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In the Forums... |
Posted: May 7, 2000 Written By: Keith "Farrel" McClellan Video Driver Cont. To choose between the both of them, however, you can use the timedemo function. Simply load up the game with each driver, enable the timedemo function, and jump into the level (make sure it’s the same for both) and take note of the initial framerate (before play starts) – stick with the driver that has the higher score. I know, not the most scientific approach, but it works. Also pay attention to the average frame rate during play. To turn on timedemo mode, hit ~ to bring down the console. Then type timedemo 1. Video Preferences I was disappointed – at least with my video card, that the game wouldn’t allow me to go up above 800x600 resolution. That stinks, particularly because I get 75 fps at 800x600 – oh the joys of Glide. I would personally recommend any resolution in which you can maintain at least 45 fps. 30 fps is reasonable if there are a lot of people on the screen, but no lower than that. My personal feeling is that it’s better to have a high resolution and have to turn down some of the detail settings – but that is personal opinion. If you are running a card that doesn’t support the 32-bit color depth – enable it. I know that sounds weird but it doesn’t affect framerate at all but it does increase the visual quality (down sampling). If your card does support 32-but color in 3D, then I would have to recommend leaving it disabled unless you have frames to spare at your chosen resolution. I would recommend leaving all of the detail settings alone (they should all be set to high), unless the framerate is too slow at your chosen resolution – in which case you should try setting them down to medium. Before you do that though, I would honestly consider disabling Dynamic Lighting and/or Decals – Decals don’t hurt performance much but in some cases Dynamic Lighting can have a serious impact on framerates. The game most certainly won’t be as pretty if you disable Dynamic Lighting, but it will be much faster. The Min Desired Framerate setting is quite interesting – it is defaulted to 30 but I would recommend upping it to at least 45. If you feel like being adventurous, turn on the timedemo function and run through an entire level of the game. Make note of your average framerate for the level, subtract 15 and then round down to the nearest multiple of 15 (for me, with an average framerate of about 76 fps, I set the setting to 60) – this will make sure that the game doesn’t randomly start throwing out frames (due to VSync or whatever). Game, Input, and Network Preferences Most of the settings within the game preferences tab are personal taste items rather than anything truly important. However, I would recommend turning down the view bob to increase firing accuracy and enable dodging. You could also choose to disable local logging to slightly (very slightly) increase performance. |
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