Bill Z Bubba's System performance Guide Rev 2
Good day, all. I had promised several folks that I would get around to this rewrite, so be prepared for a LOT of information. This guide is broken up into four sections.
Section One will cover MY computing philosophy when it comes to gaming, and will lay out the groundwork for WHY you should follow the other sections within this guide.
Section Two will cover Basic system cleanup and security. This section should improve performance and take minimal effort on your part.
Section Three will cover video driver optimizations and explanations of settings both in game and within the driver.
Section Four will cover Advanced system cleanup. This section is not for little wussies that are a-scareded of learning too much.
Let's begin!
SECTION ONE (Casual computing equates to a sub-par gaming experience)
A little history to get the ball rolling seems to be in order. I am a gamer. I am also addicted to the eye candy that has been rolling off the shelves in the past few years. The advances made in the 3D graphics community have been nothing short of phenomenal over the last decade. The technological dance between the hardware vendors and the software writers has taken us from Pong to the gloriousness of City of Heroes/Villains, F.E.A.R., and Far Cry.
Even early on, I found that my knowledge was inadequate to the task of keeping up with the accelerating evolution of the gaming industry. What could I possibly do to alleviate this problem? I became a tech. Not only has this kept me mostly up to date with the goings on of PC architecture, but it allowed me to fund my addiction.
The two now play hand in hand with my most favorite of hobbies, but there has been a price. I now REFUSE to game unless I've properly optimized every facet of the device which allows me to game. In order to have the performance, the eye candy and the lack of issues I have, sacrifices were made. Knowledge was gathered. And Bill's PC tweak guide is the product. Well, the real product is my game system. The guide is only to help others enjoy their gaming more.
My system:
The motherboard: ASUS P4C800-E
The video card: Xtacy Radeon X800XT AGP 256MB upgraded from a Radeon 9800 non-pro flashed up to pro
The ram: 2GB of DDR400 PC3200 4X512MB
The sound: Creative Audigy 2 with 5.1 speaker setup
The monitor: 24" widescreen LCD running at 1920X1200 upgraded from a 24" wide CRT that finally died on me
The hard drive: 10K RPM 80GB running on SATA
The case: CasEdge Diabolic Minotaur
I game on this system. I also use it to store my mp3s, with which I play my bass guitar whilst listening to them with WinAmp. NOTHING else occurs on my game system.
No anti-virus solutions, no software firewalls, no MS Office, nada, zip, nothing. If you wish to have one system that you do everything on, that's your choice, or your financial situation, but doing so is against my philosophy. I have a separate desktop for all my other computing needs. I advise, if at all possible, that you do the same.
The philosophy: If I'm going to game, I deserve the best that I can get out of the hardware that I can afford. We all deserve this, but ONLY YOU can make it happen.
Microsoft sure as hell won't help you, the vid card manufacturers want you to drop $500 every 4 months, 3rd party software vendors don't give a damn about your performance, so it's YOUR job to make things right.
If you are not prepared to learn a few things, and work hard for your gaming experience, quit reading now, go away and cease asking for help. You don't deserve it. I said, GOOD DAY, SIR!
Still here? Good, let's get busy.
SECTION TWO (Items every gamer should know
So your gaming PC drags, locks up, or isn't performing as it once did?
Well it's YOUR fault! At least partially.
Some notes about Windows XP. It sucks! But it's also the best Operating System (OS) Microsoft has come out with since DOS 6.2, so let's do what we can to make it a streamlined, properly functioning OS.
Basic Maintenance: (The following information is based on Windows XP with Service Pack 2. If you are not running this, or Vista, by now, you should really put some thought into upgrading.)
Update your freaking OS already. Windows Update exists for a reason. That reason being that Microsoft opens holes as often as they close them. However, do NOT enable Windows Update to run automatically as this is a performance drain. Every Friday night, before the happy weekend of gaming, bring up Windows Update from your programs list and download ALL Critical Updates. View the Optional and Driver Updates but only install the Optionals if you know they are relevant to you, and only install the Driver Updates if they have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with your video or sound cards.
