Hi, my name is Jason, a Senior Field Service Technician at Field Nation. I've been fixing computers and teaching others how to do so for over 16 years. I'm making the ultimate gaming guide to help others with their gaming experience.
There are a few things to consider when dealing with a lower than average frame-rate. I will list them here and hopefully you will be able to increase your overall performance.
1. Try to run the game on low settings\low quality renderer. If the game is still facing performance issues, then try updating your video card drivers, and DirectX.
2. If these issues persist try running the game without anti aliasing, vertical sync, shadows and ground clutter.
3. If you are on an ATI video card make sure ‘Anti-Aliasing’ and ‘Anisotropic Filtering’ are set to ‘Application Controlled’ in the Catalyst Control Center. Disabling “Morphological Filtering” in the Catalyst Control Center will usually result in improved frame-rates. Disabling “ATI Overdrive” may result in increased framerates in some configurations.
4. If you are on an NVidia graphics card then make sure “Power Management Mode” is set to “Prefer Maximum Performance” in the NVidia control panel. Ensure “Anti-Aliasing” and “Anisotropic Filtering” are set to”Application Controlled” in the NVidia Control Panel and “Transparency Anti-Aliasing” and “Ambient Occlusion” are set to”Off” in the NVidia Control Panel.
5. If none of these steps helped try performing a clean boot to ensure no background programs are causing the system to much strain, resulting in low game performance.
Using System Configuration (msconfig)
Windows XP/Vista/7
1. Press the 'Windows' + 'R' keys simultaneously.
2. In the 'Run' window that appears, type 'msconfig' without the quotes and click 'OK.'
3. In your resulting 'System Configuration' window, click on the 'Startup' tab.
4. Disable all of the programs that are unnecessarily run on computer startup. (Please note that your security software may be among the listed startup programs, and that you can always disable or enable additional software using this list before or after computer restarts).
5. Click on the 'Services' tab.
6. Click on the checkbox next to 'Hide all Microsoft services.' This will remove all of the Microsoft services from the Services list and keep them from becoming disabled.
7. Click on the 'Disable all' button.
8. Click 'OK.'
You will then be prompted to restart your computer, which you should do before proceeding.
Windows 8
1. Press the 'Windows' key and Type 'msconfig'
2. In the results list click on msconfig app
3. In your resulting 'System Configuration' window, click on the 'General' tab
4. Choose 'Selective Startup' and uncheck 'Load startup items'
5. Click on the 'Services' tab.
6. Click on the checkbox next to 'Hide all Microsoft services.' This will remove all of the Microsoft services from the Services list and keep them from becoming disabled.
7. Click on the 'Disable all' button.
8. Click 'OK.'
Windows 10
You can disable startup software from task manager.
Open task manager, then click on More Details, then click on the Startup tab.
However, msconfig is still there, just type it in the Cortana search box.
DEFRAG YOUR HARD DRIVE STORAGE
Fragmentation makes your hard disk do extra work that can slow down your computer. Removable storage devices such as USB flash drives can also become fragmented. Disk Defragmenter rearranges fragmented data so your disks and drives can work more efficiently. It’s like arranging books in a library, if they are in proper order, people can find the book they need faster.
*NOTE: Ignore if you are using an SSD. Don’t defrag your SSD.
DON’T INSTALL THIRD-PARTY ANTI-VIRUS: (Win 10)
The best anti-virus for is “Common Sense + Windows Defender
Change Power Settings to Maximum Performance
Of course, this isn't a good choice if you want to save electricity, but it could boost your computing. Head to Control Panel / System and Security / Power Options. From here, click on the dropdown arrow on the right side and choose High Performance.
If the game is still having performance issues you may also try disabling Flash and any program that may use flash as it may be using up enough system memory to cause a lower framerate.
These are just general steps to take when you are experiencing lower than average FPS.
GPU Performance
ATI
AMD is actively releasing new drivers which often contain Rift specific fixes. Updating to the latest driver may result in significantly improved framerate.
AMD has also recently released a new application profile. Downloading and installing the latest Rift application profile may result in significantly improved framerate. Note that this profile is not just for CrossFire, it may result in improvements even if you do not have a CrossFire setup.
Ensure "Anti-Aliasing" and "Anisotropic Filtering" are set to"Application Controlled" in the Catalyst Control Center.
Disabling "Morpological Filtering" in the Catalyst Control Center will result in improved framerates.
Disabling "ATI Overdrive" may result in increased framerates in some configurations.
NVidia
Ensure “Power Management Mode” is set to “Prefer Maximum Performance” in the NVidia control panel.
