Performance Tweaks & ATI Catalyst installation

[Adraeus]

Aside from the occasional crash and/or freeze, I've managed to get KotOR 2 to work nearly as well as KotOR. (KotOR worked perfectly for me with bare settings.) One of the few places that lags for me is the first location you travel to and that's most likely due to the poor level design and problems with the video performance when rendering trees and really long halls. If Fog of War existed in this game, I think many of the video performance issues would be resolved.

 

ATI Catalyst

Installation Procedure

• 1. Download the latest Catalyst software individually. DO NOT download the entire archive. You can find the individual files in the dialup users section of the appropriate driver download page on ATI's website.
  2. Uninstall the display driver, and CCC (or Control Panel.)
  3. Reboot to Safe Mode. (You can press/hold F8 before the black Windows loading screen to access the boot menu.)
  4. Use Driver (CAB) Cleaner to clean SP1.cab, SP2.cab, and/or driver.cab in order to prevent Windows from reinstalling older drivers.
  5. Use Driver Cleaner to remove leftover files. Delete the \ATI\ directory.
  6. Use "regedit" to delete registry entries related to 'ATI Technologies'.
  7. After ascertaining the nonexistence of any previous ATI driver versions, normal reboot Windows.
  8. Install WDM drivers (if needed), then display drivers, then CCC (or Control Panel.) Reboot as needed.
  9. You should now have a stable Catalyst install.
  

Download Driver Cleaner

 

Performance Tips

For the record, I don't have any problems with Dantooine. If you do, you may have Grass enabled, which degrades performance unless your system surpasses the system requirements by a multiple of two or more. Grass degrades performance in Neverwinter Nights too. If your system meets the minimum requirements for the game, try these settings.

 

Resolution: 800x600

Refresh Rate: Maximum

Texture Pack: Low

Enable Hardware Mouse

Enable Vsync

Disable EAX

Disable Emitters

Disable Frame Buffer

Disable Grass

Disable Shadows

Disable Soft Shadows

Disable Anisotropy

Disable Antialiasing

Disable Vertex Buffer Objects

 

Performance Settings (swkotor2.ini)

Add/delete entries per line as appropriate.

 

[sound Options] ; Possible performance tweak

Number 3D Voices=16

Number 2D Voices=24

 

[Graphics Options]

AllowSoftShadows=0

Anisotropy=0

Anti Aliasing=0

Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1

Emitters=0

Frame Buffer=0

Grass=0

Shadows=0

Soft Shadows=0

Texture Quality=0

V-Sync=1

[Haitoku]

Very good tips.

 

But... There is something very WRONG with this game coding and/or engine... I mean, it's not the most graphic intense out there. My Radeon x800xl EATS other games alive (Doom 3, HL2 and other OGL titles). For some reason though, Adding everything in this game, seems to decrease performance SOO much... It's insane.

[Bazooka]

Very good tips.

 

But...  There is something very WRONG with this game coding and/or engine... I mean, it's not the most graphic intense out there.  My Radeon x800xl EATS other games alive (Doom 3, HL2 and other OGL titles).  For some reason though, Adding everything in this game, seems to decrease performance SOO much... It's insane.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

HL2 is not OGL.....

[JamieKirby]

this makes little difference, i have way over the recommendations and i still get slowdowns in certain directions that are different in each area.

[Bazooka]

this makes little difference, i have way over the recommendations and i still get slowdowns in certain directions that are different in each area.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The problem is that not everyone has those slowdowns (I haven't, and so there are more people), so it's not solely the engine or the game that's responsible...

[Haitoku]

Very good tips.

 

But...  There is something very WRONG with this game coding and/or engine... I mean, it's not the most graphic intense out there.  My Radeon x800xl EATS other games alive (Doom 3, HL2 and other OGL titles).  For some reason though, Adding everything in this game, seems to decrease performance SOO much... It's insane.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

HL2 is not OGL.....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I just ment, other OGL titles run fine... Was not saying that hl2 was ogl.

[swaaye]

I usually use Driver Cleaner myself, but I doubt that it's necessary. Just using ATI's uninstall option in Add/Remove Programs should be more than enough. When you install the new drivers it will overwrite old files anyway. I don't think I've ever seen mixed up drivers with the current uninstallers ATI builds in.

 

Also, if you want to play with various OpenGL driver versions, you can copy the atioglxx.dll file from the windows/system32 folder. This is the OpenGL ICD (installable client driver). You can backup these files from various Catalyst installations. To use them just put them in the KOTOR2 folder renamed to OpenGL32.dll.

 

Should work. We used to do that with KOTOR1 so you could use the Cat 4.2 OGL ICD with later Catalyst drivers and not be stuck with the older drivers for other games.

[Adraeus]

Really, JamieKirby? These tweaks made a huge difference in terms of stability and playability for me. I don't think you should issue blanket claims like "this makes little difference." There are so many PC hardware configurations out there. I doubt LucasArts tested them all and I doubt you know them all.

 

Better safe than sorry, swaaye. The worst you'll lose is time spent using Driver Cleaner to be certain you have a clean install of the Catalyst software.