Spyware and viruses are NOT your friends. Get rid of them. Matter of fact, stop doing stupid things to get them. Quit hitting the porn sites, quit clicking yes when a webpage asks you to install something, quit being so trusting. There are evil folks running amuck on this planet, and a great many of them have computers and company logos.
Download and install the following programs:
Ad-Aware from here.
Spybot from here.
These programs do NOT stop incoming garbage from getting on your system unless you purchase the full versions. I do NOT advise this, as allowing anything to run in the background degrades your system's performance. Run them both weekly at the minimum. A great time is Friday night right after you've installed all of MS's Critical Updates.
Keeping your system free of adware, spyware and bloatware will aid you greatly in the fight against viruses and security holes.
If you can't promise yourself to manually run a free virus check monthly, then install an anti-virus solution. AGAIN, I personally do NOT advise this, as the majority of AV solutions out there are bloated crapware that degrade performance more than they keep you safe. If you DO install one, disable it while gaming.
A little interjection here:
Norton and McAfee's Internet Security bundles are the most intrusive, system clogging, problem causing sacks of excrement on the face of the earth. Do NOT use these products. If you are TRULY worried about your internet security, you should buy a router with an internal firewall to place in between your cable/dsl modem and your systems. Windows Firewall is somewhat useless and problem causing as well, but if you refuse to get a router, enable it. If you have a router and have enabled its firewall, make sure that Windows Firewall is Off by going to Start/Control Panel/Windows Firewall.
Yes, there's too much junk running in the background of your OS and you need to get rid of it.
Back to the Start button, right click it and choose Open, then Programs, then Startup. If anything is in here, it's garbage. Delete it and close the window. Right click Start again and choose Open All Users, then Programs, then Startup. If anything is in here, it's garbage. Delete it and close the window. (These are just shortcuts to various executable files. Deleting them WILL not delete the programs that they are associated with.)
"But Bill! I use those programs!" Tough noogies. Start them manually WHEN YOU NEED THEM. Allowing them to start up with Windows does nothing but waste valuable system resources.
Reboot your system. Now run Disk Defragmenter. It can be found under Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. This may take 15 minutes. This may take 3 hours. Run it, let it finish. How often you run this is a personal choice. I run it every time I add or remove a game. Beyond that, I attempt to run it once a month.
Update your Video Card and Sound Drivers!
Step one is to download Driver Cleaner 3 from
here.
"But why do I need that, Bill?" Probably because you keep installing drivers on top of drivers and haven't properly cleaned up anything ever.
Step two is to get the latest version of your video driver.
Head back into Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and Uninstall every listing you find of your video driver. (ATI now makes this simple by adding the ATI Software Uninstaller. This yanks everything and prompts a reboot.) Reboot your system. As it comes back up, it may tell you that it is reinstalling your display adapter. Cancel out of this, twice if need be.
Now run Driver Cleaner and clean every instance of your video components that you see listed. (For ATI, you should be able to only choose ATI, ATI WDM and ATI Uninstaller.)
Install the latest version of your video driver.
Check the manufacturer's website for your sound card and see if they have anything new. If they do, grab them and get them installed the same way, unless all you are downloading is a patch to your existing driver. (Driver Cleaner can also be used to strip out Creative drivers.)
At this point, you should already notice improvements in the quality and performance of your system. Enjoy.
Optional: Because my system has 2GB of RAM, I have no need of a swap file. In my testing with CoH when I only had 1GB of RAM, I saw no errors without a swap file, but the general attitude is that killing off Virtual Memory should ONLY be done if you have MORE than 1GB RAM. To disable Virtual Memory/Swap File, go to Control Panel/System/the Advanced tab/the Settings button under Performance/the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory, click Change. For all drives, select No Paging File, and click the Set button. You will have to restart when finished.
