Hi all! Today is a very interesting article about fine tuning graphics cards for high performance computer games. Friends, agree that after installing the video card driver, you once opened the “Panel Nvidia control"and seeing unfamiliar words there: DSR, shaders, CUDA, sync pulse, SSAA, FXAA and so on, we decided not to go there anymore. But nevertheless, it is possible and even necessary to understand all this, because performance directly depends on these settings. There is a misconception that everything in this sophisticated panel is configured correctly by default, unfortunately this is far from the case and experiments show that correct setting rewarded with a significant increaseframe rate.So get ready, we will understand streaming optimization, anisotropic filtering and triple buffering. In the end, you will not regret it and you will be rewarded in the formincrease FPS in games.
Setting up an Nvidia graphics card for gaming
The pace of development of game production is gaining more and more momentum every day, as is the exchange rate of the main currency in Russia, and therefore the relevance of optimizing the operation of hardware, software and operating system has risen sharply. It is not always possible to keep your steel stallion in good shape through constant financial injections, so today we will talk about increasing the performance of a video card through its detailed tuning. In my articles, I have repeatedly written about the importance of installing a video driver, so , I think you can skip it. I'm sure you all know perfectly well how to do this, and all of you have already installed it a long time ago.
So, in order to get to the video driver management menu, click right click mouse anywhere on the desktop and select “Nvidia Control Panel” from the menu that opens.
Then, in the window that opens, go to the “Manage 3D parameters” tab.
Here we will configure various parameters that affect the display of 3D images in games. It is not difficult to understand that in order to get maximum performance from the video card you will have to significantly reduce the image quality, so be prepared for this.
So, the first point " CUDA - GPUs" Here is a list of video processors from which you can select and it will be used by CUDA applications. CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing architecture used by all modern GPUs to increase computing performance.
Next point " DSR - Smoothness“We skip it because it is part of the settings for the “DSR - Degree” item, and it, in turn, needs to be disabled and now I will explain why.
DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution)– a technology that allows you to calculate images in games at a higher resolution, and then scale the resulting result to the resolution of your monitor. In order for you to understand why this technology was even invented and why we don’t need it to get maximum performance, I’ll try to give an example. Surely you have often noticed in games that small details such as grass and foliage very often flicker or ripple when moving. This is due to the fact that the lower the resolution, the smaller the number of sampling points for displaying fine details. DSR technology can correct this by increasing the number of points (the higher the resolution, the greater the number of sampling points). I hope this will be clear. In conditions of maximum performance, this technology is not interesting to us as it consumes quite a lot of system resources. Well, with DSR technology disabled, adjusting the smoothness, which I wrote about just above, becomes impossible. In general, we turn it off and move on.
Next comes anisotropic filtering. Anisotropic filtering - algorithm computer graphics, created to improve the quality of textures that are tilted relative to the camera. That is, when using this technology, textures in games become clearer. If we compare antisotropic filtering with its predecessors, namely bilinear and trilinear filtering, then anisotropic filtering is the most voracious in terms of video card memory consumption. This item has only one setting - selecting a filter coefficient. It is not difficult to guess that this function must be disabled.
Next point - vertical sync pulse. This is synchronizing the image with the monitor's refresh rate. If you enable this parameter, then you can achieve the smoothest possible gameplay (image tearing is eliminated when the camera turns sharply), but frame drops often occur below the monitor’s scan rate. To get the maximum number of frames per second, it is better to disable this option.
Pre-prepared virtual reality footage. The function for virtual reality glasses is not interesting to us, since VR is still far from everyday use by ordinary gamers. We leave it at the default - use the 3D application setting.
Background lighting shading. Makes scenes appear more realistic by softening the ambient light intensity of surfaces that are obscured by nearby objects. The function does not work in all games and is very resource intensive. Therefore, we take her to the digital mother.
Shader caching. When this function is enabled CPU saves shaders compiled for the GPU to disk. If this shader is needed again, the GPU will take it directly from disk, without forcing the CPU to recompile this shader. It's not hard to guess that if you disable this option, performance will drop.
Maximum number of pre-prepared frames. The number of frames that the CPU can prepare before they are processed by the GPU. The higher the value, the better.
Multi-frame anti-aliasing (MFAA). One of the anti-aliasing technologies used to eliminate “jaggedness” at the edges of images. Any anti-aliasing technology (SSAA, FXAA) is very demanding GPU(the only question is the degree of gluttony). Turn it off.
