games run at. Below 20 is when it starts to get real choppy, and below 10 is unplayable but you can sometimes get used to it.

VSync: Locks the refresh rate at 60 Frames Per Second and prevents tearing. Useless for people below 60 FPS and can lag.

Multi Sample Anti Aliasing: Helps get rid of the jaggies around everything. Most Unreal Engine 3 games like SMNC do not support MSAA. This is probably the most taxing option besides tesselation and SSAO and should be used only if you already run the game at high FPS.

FXAA: Anti Aliasing method that makes you lose almost no FPS but blurs the image slightly. Works in better in some games then others. Can be activated in drivers. Can be used with regular MSAA.

Water/Reflections: Self Explanatory. Simple reflections is simple reflections, reflect world is reflecting the map geometry and skybox, and reflect all is reflecting everything.

Texture: The detail wrapped around all 3D Objects. The higer the setting the higher the texture resolution and there fore the less blurriness you get. Higher options use more GPU RAM and regular RAM.

Shadows: Are shadows. Higher settings means higher resolution shadows and dynamic or "stretchy" shadows. Pretty taxing effect, reccomended to first lower this after SSAO, AA, or VSYNC.

SSAO: Screen Space Ambient Occulsion adds even more shadows/shadow depth but uses a lot of resources. Very taxing effect. HBAO in Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, and other Directx 11 games.

[align=center]Drivers[/align]

Drivers are software that tells your hardware what to do. In this case we have GPU (AKA Video Card) drivers. There are two brands: Nvidia and AMD (ATi). Nvidia drivers are here: http://www.geforce.com/drivers and AMD drivers are here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

However, AMD people can update their drivers through steam. Nvidia also has a neat auto detect option and I reccomend you use that if you don't know what video card you have.

Now to the fun stuff. Note that since I have a Nvidia graphics card most of this will be only for nvidia cards. Download Nvidia Inspector here: http://downloads.guru3d.com/NVIDIA-Insp ... -2612.html , a driver tweaking/overclocking program.

Here you can change many quality settings for games. For example, Team Fortress 2 can have SSAO enabled even though the in game settings do not have SSAO. All you do is hit the crossed hammer/wrench button, find the Team Fortress 2 profile, and find the Ambient Occulsion part and enable it. You can also enable FXAA now on any game by finding the game's profile and enabling FXAA.

Driver SSAO works on only a few games, is unoptimised, and can create bugs. As for FXAA some games handle its blurring better then others and widely depends on your personal preference.

There are other things like texture filtering quality (I reccomend you put that on high quality), Clamp (put it on clamp to get rid of a lot of jaggles with no AA!), etc. Tweak around for yourself and if you find any neat stuff post it here!

My last section of drivers is one of my favorite websites: http://tweakguides.com/

Obviously I can't make a guide for every game, but these guys can!

Be sure to post your results here, or request for a new guide or more help!

[stanley]

ive been suffering fps-wise for awhile, ill try some of these out, thanks