improving performance with little sacrifice to graphics

[Peasant Phill]

I know that this has been asked before but (probably a lot) I want a better framerate.

What settings can I change to get a better performance without noticing it to much? For example turning of all shadows.

Oh and how do I turn off steam in the background, I heard that that helps to.

[Prussian to the Iron]

i reccomend, rather than listing everything you do not need, you instead set graphics down to 'Low', then test combinations of the stuff you may or may not want/need.

things i reccomend turning off:

heat bloom
fog effects
glints

things i reccomend turning on(at least the lowest setting)

shadows
anti-aliasing
depth of field


there are more, ill check my settings tonite

[pevergreen]

Steam can not be turned off, it needs to be running to be able to play E:TW. On average steam takes about 45mb of ram up, so its not exactly a resource hog.

As for things you want to increase performance, it depends. If your screen is showing a lot of men, the game needs to render them. Each step of graphics doubles the level of detail used in the model. The models are made at one level (Ultra) and details are just cut from them with each lower level of graphics used.

I don't have the game in front of me as I'm at work, but look for things like grass detail, building detail, Anti Ailising (spelling?)

[Prussian to the Iron]

i believe hes talking about something else. perhaps fog???

oh yes. grass detail shouldnt exceed low(i have it on none) and building detail looks about the same on any level.

[Daveybaby]

The only time steam will ever cause any performance issues is if it is updating other games while youre playing. If you dont have lots of games on steam then this is unlikely to be a problem, but if it does become a problem, you can always stop games from updating automatically.

[GFX707]

A quick fix that used to improve the performance A LOT and probably still does since the last patch is to load the game, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and close gameoverlayUI.exe.

Doesn't affect the graphics one bit and you should notice the improvement right away.

[Quickening]

A quick fix that used to improve the performance A LOT and probably still does since the last patch is to load the game, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and close gameoverlayUI.exe.

Doesn't affect the graphics one bit and you should notice the improvement right away.

Sadly the game refuses to minimise for me at all now.

[GFX707]

Sadly the game refuses to minimise for me at all now.

It seems to be happier minimising from the main menu (i.e before you load anything), try doing it from there.

[Prussian to the Iron]

it wont let me minimise either; i tried doing it from main menu and from campaign today, and it just sat there doing nothing. then i had to randomly click on the botom of the scren until i found the E:TW tab and it loaded back up.

oh:

i checked my settings; i have all lowest settings, except for 2X antialiasing, fog lighting effects, and heat distortion.

[GFX707]

Well, what I do to minimise it is run something minimal in the background like winamp or notepad, and then just alt-tab. If that doesn't work I CTRL-ALT-DEL.

[Quickening]

it wont let me minimise either; i tried doing it from main menu and from campaign today, and it just sat there doing nothing. then i had to randomly click on the botom of the scren until i found the E:TW tab and it loaded back up.

oh:

i checked my settings; i have all lowest settings, except for 2X antialiasing, fog lighting effects, and heat distortion.

Nah it's definately a problem with a the game. The way I get around it is by going to the graphic settings and telling it to run in a window, that allows me to click and minimise the game. It's a bit of a hassle but it's something.

[pevergreen]

If you want to be really firm, you shouldn't alt tab anyway.