[wtfisgoingon]

Hello everyone,

I have been experimenting with various settings and tweaks, mostly googling and trial & error. I found quite a few of these to help with various games, including A-10c. I just used these last night to help a friend I've hooked onto A-10c solve his stuttering issues and so I thought I would share what has worked. If you are having stuttering issues, or just oddball problems and haven't tried any of these tweaks I recommend all of them. Everything is easy enough to undo if it doesn't help but I have a feeling it will help a few people here. Some may not apply to you however I feel they are all worth looking into and trying.

BIOS:

Disable HPET (Got an Asus board? HPET is forced on. Use TimerResolution as a fix)
Disable CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)
Disable EIST (SpeedStep)
Disable Cool'n'Quiet
Disable Hyper-Threading

TrackIR:

• Update your TrackIR to the latest version (5.1.3 Final March 18/11): http://media.naturalpoint.com/softwa....1.3.Final.exe

Notes from the TrackIR website:

• TrackIR 5 cameras with serial 155662+ require software version 5.1+ or 4.1.038+

• TrackClip PRO requires 4.1.029+

• For 64-bit games use:
5.1.3+ or 4.1.038 beta 3+

• For 64-bit Windows use:
5.0+ or 4.1.027+


• Many people have found that they had stuttering issues using TrackIR via a hub or other connection. Try to connect TrackIR directly to a usb port on the motherboard. In other words TrackIR really uses a lot of power so its important that the port its plugged into is able to handle it.


Install Intel Chipset Drivers:

•If you have an Intel Motherboard, head to device manager, open up "System Devices' & 'Universal Serial Bus Controllers'. Check the driver dates of anything that starts with 'Intel' and if you find they are dated from 2006 then you should update them.

You can try installing the drivers normally, however make sure to check afterwards to make sure those drivers were actually updated.

If they are not (very common) then you need to use a couple of tricks to get things to properly update because it seems the Intel Chipset install is *mentally challenged* so here is how:

Download newest chipset drivers: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sear...90&FamilyId=40



1. Open Properties of Setup.exe



2. Then you select VISTA SP2 compatibility mode and 'run as administrator' *Note: You can try skipping this step first. If it hangs/doesn't install then use this step and it should work for you*



3. Open a command prompt as Admin



4. Navigate to where Setup.exe is located



5. Run Setup.exe with command line: -Overall

This should update everything properly, but check afterwards via device manager. If it fails, recheck the steps and you may need to use the VistaSP2 step

DPC Latency:

Check your current DPC latency:http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

If you find your DPC latency is high, just keeping this program open while gaming can help (just run and select "Maximum" keep open in background: http://www.lucashale.com/timerresolu...Resolution.zip

Note: TimeResolution program will show you the current DPC latency when its run, so its faster and easier to just grab this program to test your DPC latency and adjust it. The free one works all the way to Win7 64.

ATI users:

• Set Anti-Aliasing & Ansiotropic Filtering to *APPLICATION CONTROLLED*

• Set MipMap Detail level to High Quality

• Anti-Aliasing Mode to Performance (Multi-Sample AA)

• In CCC make sure that "Disable AMD CrossfireX Power Settings" is checked.

• DO *NOT* use "edge-detect" AA filter (even if set to Application-Controlled)

• Kill processes MOM.exe and CCC.exe before gaming.

• Disable/Uninstall ATI HD audio (Unless you are using HDMI)

• Tesselation OFF (Uncheck both boxes, slider to far left)

• Disable CATALYST A.I - You must follow instructions below to disable Cat A.I. The slider settings are for enabled only, they've made it harder to disable it but here is how with latest drivers:

* Close down CCC.exe and MOM.exe via Taskmanager
* Navigate to <username> \AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles
* Open Profiles.xml with Notepad
* Alt + F and search for "Catalyst"
* Change Value Enable to Disable for Catalyst A.I
* Save
* Restart


Nvidia users:

• If you are using single monitor, select single monitor display mode

• Render ahead frames set to 0 (from default 3)

• Uninstall NVIDIA STEREOSCOPIC 3D (unless you use it)


DCS: A10-C GUI settings:

HDR: Turn this off for a nice performance boost, and quite a few people have found it to look better with it off.

MSAA: Try 2x or Off.

Water: Low or Medium. This has a large effect on FPS

CiV Traffic: Off.

Shadows: Try High setting. Yes, higher seem to work better than lower in a lot of cases.

TSAA: Off

HeatBlur: Off

Cockpit Displays: 512 or 256. Do not use 'every frame'

Clutter/Bushes: 0

Trees: 1500

Overheating VideoCard and/or CPU:

Check and make sure your videocard and CPU is not overheating or getting close to overheating which creates all types of strange things. Here is a link to a free well known program that is simple to use and will let you monitor your temps. Directly on that page you can see the settings screen. Simply check ATI or NVidia and run it, you will be able to keep an eye on them.

http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

Disable your page file (If you have 6GB+ Ram):





******************************
Once you have done all of the above, rerun the windows assessment tool via a cmd prompt: winsat formal -restart clean

Why rerun Windows System Assessment Tool??

Quote:
Originally Posted by TwL
This is standard Windows Performance test with cleanup previous editions (== NOT the same as you would run regular WinSAT/Performance Testing) > in terms you are telling your windows 'I got better performing driver now' without this no drivers will perform correctly. This function is also capable of disabling your entire CrossfireX systems and is also the one thing which has huge affect to drivers, if not completed & it will automatically degrade all hardware unless passed clean through. You should consider this as your biggest problem in entire installation of any driver.


Let it run and once its done, go for a fly and give it a try! (heh)


Please note: I didn't create or invent any of these tweaks nor am I trying to take credit. I just found these helpful and did not see them listed here on the forums, the tweaks that are already posted here I tried not to include. Just hope this helps someone even a little bit.

[Le0kong]

I can vouch for disabling C1E on the BIOS, did wonders for reducing stutters in both DCS and GTAIV. Cool'n'Quit i didn't notice much difference through.

Thanks for the info, will try the others later.

[keithb]

Agreed about C1E, haven't got FPS figures (I was trying to address slow load times) but its definitely much smoother in flight with C1E off.
Cheers,
Keith

[MadTommy]

This must be important.. its all in big red font

Thanks for the info.

[acerus77]

Thanks for the advice! Helped me a lot.
I just found out that enabling the Catalyst AI improved my frames a lot.
I had it always disabled coz in the Betas it runs only smooth without it.
HD4850 Catalyst 11.2

[Mustang]

I believe this link provides much newer Intel chipset drivers than the ones listed above

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...19597&lang=eng

[rexehuk+]

On another note for ATI users.. disable the ATI HD AUDIO device in Device Manager... I've found that gives performance gains (never looked into why). Obviously if you're using HDMI audio from your card then keep it on.

[wtfisgoingon]

Thanks for the file update Mustang! I've edited it so its included in the first post now.

Rexehuk: Thanks I didn't even install mine since I don't use it but its worth adding for sure!

[Hellfire257]

This helped a lot! Thanks for this.

[wtfisgoingon]

Glad many people are finding this somewhat helpful