Performance tip?

[Megalos]

Ok, I just disabled all the ETW gfx settings that I can customize by my nvidia control panel and turned them on, on the control panel.

Loaded up the game, and saw an fps improvement of about 35fps, exited game, and upped the settings, tried ingame and I am getting better fps with higher settings than I was using the ETW gfx settings and it looks a hell of a lot better!

This may be worth trying on your PC too. Try it out and let me know your results!



Instructions:

Nvidia users

right click your desktop background and select the nvidia control panel.

go to the "manage 3d settings" tab/selection on the left of the screen.
On the "antialiasing-mode" drop down box select "overide any application setting".
Then choose your "antialiasing-setting" (2x, 4x, 8x etc).
Choose your "antisotropic setting" (4x, 8x, 16x)
Choose your "vertical sync setting" (force on).
Click "apply" in the bottom right corner of the window.


(it's been tested by ATI users, and it's been found that the results are poorer than the ingame settings. sorry guys)
ATI USERS (courtesy of mrhenrik)

Rightclick on your desktop, go to Catalyst(TM) Control Center. (if it's not there, download it)

If asked, use the advanced version of the control center.

On the left hand menu, go to "3D".
Choose "All Settings".

Here's the options we're interested in:
Anti-Aliasing - deselect the box tagged "application settings", choose your own settings.
Antrosopic Filtering - same deal.




Load up Empire and disable those settings in the gfx menu.





Mega

[Martin N]

What graphics settings did you customize ? interesting you saw such a big improvement, guessing the graphics quality slipped a bit though ?

[Megalos]

What graphics settings did you customize ? interesting you saw such a big improvement, guessing the graphics quality slipped a bit though ?

Nope it improved alot! I changed anti aliasing, Antisoptropic filtering, vert sync. I'm pretty sure the ETW AA is borked now!

[Mediteran]

how do i do it exactly, how do you disable empire settings?

[Megalos]

how do i do it exactly, how do you disable empire settings?

From the game option menu. Right click your desktop and find your gfx control panel from there.

[centurie]

i use ATI card...but it runs great anyway...but i will try that out with the ccc and let you know...and AA works as it should with ATI i have it set to 4x

[Zhangir]

can u explain carefully step by step for noobs?

[k_raso]

can u explain carefully step by step for noobs?

Please? I really didn't understood much on your first post, but am very interest in knowing more

[Martin N]

You can right click your panel, performance, image settings, then click high performance, instead of high quality, then go to AF, click off.

[Megalos]

can u explain carefully step by step for noobs?

Sure.

Ok, right click your desktop background and select the nvidia control panel or right click your ATI icon near your clock in the bottom right hand corner.

For Nvidia users, go to the "manage 3d settings" tab/selection on the left of the screen. On the "antialiasing-mode" drop down box select "overide any application setting". Then choose your AA setting (2x, 4x, 8x etc). Choos your anti sotropic setting also and the vertical sync setting too. Load up Empire and disable those settings in the gfx menu.

I'm not sure of the exact way to do this on the catalyst panel for ATI cards, can someone with an ATI write up some instructions please?

[Theseus1234]

so basically you changed the global settings in the nvidia control panel...? i am thouroughly confused, but i'm gonna try it out anyways and see what happens
right now i'm gonna change vertical sync to on force on, anisotrpoic filtering to 2x, and AA to multisampling and turn those options off in game to see if there are performance increase (if that's what i'm supposed to do)
wish me luck!

[Remo]

I will test this out a little bit later.

[Sorkenlol]

How do I do it in catalyst? I've tried using ATI's own AI and AF but I don't think it works, I don't see any visual improvement in games when I do this so I reckon I'm doing something wrong.

[Archimonday]

I don't know if its the settings which are increasing your Frames per second, or that its the override that is giving your GPU more to do, and making it run faster. Overriding the settings could be freeing up the software and placing that burden on the GPU instead, this is also true for sound, where a dedicated sound card will give your games far better performance than an Onboard setup.

[priam11]

There should be a mode option under Global Settings that say "Override any appilcation setting'. I have had it on all the time so I don't know if I would notice any difference.

This is for Nvidia but I can't think ATI would be that differnt.

[Theseus1234]

ok i did it with my nvidia 8400 GS and it worked great! previously, i was only capable of running the game on low settings with no AA and bilinear anisotropic. now i can run it with medium settings and i get a slightly improved performance! +rep!

[mandalore9]

Step by step guide for noobs PLOX.

edit: I have an ATi Card

[Mikhail Tomasovic]

+rep this is good for those of us with the gtx cards...

[Megalos]

Good news!

Could someone wirte some instructions for how to do this for ATI cards please? I will add it to the first post and rep you.

[Tom Servo]

Havent tested this yet but it has worked for me in the past. The thing is, the nvidia AA settings override the game's AA so that the whole screen is antialiased, including the menus, so while the game AA might be more accurate, it might also be highly unoptimized.
Another tip you might want to try is setting the audio output to Mono ingame, big difference.