I love it when hardware and software meet in the middle.
by AC - permalink
I think I may have finally found the perfect set-up for GTA San Andreas for my PC. Before upgrading my CPU, something about the way the game handled the in-game shadow and fog effects forced me to run with the "visual fx quality" set to low to get over 45 fps at any resolution. It's probably the 1MB L2 cache, but whatever the reason (and I don't really care), with my new 4000+ I can hover right around 60fps with any fx quality setting. Unfortunately, my cheap and rather shitty monitor can only manage a 60Hz refresh rate at 1280x1024, which makes enabling vertical sync, which I almost always do in all my games, not very effective, as the framerate keeps jumping back to 45.
But I found a lovely solution. In a game like San Andreas, with rather low-quality textures and low-poly models, dropping to 1152x864 makes no difference at all during gameplay. You do lose some clarity and aliasing becomes more pronounced, but the upside is my monitor can hit 75Hz at 1152, which means I can turn of v-sync and get very little noticeable tearing because the framerate, even with that visual fx setting turned all the way up to "very high," stays well over 60fps almost all the time now. The only slow-downs are in the middle of Las Venturas, for whatever reason, but even then it's only in the 45- to 60-fps range.
To sum up. In-game, all settings maxed, except resolution at 1152x864, and AA at "1," which means 2x. This is very low, obviously, but moving up to 4x doesn't look much better and it's dramatically slower. Hardware side, anisotropy is at 8x, and refresh rate forced to 75Hz (after checking that my monitor can support said refresh at said res). End result: seamless framerate way over 60 90% of the time with virtually no evident tearing, and no jarring fps switches from 60 to 45 to 30 and back, while the game looks damned good compared to the console versions. And keep in mind, high framerates means easier gameplay.
I should have bought a new CPU a long time ago.
by AC - permalink
I think I may have finally found the perfect set-up for GTA San Andreas for my PC. Before upgrading my CPU, something about the way the game handled the in-game shadow and fog effects forced me to run with the "visual fx quality" set to low to get over 45 fps at any resolution. It's probably the 1MB L2 cache, but whatever the reason (and I don't really care), with my new 4000+ I can hover right around 60fps with any fx quality setting. Unfortunately, my cheap and rather shitty monitor can only manage a 60Hz refresh rate at 1280x1024, which makes enabling vertical sync, which I almost always do in all my games, not very effective, as the framerate keeps jumping back to 45.But I found a lovely solution. In a game like San Andreas, with rather low-quality textures and low-poly models, dropping to 1152x864 makes no difference at all during gameplay. You do lose some clarity and aliasing becomes more pronounced, but the upside is my monitor can hit 75Hz at 1152, which means I can turn of v-sync and get very little noticeable tearing because the framerate, even with that visual fx setting turned all the way up to "very high," stays well over 60fps almost all the time now. The only slow-downs are in the middle of Las Venturas, for whatever reason, but even then it's only in the 45- to 60-fps range.
To sum up. In-game, all settings maxed, except resolution at 1152x864, and AA at "1," which means 2x. This is very low, obviously, but moving up to 4x doesn't look much better and it's dramatically slower. Hardware side, anisotropy is at 8x, and refresh rate forced to 75Hz (after checking that my monitor can support said refresh at said res). End result: seamless framerate way over 60 90% of the time with virtually no evident tearing, and no jarring fps switches from 60 to 45 to 30 and back, while the game looks damned good compared to the console versions. And keep in mind, high framerates means easier gameplay.
I should have bought a new CPU a long time ago.
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