Ensure "Anti-Aliasing" and "Anisotropic Filtering" are set to"Application Controlled" in the NVidia Control Panel.
Ensure "Transparency Anti-Aliasing" and "Ambient Occlusion" are set to"Off" in the NVidia Control Panel.
GPU Drivers
As you can see, even with some older games (such as RIFT) you will see a performance increase between 6% and 64% on a GeForce 700 series GPU. That’s because game makers and the big graphic behemoths like AMD, nVidia and Intel constantly work together to make games faster. So let’s have a look at where to get the latest drivers for the three big graphic card types out there:
Nvidia GeForce owners: Go to http://www.geforce.com/drivers. Next, select your graphics card and your Windows version from the list and hit the “Start Search” button. My tip: Always go for the driver marked as “BETA”. This isn’t quite a finished driver, but they all run as stable and good as the final release these days and will likely give you even more performance!
ATI Radeon owners: ATI fans go to http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...downloads.aspx and select the appropriate device. This will give you access to the latest official driver which you can download and install. To get the beta driver with more performance improvements or features, head over to http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-arti...dows-beta.aspx.
For Intel HD Graphics owners: Mostly found on ultrabooks or tablets, the Intel graphics chipsets are the weakest of the bunch. I wouldn’t recommend doing any sort of gaming on the older integrated Intel HD chipsets (such as the HD 3000 or earlier) – unless you’re heavily into slideshows instead of smooth gameplay – but their latest graphics chipsets are powerful enough to play even recent titles, albeit not at the highest possible resolution or with all the bells and whistles turned on.To get updated drivers go to the Graphics driver page of the Intel Download Center.
To overclock the GPU, I recommend two tools:
GPU Tweak –a classic overclocking tool from ASUS.
EVGA Precision X – allows overclocking of both the GPU and memory clocks.
General Performance
Flash
Any programs which use flash (for example a browser playing YouTube) can incur a significant framerate hit in game. The reason for this is if flash hardware acceleration is enabled, it will cause certain video cards to downclock to 400 MHz, resulting in much lower in game framerate. This will apply as long as the flash application is open, regardless if it has focus, the video is paused, etc.
To fix this issue, either close any programs which are running flash, or change flash to disable hardware acceleration (when mousing over flash application: right click...settings...uncheck "Enable Hardware Acceleration").
Background Programs
Background programs can also have a significant impact on your framerate, if they are taking up large amounts of your CPU. Ensure you have no other programs running. This includes: antivirus, automatic updates, video and music players, etc.
Window Postioning/Mode and Multiple Monitors
I am going to assume you're running in the same windowed resolution as you would be fullscreen (i.e. if you run it in 800x600 windowed, you're comparing against 800x600 fullscreen), since that means the game has to render the same image in either case. If you run in a higher resolution for fullscreen, then it seems likely that there's something else going on.
When in windowed mode, your computer has to draw more than the game itself: your desktop and other windows are also visible, and time has to be spent on drawing that as well.
However, there is another, more subtle difference, which your games may or may not make use of - it was somewhat common in previous years, but I'm not sure if game companies are still using it.
You see, the image you see on the screen is nothing more than a contiguous collection of rows of pixels. That is, nothing is stored between each row of pixels: it's just one large chunk of memory.
In fullscreen mode, the game can just place its image in that chunk of memory; when one row ends, the next begins, so you can copy your entire rendering buffer in one go. In windowed mode, that doesn't work any more: you now have to copy each row individually, because you have stuff to the left and to the right of your window which you aren't allowed to overwrite.
If your hardware is sufficiently fast, the difference should not be noticable, because although it is more work, it is not really that much more work - not as long as you aren't keeping a ton of other things with complex rendering visible at the same time - and if you're capable of getting the full X FPS in fullscreen (where X is your monitor refresh rate), it's quite likely that you could also get a few more FPS, and the computing power that could have been used for those extra FPS, can instead go to all of the other stuff happening in windowed mode.
Overheating
The Open Hardware Monitor is a free open source software that monitors temperature sensors, fan speeds, voltages, load and clock speeds of a computer. http://openhardwaremonitor.org
Power Saving/Hardware Throttling
Windows can control power flow to hardware components. If your PCIe starts pulling a lot of power (like when the GPU is in full throttle gaming) windows will cap the power consumption to meet it's hardware power management profile. Cap the power available to your PCIe port, Cap the resources available to your GPU. This might be related to vsync, though the original poster and the pcmr doesn't mention it. However, if you have that on, then the GPU can actually be idle part of the time after it finishes the frame it is working on and the queue of frames to display is full until the next frame switch time.