Streaming optimization. By enabling this feature, an application can use multiple CPUs at once. If the old application does not work correctly, try setting the “Auto” mode or disabling this function altogether.
Power management mode. There are two options available - adaptive mode and maximum performance mode. During adaptive mode, power consumption depends directly on the GPU load. This mode is mainly needed to reduce power consumption. During maximum performance mode, as you might guess, the highest possible level of performance and power consumption is maintained, regardless of the GPU load. Let's put the second one.
Anti-aliasing – FXAA, Anti-aliasing – gamma correction, Anti-aliasing – parameters, Anti-aliasing – transparency, Anti-aliasing – mode. I already wrote about smoothing a little higher. Turn everything off.
Triple buffering. A type of double buffering; an image output method that avoids or reduces artifacts (image distortion). If we talk in simple words, then increases productivity. BUT! This thing only works in conjunction with vertical sync, which, as you remember, we disabled before. Therefore, we also disable this parameter; it is useless for us.
Hi all! Today is a very interesting article about fine-tuning your video card for high performance in computer games. Friends, agree that after installing the video card driver, you once opened the “Nvidia Control Panel” and saw unfamiliar words there: DSR, shaders, CUDA, clock pulse, SSAA, FXAA, and so on, and decided not to go there anymore. But nevertheless, it is possible and even necessary to understand all this, because the performance of your video card directly depends on these settings. There is a misconception that everything in this sophisticated panel is configured correctly by default, unfortunately this is far from the case and experiments show that the correct setting is rewarded with a significant increase in frame rate. So get ready, we will understand streaming optimization, anisotropic filtering and triple buffering. In the end, you will not regret it and you will be rewarded with an increase in FPS in games.
So, in order to get to the video driver management menu, right-click anywhere on the desktop and select “Nvidia Control Panel” from the menu that opens.
Then, in the window that opens, go to the “Manage 3D parameters” tab.
Here we will configure various parameters that affect the display of 3D images in games. It is not difficult to understand that in order to get maximum performance from the video card you will have to significantly reduce the image quality, so be prepared for this.
So, the first point " CUDA - GPUs" Here is a list of video processors from which you can select and it will be used by CUDA applications. CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing architecture used by all modern GPUs to increase computing performance.
Next point " DSR - Smoothness“We skip it because it is part of the settings for the “DSR - Degree” item, and it, in turn, needs to be disabled and now I will explain why.
DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution)– a technology that allows you to calculate images in games at a higher resolution, and then scale the resulting result to the resolution of your monitor. In order for you to understand why this technology was even invented and why we don’t need it to get maximum performance, I’ll try to give an example. Surely you have often noticed in games that small details such as grass and foliage very often flicker or ripple when moving. This is due to the fact that the lower the resolution, the smaller the number of sampling points for displaying fine details. DSR technology can correct this by increasing the number of points (the higher the resolution, the greater the number of sampling points). I hope this will be clear. In conditions of maximum performance, this technology is not interesting to us as it consumes quite a lot of system resources. Well, with DSR technology disabled, adjusting the smoothness, which I wrote about just above, becomes impossible. In general, we turn it off and move on.
Next comes antisotropic filtration. Antisotropic filtering is a computer graphics algorithm created to improve the quality of textures that are tilted relative to the camera. That is, when using this technology, textures in games become clearer. If we compare antisotropic filtering with its predecessors, namely bilinear and trilinear filtering, then antisotropic filtering is the most voracious in terms of video card memory consumption. This item has only one setting - selecting a filter coefficient. It is not difficult to guess that this function must be disabled.
Next point - vertical sync pulse. This is synchronizing the image with the monitor's refresh rate. If you enable this option, you can achieve the smoothest possible gameplay (image tearing is eliminated when the camera turns sharply), however, frame drops often occur below the monitor’s refresh rate. To get the maximum number of frames per second, it is better to disable this option.
Pre-prepared virtual reality footage. The function for virtual reality glasses is not interesting to us, since VR is still far from everyday use by ordinary gamers. We leave it at the default - use the 3D application setting.
Background lighting shading. Makes scenes appear more realistic by softening the ambient light intensity of surfaces that are obscured by nearby objects. The function does not work in all games and is very resource intensive. Therefore, we take her to the digital mother.
Shader caching. When this feature is enabled, the CPU saves shaders compiled for the GPU to disk. If this shader is needed again, the GPU will take it directly from disk, without forcing the CPU to recompile this shader. It's not hard to guess that if you disable this option, performance will drop.