If you REALLY want to see your system happy, let's move on to tweaking your settings.
SECTION THREE (Getting that video card to SMOKE (Metaphorically, of course, as actually causing your vid card to smoke is a BAD thing, mmmkay?))
A little general information:
If you are running on a CRT, I advise setting your refresh rate to 75Hz and at a resolution no lower than 1024X768. As monitor size increases past 17", so should your resolution.
If you are running on an LCD, you should leave the resolution at the factory set Optimized resolution and 60Hz refresh, because running at anything lower will cause an overall fuzziness to your images due to the way LCDs are manufactured.
The following instructions are written based on ATI's Catalyst Driver package 6.3 with the Catalyst Control Panel. If you are running an Nvidia card or you've chosen to go with the 3rd party tweaked Omega drivers, you'll need to locate these items on your own.
For explanations of the settings:
ATI folks go here.
Nvidia folks go here.
In Catalyst Control Center:
Under Display Options:
3d Refresh Rate Override: Same as Desktop
Under 3D settings:
Anti-Aliasing: 4X (Uncheck the Let Application Decide box)
Anisotropic Filtering: 4X (Uncheck the Let Application Decide box)
Catalyst A.I.: Disabled
Mimmap Detail Level: Full to Quality
Wait for Vertical Refresh: Always On
SmartShader: None
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
API Specific:
Direct3D:
Enable geometry instancing: yes
Support DXT texture formats: yes
Alternate pixel center: no
OpenGL:
Triple Buffering: yes
Force 24-bit Z-buffer depth: no
***READ ME!***
Under SMARTGART:
Fast Writes: Off (THIS IS VITALLY IMPORTANT TO YOUR PERFORMANCE.)
If you do not see the SMARTGART section, you probably have a PCI-E card.
***READ ME!***
SECTION FOUR (You want me to do WHAT?!?!?)
In this section, I will be sharing with you some great resources to study with, research issues with, and to simply bone up your knowledge with. I will also be taking you through a few items in the system registry to nuke, as well as a few services that can be done away with without issue.
The Windows XP Registry: This is not a place to be if you don't know what you're looking for, and it most CERTAINLY isn't a place to be mucking about if you don't know what to do with the items you have found.
That said, Let's Go Delete Some Garbage!
Click on Start, then Run. In the run box, type in regedit and hit Ok. Weclome to the registry editor. Do not fear, young readers! As long as you tough NOTHING but what I'm telling you to touch, all will be well.
But just in case,
read this Microsoft article.
Before following the rest of my instructions, to be the good techboy I'm supposed to be, I must advise making a backup of your system state as described
in this MS article.
Ok, now with that inanity out of the way...
Let's get to the two sections you want to look at.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion
Within these two paths, there are three items we are seeking. Run, RunOnce and RunOnceEx. When you click on the Run folder, items should pop up on the right side.
The only item that MUST remain on the right side is "(Default) REG_SZ (value not set)."
Everything else on the right side is something YOU will have to determine whether should be kept or deleted. In a nutshell, if you find that it is related to your anti-virus solution, your sound card or your video card, leave it alone. If it's NOT related to those items, you can right click the NAME of the key, and choose delete.
DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE IN THE REGISTRY BESIDES THE CONTENTS OF THESE 5 KEYS!
Do NOT delete ANYTHING from the left window.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\RunOnceEx
The CONTENTS will appear in the RIGHT window when you have Run, RunOnce or RunOnceEx HIGHLIGHTED on the right.
If you delete something you weren't supposed to, follow the instructions from the MS links above on restoring your system state.
WINDOWS SERVICES: Below is all I plan to tell you about disabling unnecessary windows services. The Services MMC can be found in Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services.
Here's one services guide.
Here's another.
Services that I would completely disable:
Automatic Updates
Error Reporting Service
Indexing Service
Messenger
Themes
CONCLUSION:
Game happy, or quit gaming.
