Ultimate PC Tweaking Guide
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 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.
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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.
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If these issues persist try running the game without anti aliasing, vertical sync, shadows and ground clutter.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Please Note If you have any biometric software (Fingerprint readers) on your system take care not to disable it.
You can run this utility by following the steps below:
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Press the Windows + R keys simultaneously.
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In the Run window that appears, type "msconfig" without the quotes and click OK.
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In the System Configuration window, click on the Startup tab.
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Click the Disable all button.
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Click on the Services tab.
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Click on the checkbox next to "Hide all Microsoft services", which will remove all of the Microsoft services from the Services list.
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Click on the Disable all button.
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Click OK.
You will then be prompted to restart the computer, which you need to do before proceeding.
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
Fullscreen mode will generally result in higher framerates than windowed modes. Beyond that, while in windowed mode a couple things can severely hurt in game framerate. Ensure the client window does not span multiple monitors in any way (even just an edge hanging onto another monitor). The impact of this is significantly greater when using multiple video cards to drive different monitors. Also ensure that the circular Windows start button on Vista and Windows 7 is not overlapping the client window, as this can have a significant effect on performance as well.
When running with multiple monitors, ensure that all monitors are running the same color depth (for example 32-bit).
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
Many hardware configurations support power saving modes in which the hardware is run at lower frequencies than it is capable of to conserve power (for example AMD's Cool and Quiet). These settings are generally changed in the BIOS, refer to your motherboard or system manual for information on how to change these.
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
Disabling any active sound post processing effects can result in improved framerates.
Hardware Limitations
Rift utilizes both the CPU and the GPU extensively. Running at high settings requires both components to have sufficient processing power, or else your framerate will become bottlenecked by the slower component. See above for more information on how to tune settings for a specific configuration.
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.
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.