This kind of problem affects naive algorithms also when doing dynamic clock scaling. The algorithm is designed to raise clock if it seems like the current clock speed is not high enough. This is measured based on the processor core(s) being fully utilized almost all of the time. However, when the algorithm sees that the processor is idle part of the time, perhaps because it just dropped a frame and has therefore less work to do overall, it may in fact choose to lower the clock instead of raise it, because it is misreading the situation.
Underclocked Hardware
Underclocked hardware is generally caused by using newer processors in older motherboards which do not recognize it, or harware being set up incorrectly. These issues can generally be resolved by updating your BIOS. Refer to your motherboard or system manual for more information on how to do this.
Sound Driver Settings
Temporarily disable the sound card. Disabling the sound card will help you determine if the sound card is the cause of the problem. To temporarily disable your sound card, follow these steps:
You must be logged on as an administrator to perform these steps.
Open Device Manager by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security, and then, under System, clicking Device Manager.* Administrator permission required If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Double-check Sound, video, and game controllers to expand the section.
Right-click your sound card, and then click Disable.
If disabling the sound card resolves this issue, contact your computer manufacturer for more troubleshooting steps.
Utilizes both the CPU and the GPU extensively gaming
Rift utilizes both the CPU and the GPU extensively. A GPU generally has a large number of slow and weak processors. By weak I mean lower operating frequency, lower number of registers, simpler ALU's etc. GPU's come strapped with lots of memory and generally have high Memory bandwidth to support the hundreds of small processors that make up the GPU. GPUs are special purpose and can compute vector maths, matrix maths, pixel transforms and rendering jobs about 10-100x faster than the equivalent CPU performance as all these tasks are embarrassingly parallel, although it should be noted that incredibly optimized CPU code can come close to GPU code. However, the amount of work required is not worth the time when GPUs can do the same calculations with significantly less work, and not requiring a programmer with an excellent background in computer architecture.
A CPU generally has higher operating frequency and is designed for general purpose use. They excel in serial tasks, branching operations and file operations. CPUs, traditionally, have been easier to program and more versatile for general purpose usage. Most office computers have rudimentary GPUs as they dont have to perform such highly parallel/ specialized tasks. But a gaming PC or a workstation PC would generally have a powerful GPU(s).
Bonus: SoCs are processors that have both the CPU and the GPU in the same package (or other types of processors as well). They provide faster communication paths between CPU and GPU in addition to price advantages. The GPUs in these processors are generally targeted for basic multimedia and gaming..
Rift also provides an option specifically for the support of low end and integrated video cards. If you are running a video card with limited processing power, try enabling the "Low Quality Renderer" and restart the client.
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Tweaks and Repairs
GodMode
To enter "GodMode," one need only create a new folder and then rename the folder to the following on desktop.
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Repair Commands
Open Command (Admin)
System File Checker:
SFC/SCANNOW
Flush Your DNS Resolver Cache:
ipconfig /flushdns
To manually reset TCP/IP:
1st: netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt
2nd: netsh int ip reset
Reset Firewall:
netsh advfirewall reset
Force a check disk at startup:
chkdsk E: /f
Registry Tweaks
(1) Change Mouse Double-Click Sensitivity
open your registry and find the key below.
Create two new string values named 'DoubleClickHeight' and 'DoubleClickWidth'. Set the these values to equal the size in pixels of the double-click area.
Logoff, or restart Windows for the changes to take effect.
Registry Editor Example
| Name Type Data |
| (Default) REG_SZ (value not set) |
| DoubleClickHeight REG_SZ "30" |
| DoubleClickWidth REG_SZ "30" |
-
| HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse |
-
Registry Settings
User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse]
Value Name: DoubleClickHeight, DoubleClickWidth
Data Type: REG_SZ (String Value)
Value Data: Size in Pixels
(2) Network Latency
Determine your IP (ipconfig or similar) : Start->All Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt, type in "ipconfig" and push enter.
Run Regedit :Start->Run, type "regedit", click ok
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces : In this directory, there are going to be several folders with seemingly random letters and/or numbers as names. You're going to have the find the correct one to edit, which is done by doing the next step.
Determine which interface is for your IP. The correct interface will have a DhcpIPAddress set to your current IP.: This is displayed to the right after clicking one of the directories mentioned earlier, and should be the fifth or sixth entry down.
Right-click on the interface and select New->DWORD: Right click anywhere in the area that has your IP displayed nexted to the DhcpIPAddress entry.
Set the name to TcpAckFrequency (case sensitive): Right click->rename.
Set to a decimal value of "1" Right click->modify, type "1" in the value field, select "decimal," and click OK.1
Save There's no save function, just close out of RegEdit.
I will add more tweaks in a day or two :)
Source: Original Post