Increasing Framerate in Unreal
Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 7:03 pm
This little and easy tip will give you a significant performance improvement in Unreal as far as gameplay is concerned.
THIS IS FOR OPENGL USERS ONLY
If you don't have it, get it. You are missing out bigtime.
What are framerates and all this technical mumbo-jumbo? Well, FPS (Frames Per Second) is how quickly images are processed by your PC. Think of how they draw cartoons; one drawing at a time right? Then when you flip through the individual drawings quickly, it makes a semi quasi-video. Now think about the speed at which you do this. Slower would make it appear choppy and faster would make it smooth.
They say the human eye can only process around 60 FPS. Well this may be true in some situations, but certainly not in online gaming. All video cards have whats called VSync which is by default, enabled. This driver Syncs the framerate with the max "Refresh Rate" of the monitor you are using. My monitor is LED and limited to a 60Hz refresh rate, which is the standard for almost all LCD and LED monitors. CRT monitors (the big clunky one that weighs a 100 pounds, lol) can sometimes have refresh rates of over 100Hz. Do not worry about this aspect though, as you can "trick" it.
Now that that has been explained, it's time to make the modifications necessary to get the best performance out of your PC.
Step 1: Do a control. Go onto a server and hit Tab and type timedemo 1. Look at your average FPS as you move about the map, now you have a value to go by. To get rid of it, hit tab and type timedemo 0.
Step 2: Now hit Tab again and type Preferences. Once the window comes up, expand the Driver tree and make sure the following is correct:

While you are in the preferences window, perform the following Under the Rendering tab at the bottom:

Step 3: Exit Unreal, and navigate to your Video Card's main menu. Do the Following (may be different for older or newer cards/Drivers, but look and you'll see) ATI users, I don't know what you'll need to do.

Apply everything, double check blah blah, fire up the game. Enter a server, and hit Tab Timedemo 1. Check your FPS now, it should be twice or more of what it used to be. Be careful though, if it is jittery, play with the FrameRateLimit described in Step 2 (turn it down) if it runs smooth, you may be able to get even more out of it.
Here is my current FPS running Gold, 1024x768 pixels

THIS IS FOR OPENGL USERS ONLY
If you don't have it, get it. You are missing out bigtime.
What are framerates and all this technical mumbo-jumbo? Well, FPS (Frames Per Second) is how quickly images are processed by your PC. Think of how they draw cartoons; one drawing at a time right? Then when you flip through the individual drawings quickly, it makes a semi quasi-video. Now think about the speed at which you do this. Slower would make it appear choppy and faster would make it smooth.
They say the human eye can only process around 60 FPS. Well this may be true in some situations, but certainly not in online gaming. All video cards have whats called VSync which is by default, enabled. This driver Syncs the framerate with the max "Refresh Rate" of the monitor you are using. My monitor is LED and limited to a 60Hz refresh rate, which is the standard for almost all LCD and LED monitors. CRT monitors (the big clunky one that weighs a 100 pounds, lol) can sometimes have refresh rates of over 100Hz. Do not worry about this aspect though, as you can "trick" it.
Now that that has been explained, it's time to make the modifications necessary to get the best performance out of your PC.
Step 1: Do a control. Go onto a server and hit Tab and type timedemo 1. Look at your average FPS as you move about the map, now you have a value to go by. To get rid of it, hit tab and type timedemo 0.
Step 2: Now hit Tab again and type Preferences. Once the window comes up, expand the Driver tree and make sure the following is correct:

While you are in the preferences window, perform the following Under the Rendering tab at the bottom:

Step 3: Exit Unreal, and navigate to your Video Card's main menu. Do the Following (may be different for older or newer cards/Drivers, but look and you'll see) ATI users, I don't know what you'll need to do.

Apply everything, double check blah blah, fire up the game. Enter a server, and hit Tab Timedemo 1. Check your FPS now, it should be twice or more of what it used to be. Be careful though, if it is jittery, play with the FrameRateLimit described in Step 2 (turn it down) if it runs smooth, you may be able to get even more out of it.
Here is my current FPS running Gold, 1024x768 pixels