Maximum number of pre-prepared frames. The number of frames that the CPU can prepare before they are processed by the GPU. The higher the value, the better.
Multi-frame anti-aliasing (MFAA). One of the anti-aliasing technologies used to eliminate “jaggedness” at the edges of images. Any anti-aliasing technology (SSAA, FXAA) is very demanding on the GPU (the only question is the degree of gluttony). Turn it off.
Streaming optimization. By enabling this feature, an application can use multiple CPUs at once. If the old application does not work correctly, try setting the “Auto” mode or completely disabling this function.
Power management mode. There are two options available - adaptive mode and maximum performance mode. During adaptive mode, power consumption depends directly on the GPU load. This mode is mainly needed to reduce power consumption. During maximum performance mode, as you might guess, the highest possible level of performance and power consumption is maintained, regardless of the GPU load. Let's put the second one.
Anti-aliasing – FXAA, Anti-aliasing – gamma correction, Anti-aliasing – parameters, Anti-aliasing – transparency, Anti-aliasing – mode. I already wrote about smoothing a little higher. Turn everything off.
Triple buffering. A type of double buffering; an image output method that avoids or reduces artifacts (image distortion). In simple terms, it increases productivity. BUT! This thing only works in conjunction with vertical sync, which, as you remember, we disabled before. Therefore, we also disable this parameter; it is useless for us.
Accelerate multiple displays/mixed GPUs. The setting defines additional options for OpenGL when using multiple displays and multiple video cards. Single display – single display performance mode respectively. Two or more – multi-display performance (or compatibility mode in case of incorrect operation of applications). Two or more video cards – compatibility mode.
Texture Filtering – Antisotropic Filtering Optimization. Enabling the option will lead to a slight deterioration in the picture and an increase in performance, which is exactly what we need.
Texture filtering - quality. Allows you to control Intellisample technology. This technology is designed to improve the quality of anti-aliasing of scenes with partially transparent textures. We turn it to minimum, that is, set it to high performance mode.
Texture filtering - negative detail level deviation. A technology that allows you to display textures in applications with more contrast.
Texture filtering - trilinear optimization. Enabling this option allows the driver to reduce the quality of trilinear filtering to improve performance.
This concludes the performance tuning of the Nvidia video driver.
If during battle the FPS on your laptop is always too low, we suggest following these steps:
I. Make sure that the computer is suitable for system requirements.
II. Set a high-performance energy plan.
III. Disable all system and Internet programs that reduce performance.
IV. Check how many video cards are installed in the laptop.
V. Switch the video card to discrete.
Va. Instructions for Nvidia video cards.
Vb. Instructions for AMD video cards.
VI. If all else fails, create a support ticket.
I. First, make sure your laptop is compatible.
II. High performance energy plan.
1. Click "Start".
2. Go to Control Panel > System and Security.
3. Select "Power Options".
4. Set to "High performance". Adjust your monitor brightness if necessary, as brightness may change when you switch performance.
III. Disable all performance-reducing systems and Internet programs
Antiviruses (as a last resort), clients for downloading files (for example: uTorrent, Download Master, Zona, FlashGet and others), programs providing text and voice communication(for example: Skype, ICQ), close the browser and others, unnecessary applications. Especially in this situation, it is worth highlighting the antivirus, since during the game it checks various files and this loads the system to a certain extent.
IV. To find out the number of video cards on your laptop, follow these steps:
1. Click the Start button, enter the word “device” (without quotes) into the search bar and select “Device Manager” from the list of results.
If two display adapters are listed, it means your laptop supports switching between graphics cards.
If there is only one display adapter in the list, most often the laptop does not support such switching.
V. Switching video cards
So, we have determined that the laptop meets the system requirements of the game, can switch between video cards, and has the correct power plan. Now you need to correctly configure the video card for the game, since, most likely, the laptop automatically uses the built-in Intel video card and this causes a decrease in FPS. To use a discrete graphics card, you must follow these instructions:
Va. Control PanelNvidia. For video cardsNvidiaGeForce
If your system has a video cardAMDRadeon or onlyIntel, then go to section Vb.
Make sure that the latest video card drivers are installed on your laptop Nvidia GeForce. To install/update drivers, the manufacturer recommends using the GeForce Experience program, which monitors the release of a new driver for your video card and automatically updates it. After installing the driver through GeForce Experience, be sure to restart your computer.
Nvidia GeForce video cards are configured through the Nvidia Control Panel.
