How I got SL to play in ULTRA on a 5 year old 3870 with 20-60FPS...

[Andre54 Hax]

MY SPECS:
4GB DDR2 Ram (800mhz)
AMD Phenom 2 X4 955 OC'd to 3.5GHZ
ATI 3870
460GB HD @ 7200RPM W/ 191GB'S free
1x 23" monitor @ 1920x1080
1x 17" monitor @ 800x600

 

For comparison, the ATI 3870 can be compared to the 8800/9800GT line.

Essentially running SL at 1920x1080 or in a screen of similar size with graphics on low I was getting around 15-30fps. What I did was made my second monitor 800x600 in windows which was the smallest it would go and put SL in that monitor. I was able to switch the graphics to Ultra and only lowered the viewing range to the smallest possible. I now get, in full screen on the 17" monitor, 20-60FPS and everything looks STUNNING! The game also runs very smooth. 

I think they may have to do with the issue dealing with some people claiming to have really high FPS under high settings with the same hardware as other folks who are getting much less FPS and are banging their head against the wall trying to figure out why.

Essentially the resolution the game is playing at makes a hugedifference. More than anything else. This is true with modern games and very true with SL.

The trick here is to lower the screen res of the monitor itself to small size. This works well if you have two monitors because I can forever keep the second in a smaller res and put SL into that screen.

With 4X anti-aliasing things did not look that blocky.

 

[Andre54 Hax]

*I had to lower the draw distance to the lowest but everything still looks good and it renders enough objects around me to not be a bother.

[Andre54 Hax]

Test with 1024x768 and the FPS stayed about the same! looks even better and less pixelated

[Andre54 Hax]

Tested with about 14 people @ REZ Nightclub and was averaging about 14-20 FPS @ 1024x768 in full screen on second monitor

[Andre54 Hax]

One other thing I noticed is that even at 10-15FPS it still runs much smoother at Ultra than when running at 10-15 fps running on Low.

[Orca Flotta]

Get a better computer!

[Curious Hazelnut]

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. I run SL in a window instead of full screen because I noticed how much it affects FPS. But I like the big fully screen view with all the window clutter behind it. I'll have to fiddle with screen rez on my 2nd monitor and see if I can do something similar.

Thanks. :-)