Windows 7: How to get the most FPS from a game?

Evening all,

How do you manage to get over 60+ fps with smooth gameplay? Most monitors these days are only have 60hz refresh rates dont they? and as soon as you start going over that or disabling vsync do you not get annoying tearing effects on your screen?

I have been playing GTA 4 on max settings with my PII CPU at 3.8ghz and a 5850 GPU and even when i vsync the game to match my monitor at 60fps i still get the odd drop to 30fps. I would love to not have to enable vsync cos i feel my setup is good and could handle much more. I see lots of people saying they get 70-80fps in games.

For Me Consoles Are The Best Because Of The FPS

Turn You Windows To Basic Mode And Resolution To 800*600

Hiya craney5, I'm pretty sure that "tearing effects" only applies to older CRT moniters ( i could be wrong) as newer LCD's dont refresh in the true sense of the word. Have a read of this : How VSync works, and why people loathe it - [H]ard|Forum

so you could leave the vsync off and get higher FPS. I havent played GTA4 but i know its s very CPU,GPU and MEM intensive game, you would need a very high spec PC to get high FPS. That game even struggels on the PS3 at times.

Try a google search for "GTA4 optimal seetings" or something similar. I agree with xxbarel to set windows to "basicmode" before gaming as it frees up memory, I also disable any non-essential back ground services. Shadow settings can also draw a fair bitt of juice, try turnning them down a notch or even off. There's plenty of optimization or tweak guides around for ATI and NVID cards, just do a google search as well.

I play BFBC2 (85 - 145 FPS ) and have played with the vsync settings and there is a FPS drop with in on, but no improvement whatsoever in "eyecandy" so i leave it off

hope this helps

Thanks for that mate, i will have a read of the article you posted. I was thinking of using d3d overider to allow me to use triple buffering as i cannot see an option in my CCC, i was hoping that this could give me smoother gameplay with vsync enabled. I red that triple buffering only supports direct x games. What is the difference between direct x and open GL games?

DirectX and openGL are just the progamming interfaces that developers use write games on windows platforms. Directx is a Microsoft owned API ( application programming interface), while OpenGL is a standard which is "open" for use by any1. Yes tripple buffering allows your overall perfomance to improve when vsync is selected on. This option only works in OpenGL games, I think that GTA4 requires Directx?? Most games are these days.

edit: yeah you would need to use d3d to force tripple buffering if its a Directx game, it can cause mouse lag though so let us know how it goes

Have you ever tried pc gaming?

As long as the computer is powerful enough to handle gaming then gaming is sweet on pc. It doesn't matter whether you get 60 or 600 hundredfps.

I have a 360 too but never use it for anything other than bridging gap between comp and tv. PC gaming for me is the clear winner because the detail is so much more clearer and you can also tweak settings and there are lots an lots of add on packs for games for pc.

Sure, pc gaming is more expensive but the enjoyment tastes better.

By the way craney, maxing gta iv out on pc and expecting 60fps is an absolute no no, it's a badly ported game and there isn't a set up yet than can max out with over 50 fps, that's including sli top of the range cards.

GTX 480 can max out 60 fps, i dont know what high end cards you're talking about but my card is 50+ almost all the times.

Also 60fps/hz isn't where it all stops, apparently you've never seen 120hz and 120 fps gaming, it looks different and feels different, i'd say up to 300hz it improves, just because you can't see difference doesn't mean it's the same.
Eyes aren't made to watch blinking screens, now i dont know what's the max hz that eyes can notice but it's definetly not even 120hz, it's more than that.

Depends on the game but you could keep track of some of the crazy mods out there. I mean in some games mods that edit fires, explosions, traffic, weather affects etc. Some games have an options mods-console. For others I know a program called JSGME that helps install & track game mods, works great.

[QUOTE=RST101;887602]Amen to that. GTA4 would probably lag at max settings with distance maxed out even if I had two more HD5870s in x-fire... "optimized for use with future technology.." probably means that sometime around 2037 a graphics card will be made that can handle it.. what a load of crap.

It depends on the game too. With my SLI 480 setup I get a 120fps average in assassins creed, and there is no tearing at all, but in Singularity maxed out at 121 FPS (Engine Limit) I get lots of tearing, so it seems like it depends on the game/engine/fps-cap and so on.