To open this panel, right-click on the desktop and select “NVIDIA Control Panel” in the pop-up window.
1. In the Control Panel, go to the "Manage 3D Settings" tab. In Global Settings, set the Nvidia processor as your preferred processor and click Apply.
2. Go to the " tab Software settings". In the first step, click Add, then Browse. Locate the Castle.exe file (located in the folder with installed game PrimeWorld\Castle\Castle.exe) and PW_Game.exe (located in the game installation folder PrimeWorld\PvP\Bin\PW_Game.exe), then click "Add selected program".
In the second option, select "Nvidia High-Performance Processor" from the drop-down menu.
Important! After adding Castle.exe, be sure to click "Apply", then add PW_Game.exe and also click "Apply".
Restart your computer and launch the game. If you do not notice an increase in FPS or it is not significant, then follow these steps:
Launch Nvidia Control Panel. Go to the "Adjust Preview Image Settings" tab, select "Custom Settings with Focus on:" and drag the slider all the way to the left until "Performance" appears. Click "Apply", restart your computer and launch the game.
Vb. ATI Catalyst Control Center. Forvideo cards AMD Radeon
If your system only has a video cardIntel, then go to section VI.
Before starting the settings, make sure that the latest drivers for your laptop are installed. AMD video cards Radeon. To install\update drivers, download the utility to determine the most suitable drivers for your system AMD Driver Autodetect from the official AMD website. The utility does not require installation - just run it and it will automatically offer to download the necessary driver. After installing the driver, be sure to restart your computer.
To change the video card switching settings in the ATI Catalyst Control Center, follow these steps:
1. Click the Start button and enter the text CCC (in the English layout) in the search field, then select CCC - Advanced from the list of results:
2. From the Catalyst Control Center menu, select Switchable Graphics.
3. Select Browse to search for the executable file for the application you want to configure. In our case it is executable files Castle.exe (located in the game installation folder PrimeWorld\Castle\Castle.exe) and PW_Game.exe (located in the game installation folder PrimeWorld\PvP\Bin\PW_Game.exe).
The changes you make will be applied immediately. Restart your computer and launch the game.
Don't forget to finish your work unnecessary programs at the time the game starts.
If after following the suggested instructions the FPS level does not change, then switch the game to windowed mode and lower the graphics settings to minimum.
VI. If the instructions did not help increase FPS
Create a request with the support service, immediately attaching a file and detailed description problems (under what conditions does subsidence usually occur, does the sound freeze along with the picture, and so on). Also indicate which instructions you have already completed.
How to configure a video card?
Each PC user, by simply adjusting the characteristics of the video card, can improve its performance and image quality on the screen, and change the resolution.
Video card detection
If you do not understand which video card you are using, then you need to clarify its name:
- To do this, open Device Manager.
- Find the “Video adapters” item and expand the list by double-clicking on the line name. The name of the sub-item is the name of the video card installed on your personal computer.
- Today, the most common video cards are Nvidia and Radeon.
Setting up an Nvidia video card
If you decide to figure out how to configure an Nvidia video card, then initially you need to right-click on the desktop, and then select “Nvidia Control Panel” in the window that opens. Now select "Manage 3D Settings". If you do everything correctly, you will see a window in which you need to set the following settings:
- GPUs - all;
- texture filtering - disable;
- triple buffering - disable;
- texture filtering (quality) - maximum performance;
- anisotropic optimization - disable;
- trilinear optimization - disable;
- vertical sync pulse - adaptive;
- acceleration of various monitors - single display performance;
- PhysX - central processor;
- anti-aliasing-transparency - disable.
Next, you need to click the “Apply” button. This way, numerous changes will be able to take effect. You should also pay attention to the fact that certain items presented above may be missing (it all depends on the version of the video card). However, you should not worry about this, since the settings for different video card models may vary slightly.
Such changes guarantee an increase in productivity of approximately 30-40%. This way, you can work more efficiently with 3D graphics, watch movies or play modern games.
Setting up a Radeon video card
Radeon graphics cards, like Nvidia's, can also be tweaked to improve their overall performance. This is quite easy to do. To get started, open the “Display Properties” tab, find “Settings” and select “Advanced”. A window will then open allowing you to configure Radeon video card:
- First set up OpenGL. Open the appropriate tab. Check the “Special settings” checkbox.
- Set the Anisotropic Filtering parameter to 16x. If you are using a video card based on R3xx chips, then it is additionally recommended to use the “Quality” mode. It provides the ability to apply trilinear and anisotropic filtering in parallel.
