FPS & ENB Strange & Good Results >>

[DondiWhite]

I have installed this game recently and new to it, I instantly searched for mods & tweaks as I found that it played sluggish on highest settings VSYNC on & off. So naturely I started to tweak

I have a basic Dual Core AMD 6000+ 3.2 GHZ with a GTX260 896 MB OC 216 card, all drivers up to date. So its not the best machine in the world running XP SP3. I have Skyrim/fifa13/Arma2 that run well on it so its not a complete dead horse. But this played pretty bad for me.

I checked FPS and was getting 25fps tops and very sluggish and jittery. I then noticed that if I injected the Poison 1.1 ENB files from this sites link (without pressing Shift+12 to switch it on) ... my FPS jumped to 35 fixed ... just by having it inject and not turn on as I said. So then after playing around I then managed to make a jump to a fixed 57 fps ... by switching player to low (or in other words as I can tell turning off player clothing physics). Then I switched off Vsync and got 67 fps

Without ENB's injection I would not be able to play, at the moment I have all courts with reflections/cyber faces/globals with shine/sweat etc and still get fixed 65 fps. I prefer VSYNC on becuase of tearing so even at 55 its smooth as silk.

So the only realkiller now is player set to high (clothing physics) I just wonder why the biggest hit for me now is simply that feature? Is the phyics engine based or using physics from graphics driver? I switched Nvidia from GPU to CPU physics and tested both but I think it made 1 fps difference.

So, anyone out there with sluggish fps, grab ENB but dont switch it on from here: Poison ENBSeries , and turn the setting for player to Low (its still looks and feels superb without clothing physics). I also have latest Nvidia drivers. No placebo effect, tried and tested with benchmark and comparing with Fraps (and without).

[DondiWhite]

System: Dual Core AMD 6000+ 3.2 GHZ with a GTX260 896 MB OC 216 card, all drivers up to date

Just as a further update I found the mlp111 enb & sj1414 fxaa settings here http://www.mediafire.com/?2g013765vvaia0g

I noticed th3 d3d9.dll was more up to date, I switched off most FXAA settings so only AA was set to on.

I found that using this dll version I could then switch on the ENB warm look with the extra AA SMAA smooth look with VSYNC on and still kept mid 50fps (the other one would lag with VSYNC on)

EDIT: You can also toggle this on and off using pause/break on keyboard, SMAA AA with VSYNC can cause a fps drop at baskets for me, so I simply turn this off now, although its set to 8x AA in game and is smooth enough anyway.

So for those wanting some extra eye candy with not alot of features switched off ...

mlp111 enb & sj1414 fxaa settings here http://www.mediafire.com/?2g013765vvaia0g << use this, in injFxaaSettings.h set:

#define USE_ANTI_ALIASING 1 <<< this on only
#define USE_PRE_SHARPEN 0
#define USE_BLOOM 0
#define USE_TECHNICOLOR 0
#define USE_TONEMAP 0
#define USE_SEPIA 0
#define USE_POST_SHARPEN 0
#define FXAA_QUALITY__PRESET 4

(Toggle this type of AA blur on and off with pause break if SMAA causing any lag)

Under in game video setting:

Turn everythign High & On apart from:

Windows Mode Off
Player low (clothing physics off)
Vsync On

And then press Shift+F4 to add the enb warmth one game has started.

NVIDIA driver 3D Settings for the exe of the game set:

Using latest WHQL driver 306.81

Everything set to "application controlled" apart from:

1440X900 Res 16:9 Resolution 60hz.

Anastropic filtering 8x
Maximim Pre Rendered Frames 3
Milti Display/mixed GPU acceleration Single Display Performance Mode
Texture Filter Quality: High Quality
Trilinear Optimisation (For Vsync on) On
Vsync Use the 3D Application settings

Also make sure game is connected to internet regardless of any server problems, I would have sluggish play and capped to 40 if game starts without net connection, soon as I connected online in game the game will pause/jolt (checking online) and then suddenly runs smooth and fps jumps to normal, must be copy protection or contant net check causing engine lag, weird but true for me.

After this go to graphics setting and benchmark test and keep checking results, for me after all this I get smooth play with minimal stutter & lag and can use nearly all shine globals/graphics updates for the game without much of a hit on FPS at all. Fps average for me now is 55 FPS solid in the benchmark, fraps/ENB fps count (ENB's you can toggle using * (start on numpad) ) reads as 60fps dropping to 54 in places.


I realise this isnt news to many regulars, but as I am a newcomer to the game itself and my system specs, just thought I would post it if anyone has had issues.

[Patr1ck]

I believe the cloth physics are rendered using your cpu. People with certain dual core AMD processors seem to have framerate issues with cloth physics turned on.

It appears you have discovered something. I'm not sure if this would matter on a Vista or a Windows 7 machine, but it seems as if the game likes the ENBseries DX9 wrapper as opposed to the game's implementation of DX9.

[DondiWhite]

Yes it deff likes to have that injected, DX9 with DX9 ENB I guess it would benefit.

On a more stranger note, the last few hours I have got bench marks at only 40 fps with very sliggish play, even though I had changed nothing. I scratched by head, went back to vanilla, re tested and I could not for the life of me get the FPS I had before.

I noticed as I started the game my Ethernet cable was out of modem so it was in offline mode. By accident I happened to be mid way through bench mark test as I re connected the modem cable .... all of a sudden the laggy benchmark at 40 fps did a large freeze (Game checking net connection as modem came online) ... then a slight jolt, and as if my magic the game was fluid again hitting 55 FPS!

So after a few tests, I found that if I start the game offline (no net connection) the game sits at 40fps and quite laggy, as soon as I re connect modem cable it jumps back to normal again!? If I unplug modem after this the entire game session will be fluid, or if modem is connected as I fire up the game.

So, why would I experience 10 fps frame drop and lag just because im offline? Anyone know what on earth that is? I can make it do this FPS jump in benchmark at will so its not a placebo or anything. Does the game constantly try to re connect if it cant see net connection and thats causing a bottleneck?

[Patr1ck]

That is quite possible. It could also be a form of anti piracy crippling the performance. I doubt the latter. Last year the game would completely freeze of it got disconnected. The game is probably trying to connect constantly, using up engine resources and causing the frame rate drop.

[DondiWhite]

Ok thanks Dpb, I dont have previous experience of the game to compare it against so that explains it.

You can imagine how freaked out I was after tweaking everything with mods and ENB etc and then starting to see fram drop and lag, you wont believe the things I tried to step back on what might cause it (replace settings, go back to vanilla, different ENB ... and then roll back of latest nvidia driver) .. only to realise it was all down to net connection

All good now though, back to the norm and I know what to do to fix it.