Desktop resolution & game performance

[VTOLfreak]

I used to run a GF5600U. And now I have just upgraded to a GF6800U.

I didn't get the performance increase in KotoR2 I expected from the new card. (HL2 and UT2K4 blew the roof of my house ofcourse )

It was even worse then before, even 800x600 was unplayable. (Think Kotor2 at 5fps)

 

So I did the usual:

-uninstall & reinstall drivers (77.76)

-uninstall & reinstall game

-mess with BIOS options and Windows settings

-Change setting, test new setting, and repeat until you've tried everything.

 

Here's what I found:

Normally I run my desktop in dualview mode with 1280x1024.

I had to switch back to 800x600 desktop resolution.

(I tested with Dualview on and off, didn't appear to make any difference.)

 

I also experimented with the AGP aperture in the BIOS:

With the aperture disabled the game wouldn't even run. (HL2 and UT2K4 ran fine without AGP aperture.)

I found that the optimal size was 32MB. Anything higher slowed down the game noticeably.

 

I can now run the game at 1280x1024@60Hz with 4xAA and 16xAF. The game doesn't even hiccup anymore.

Strange thing is that none of my other games noticed any impact of the changes I made.

Everytime I changed something I did not only test KotoR2 but also HL2 and UT2K4.

Both were not affected by different desktop resolutions and AGP apertures.

 

So why is KotoR2 so sensitive about this? Sloppy coding?

 

Anyway: If you get thesame problems as me you might want to see if lowering your desktop resolution helps.

And you might notice improvement from changing AGP aperture size too.

(You don't need the AGP aperture anyway with a 256MB videocard, HL2 and UT2K4 proved that on my system)