- Then set the SmoothVision anti-aliasing technology to values depending on the power of your PC. Before tuning your Radeon graphics card, be aware that this setting has the greatest impact on performance in 3D programs.
- “Sharpness Level” and “Texture Preferences” - set the values to maximum. Disable vertical sync.
- Next, configure Direct. Go to the appropriate tab. Click Compatibility Settings.
If you plan to improve the performance of video adapters based on Radeon 7 xxx, 9100, 9200, then you need to do the following:- disable 32-bit depth support;
For all other video cards:- enable support for DXT texture formats;
- disable alternate pixel center.
- Additionally, to configure the video card, it is recommended to open the “VPU Recover” tab. Next to “Enable VPU Recover” check the box.
Please note that to more effectively configure the video adapter, you can use specialized applications, which are commonly called tweakers.
Thanks to them, you can increase the frequency at which the memory and adapter core operate. In addition, you can set special parameters so that all this is done in automatic mode when the personal computer is turned on.
However, do not forget that it is necessary to increase the frequency little by little. As practice shows, the optimal step is a value of three to five megahertz. To prevent damage to the video card, after each change it is recommended to check the stability of its operation in 3D programs and games.
If you do not have a built-in video card, then most likely it belongs to either AMD (ATI Radeon) or Nvidia.
Video cards are used to better display and work with graphics. In particular, this is a special topic for gamers and gamers, because... How you play games and which ones depends on the characteristics of the video card.
In this article, I focus specifically on how you can improve the performance of a video card by adjusting standard utilities.
You can find out for yourself.
For games there is such a thing as FPS. Simply put, this is the number of frames per second. It's kind of throughput Your video card. The higher the frame rate (FPS), the better the picture and the game (video) as a whole will become. FPS is not mentioned in the video card specifications. By adjusting the video card you can just increase the FPS.
Before you start setting up, you should install the included software on the video card.
Configuring an AMD (ATI Radeon) graphics card for acceleration in games
Right-click anywhere on the desktop and select AMD Catalyst Control Center(the name may be slightly different (for example Catalyst(TM) Control Center) depending on the software version and drivers)
Next, on the right, select “Standard View”
Go to the "Games" section
Select "Game Performance"
Uncheck "Apply custom settings" and move the slider to the left, towards performance
Now in the "Smoothing" section, uncheck both checkboxes and move the cursor to 2X
In the "Smoothing Method" section, move the slider to Performance
The "Anisotropic filtering" section is the most important. Uncheck "Use application settings" and move the slider towards performance.
Now select "Advanced View"
And on the left go to the Games section -> 3D application settings
Here you can configure it both for all games and for each one separately (see the Add... button), which is convenient, for example, when graphics are very important for a certain game.
In general, the recommended parameters here will be:
SMOOTHING
Antialiasing Mode - Override Application Settings
Sample smoothing - 2x
Filter - Standard
Smoothing Method - Multiple Sampling
Morphological filtering - Off.
TEXTURE FILTRATION
Anisotropic Filtering Mode - Override Application Settings
Anisotropic filtering level - 2x
Texture Filtering Quality - Performance
Surface Format Optimization - On
FRAME RATE CONTROL
Wait for vertical update - Always off.
OpenLG Triple Buffering - Off
TESSELATION
Tessellation Mode - AMD Optimized
Maximum Tessellation Level - AMD Optimized
Now what about if your window is a little different. For example, if the video card is not of new generations. For example this:
Select "Advanced" and click Next, agreeing to the notification:
At the top left click on “Graphics” and select 3D
We go to a window in which we configure everything in the same way as described above by moving through the tabs.
You can also go directly to the “All” tab and set the necessary settings there. Only then the picture will not be visible.
You can also create a profile (top right "Settings -> Profiles -> Profile Manager...") to use it and switch between them.
Configuring an NVIDIA graphics card for acceleration in games
We also click on the Desktop and select “NVIDIA Control Panel”
Texture filtering (negative LOD deviation) - On.
Texture filtering (three-line optimization) - On.
With these settings, we have reduced the quality of graphics and now the video card will not waste its resources on it, but will have more performance. The fact that the picture quality has become worse will sometimes not even be noticeable.
If you don’t have any items or the settings window is different, then look for yourself how to get to the necessary settings. It is impossible to guess who has which utility, but in general, the video card settings for acceleration in games are similar for everyone.