Performance anxiety

Nowadays, I turn off all shadows and reflections, and depending on the game, I turn off post processing and ambient occlusion as well. These options make screenshots look GORGEOUS, but in motion? I don't really notice unless I stop and just take in the scenery, which I don't often do in a game nowadays. However, I almost always turn on V-Sync and and Triple Buffering. Makes the game so much smoother.

For a game, I turned off shadows and it looked BETTER, and my FPS went from 30 to 60.
 
Maybe I'm just overreacting, I used to have to adhere to system specs nearly religiously whenever a new PC game came out, my last PC was an Athlon 1 Ghz CPU, Geforce 6000 series, 1 gig of RAM...even if I met the system specs sometimes the game would run like shit. Now I'm running a 2600k, 16 GB of RAM, and a GTX670 so I don't worry about it anymore but I still remember....oh yes. That PC died in I think 2007, BTW.

Buuut....OP, if you wanna squeeze a few more FPS out of The Third, I think turning Post-Processing down would be your best bet. That'll eliminate your slowdown for sure and from what everyone's saying you won't have issues with 4 either, thankfully. See if you can turn Ambient Occlusion off entirely, it's barely noticeable (At least for me), it just makes shadows a bit crisper, I think? Either way AO is a resource hog, same with post-processing if you go overboard with it.
 
HugeSaintsRowFan said:
Boaster! :p
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It should run just fine on my system as well.

Processor Information:
Vendor: AuthenticAMD 4100
Speed: 3600 Mhz
4 logical processors
2 physical processors
HyperThreading: Supported

Network Information:
Network Speed:

Operating System Version:
Windows 7 (64 bit)
NTFS: Supported
Crypto Provider Codes: Supported 311 0x0 0x0 0x0

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

DirectX Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll
Driver Version: 9.18.13.2619
DirectX Driver Version: 9.18.13.2619
Driver Date: 13 July 2013
Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
DirectX Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0x1189
Number of Monitors: 2
Number of Logical Video Cards: 2
No SLI or Crossfire Detected
Primary Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Desktop Resolution: 3840 x 1080
Primary Display Size: 26.65" x 15.00" (30.55" diag)
67.7cm x 38.1cm (77.6cm diag)
Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
Primary VRAM: 2048 MB
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x

Sound card:
Audio device: Speakers (Realtek High Definiti

Memory:
RAM: 12271 Mb
 
mogwaimon said:
Maybe I'm just overreacting, I used to have to adhere to system specs nearly religiously whenever a new PC game came out, my last PC was an Athlon 1 Ghz CPU, Geforce 6000 series, 1 gig of RAM...even if I met the system specs sometimes the game would run like shit. Now I'm running a 2600k, 16 GB of RAM, and a GTX670 so I don't worry about it anymore but I still remember....oh yes. That PC died in I think 2007, BTW.

Buuut....OP, if you wanna squeeze a few more FPS out of The Third, I think turning Post-Processing down would be your best bet. That'll eliminate your slowdown for sure and from what everyone's saying you won't have issues with 4 either, thankfully. See if you can turn Ambient Occlusion off entirely, it's barely noticeable (At least for me), it just makes shadows a bit crisper, I think? Either way AO is a resource hog, same with post-processing if you go overboard with it.
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And turn off shadows. Those things hog a lot of resources, too.
 
But I like pretty! :P

Alright, alright...yeah, seems like it's worth crossing my fingers. From what I've gleaned here I think I can probably get away with running SRIV, even if it means turning things down a little more. I've been repeatedly surprised with what my system can handle this past year. I can't believe I can run the new Tomb Raider on the settings I do...I think Windows 8 means a lot; a friend of mine couldn't play Arkham City at all on his rig, then got Win8 and suddenly it ran fine (then he bought a sexy video card too and laughed maniaclly at all the games that gave him fits).

I'm too big a fan of the mod community here, especially with the amazing support from Volition, not to want to get in right at the start! :D
 
iDEATH said:
But I like pretty! :p

Alright, alright...yeah, seems like it's worth crossing my fingers. From what I've gleaned here I think I can probably get away with running SRIV, even if it means turning things down a little more. I've been repeatedly surprised with what my system can handle this past year. I can't believe I can run the new Tomb Raider on the settings I do...I think Windows 8 means a lot; a friend of mine couldn't play Arkham City at all on his rig, then got Win8 and suddenly it ran fine (then he bought a sexy video card too and laughed maniaclly at all the games that gave him fits).

I'm too big a fan of the mod community here, especially with the amazing support from Volition, not to want to get in right at the start! :D
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By the way, unless your video card is VERY, VERY, VERY old, keep all drivers (not just video ones) up to date. That helps a lot. And some graphics options just aren't worth it. I play my games on the smallest 16:9 resolution, and it doesn't look that much worse than 1920x1080 resolution; I turn off shadows, ambient occlusion, and post-processing, and in same cases, the game looks better (and almost always runs faster). The only option I turn on very high is AA (Anti-Aliasing) and AF (Anisotrophi Filtering).
 
HugeSaintsRowFan said:
By the way, unless your video card is VERY, VERY, VERY old, keep all drivers (not just video ones) up to date. That helps a lot. And some graphics options just aren't worth it. I play my games on the smallest 16:9 resolution, and it doesn't look that much worse than 1920x1080 resolution; I turn off shadows, ambient occlusion, and post-processing, and in same cases, the game looks better (and almost always runs faster). The only option I turn on very high is AA (Anti-Aliasing) and AF (Anisotrophi Filtering).
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Don't worry, this ain't my first rodeo! :D I keep my drivers updated like it's a religion. My regular PC maintenance regimen also includes things like registery cleaners and defragging too, to keep things running as smoothly as I can.

I played around with my SRIII settings for ages in order to get them where I felt a nice healthy balance between pretty and performance.

Also, cancelled my xbox pre-order with EBgames and fired up the SRIV pre-order on Steam! Thanks tons for the input guys. :)
 
Yea, shadows can be costly too but he's got them on low and he's only experiencing slowdown when going fast. He can afford to have them on, I think, but if it comes down to it...Yea, turn off shadows.
 
mogwaimon said:
Yea, shadows can be costly too but he's got them on low and he's only experiencing slowdown when going fast. He can afford to have them on, I think, but if it comes down to it...Yea, turn off shadows.
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It's not just that, I don't know notice shadows being on, and when I do notice, it's actually like "ugh, what the heck is that ugly blackish thing over there?" I turn them off, and depending on the game, it looks better. I'm not talking about SR3, either. I'm just talking about in general. I never got the whole thing about "shadows". If spend your time in a game looking at shadows, you're playing the game wrong (unless it's a Stealth game).
 
I play every game like it's a stealth game! lol

Seriously, I'm the opposite. Things just look off without shadows.

If I find I need to tweak performance I'd probably just try dropping the anti-aliasing down to 2x and tone done the post-processing. But I don't need to worry about that for 3 more weeks. 3 more long, long weeks... *cry*
 
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