So how the hell do I boost performance in CMx2???

[noxnoctum]

Cause a lot of times I'm getting in the 10-20 FPS range... REALLY bad.

Meanwhile I run Mass Effect 2 at medium-high settings and get 45+ FPS... and ME2 is a LOT prettier. So you'd think it would run worse.

Anyways... obviously CMx2 doesn't have multicore support so will upgrading my ram and video card do anything?? I have a Radeon 4650 (1 gig version) and 2 gigs of RAM.

[gibsonm]

Well a first step might be to ask in the Tech Support forum?

It maybe a few days before the guys who regularly check there notice this “out here”.

[ZPB II]

Setting CMSF process priority to High, ensuring it runs on the main core instead of wandering, letting your graphics card control anti-aliasing instead of CMSF itself and turning multisampling on for CMSF have been reported to increase performance.

[Pvthudson]

Turn off Shadows is the first thing you should do (ALT W)

[Erwin]

Given there are folks with really powerful machines having this problem when they should not, you may need professional help to debug or something.

Not sure what you vidcard is, but may also want to check if you need something better.

[Schrullenhaft]

The performance of CMSF can be quite different from most games since it is:

1) An OpenGL game, rather than DirectX. OpenGL doesn't get quite the support from driver developers as DirectX does (since most games on the market are DirectX).

2) CMSF renders a large open area compared to many games that are rendered with a limited view (FPS games come to mind). The camera abilities in CMSF allow for a much larger environment to be displayed than you'll find in a number of other games. So direct comparisons between the display performance of other games and CMSF may not be all that valid.

3) The LODs (level-of-detail models and textures) may not be as numerous as they need to be, along with other optimizations that can be pretty time consuming to create/code.

The performance can also vary quite a bit depending on your view and the number of buildings and the landscape detail present. Some maps are going to be definitely much slower than others to display because of their 3D mesh detail, along with the number of buildings, etc.

You can probably get a bit better performance with a newer video card, though a Radeon 4650 isn't too bad. However I don't know what video card will allow CMSF to reach the performance that you see in ME2 and other games.

Upgrading your RAM will probably have little effect on the performance of CMSF if you have 2GB already. It MIGHT help just a little, but you probably won't see an improvement to the level that you're seeking.

A faster CPU can help in some cases, especially once the action starts. How much of a difference it will make in the video performance of CMSF will vary.

Reducing graphics settings can definitely help performance. As previously mentioned:

Within the CMSF 'Options' panel:

Display Size: 'Desktop' is the easiest, but if your monitor can handle lower resolutions (without distortion), then lowering your resolution can help quite a bit, especially if you're running a high resolution right now. You can customize a 'single' resolution with the 'display size.txt' file with the format of:

1280 1024 60

That would be 1280x1024 at 60Hz.

Vertical Synchronization: Off (unless you have really bad 'tearing' of the the display).

3D Model Quality: 'Balanced' (you can definitely experiment here)

3D Texture Quality: 'Balanced' (again, another one to experiment with)

Antialias / Multisample: 'Off' (this can be 'forced on' with the Catalyst control center)

High Priority Process: 'On' (this may make mouse movement less precise)

Within the game you can turn OFF 'Shadows' (Alt-W), Trees (Alt-T) if there are many of them, Smoke (Alt-K) if you are seeing it.

You can also experiment with 3D Texture Quality within the game with the '{' and '}' keys.

From the Catalyst Control Center you can also make changes that can affect your video performance (the different versions of the control center will be laid out a bit differently):

Graphics > 3D >

Standard > check 'Use custom settings'

AA (Anti-aliasing): 'Use application settings' will utilize the CMSF control for this. You have more control over the quality and speed from the CCC settings for this, so you may want to uncheck this IF you want to use AA, which will slow down your frame rate.

AAA (Adaptive Anti-Aliasing): uncheck 'Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing' for better performance. This setting (when enabled) improves the AA for transparencies (which CMSF does have).

AF (Smoothvision, Anisotropic Filtering): check 'Use application settings' (which should disable it since CMSF doesn't control this). Enabling it slows down performance, but improves texture appearance in some views.

AI (Catalyst AI): this setting probably doesn't matter to CMSF since it probably isn't in AMD/ATI's database. Supposedly it will enable certain 'optimizations' for certain applications that it recognizes.

Mipmap: move slider to left ('Performance') will increase the speed. Moving slider to right ('Quality') will improve the appearance of some textures a certain distance from the camera.

In the past Nvidia has had better performance than AMD/ATI when it comes to OpenGL. That may still be true, but it may be hard to quantify since there are differences in hardware architecture too between the two brands.

[Erwin]

This may be of no value whatsoever, but I always increase my virtual memory settings and/or the amount of disk space the system is allowed to use.

Getting rid (or stopping them for automatically loading at start-up) of all other non-essential apps.

[LongLeftFlank]

Amen on killing the non-essential apps: HP and Itunes are particularly egregious latent memory hogs

[MikeyD]

Most performance hits for me have been fixable in my graphics card's options screen rather than the game options. If you've got all the bells and whistles turned on and running at max and its like dragging an anchor. I use two different setting for the game, one for making pretty screenshots and another for actually playing it at a decent speed.