get the best performance out of Phase Shift

[asskickulater]

I've decided to make a basic guide on getting the best performance you can out of Phase Shift, many of these tricks will work with almost every game, home-brew, or commercial.


1)High Priority
my first one doesn't do much for Phase Shift itself, but it definitely helps in video backgrounds

heres what you do:
1) run Phase Shift, let it finish loading the main menu to avoid crashing.
2) Ctrl+Alt+Delete and bring up the task manager, right click Phase Shift in the applications tab and select "Go to process"(see screenshot 1) once it brings you to the process, right click, hover over priority. and select "high", DON'T select "realtime" its more then likely to make it slower.. if it don't give you an instant BSOD(see Screenshot 2)


Screenshot 1


Screenshot 2

3) click Phase Shift which has been running silently in the background as you did this.
4)(optional) make a.bat file that will run PS in high priority on its own and run it from that, bat files are basically just text files that give a list of commands for your PC to do, heres how to create one, create a .txt file and open it up. paste this into it:

SPOILER: Click to show

@echo off
cd /d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Phase Shift"
start /high Phase_Shift.exe

you will need to change the path to the path of your Phase Shift installation, also, you will have to change the exe name to "Phase_Shift.exe" if there is no .exe displayed then don't worry about it, that just means you have file extestions hidden. (BAT files can't have spaces in them) ALSO, make sure you save as "All Files (*.*) and that you add ".bat" to the end of what you name it (Example: Phase Shift.bat)

I also want to note that if your using fraps to record, then only high priority it if your using a video background, it will drop your framerate more then usual, but will allow the background video to run smoother, theres no advantage in recording with high priority in any other mode

2)Compatibility
this ones rather simple, but it makes a bigger difference then you think, heres the step by step on this one:
1) find your executable file (.exe) and right click it and select "Properties" which will pop up a window that looks something like this:


once you got that window open, click the compatibility tab at the top and check the following:
"Disable visual themes"
"Disable desktop composition"
"Run this program as an administrator"

now just hit "Apply" and then "OK" and your done!


3)Defrag!!!
A lot of people seem to neglect this one, defrag your hard drives every week or so, it will help a lot more then you think!

4) run on RAM
ok, this one I wont go to much into detail on, if you guys want more to, let me know and I will (this may be a tutorial on its own)

google a program called "ramdisk" basically what this program does is make a partition of your RAM that you can use as a hard drive, this is one I dont recommend unless you have atleast 4 gigs of RAM, you should monitor how much RAM PS uses when running with task manager and make sure your not taking RAM that it's using. whats the benefit of doing this? RAM has a massively faster read/write time then any hard disk drive out there, if you have enough RAM, then its well worth it

this is all I have for now, if anyone has other little tricks that they know of that can improve performance let me know in a reply and I'll post it up

I'm wondering if this can get a sticky? as it can be quite useful in the future and getting buried and all is no help! lol

5)Proccesses
this one is more along the lines of freeing up resources that windows will eat regularly. To get to the processes open up task manager with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, or if you have Windows 7 you can right click the task bar and select "Start task manager"

here's a list of processes that I've found that you can close that will gain you slightly better performance (these really wont make huge differences, but they can help if your really struggling)

A) explorer.exe
this process handles pretty much the entire desktop UI, once disabled your task bar will disapear, you can re-enable it by opening up the task manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) and selecting "new task(see screenshot 5 below)"



B) dwm.exe this process controls all the fancy animations and is basically the eye candy in windows 7, turning this off will set the theme to basic and disable all animations in windows, this process can only be turned back on by resetting your system

I'm still experimenting with these, so i may add more, also, if someone wants to make up a batch file template to make windows kill and restart these processes that would be awesome! (raynebec )

6)Game booster

ok, well first off:

Game Booster 3 is capable of delivering the best gaming experience to you even if you have an old PC. One-click to boost PC performance is not enough, Game Booster 3 also allows you to tweak your system for top PC performance. By temporarily shutting background processes and unnecessary Windows services, cleaning RAM, and intensifying processor performance, Game Booster 3 concentrates every little system resource for gaming only.

Game Booster 3 is compatible with PunkBuster, Cheating-Death, VAC, and any other anti-cheat software.

now despite how fake this sounds (trust me, I didn't trust it either) but after I decided to try it, I found that it really does give a considerable amount of performance, I've had some games gain 15 fps from this software, I definately recommend this, hopefully it helps others out!

download it here: www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html

7)Gboost
pointed out to me by Chunkatuff, is essentially the same thing as gamebooster but without as many features/options this one excels more in raw performance

A Free windows game booster service that allows you to temporarily strip down your slowing PC to its bare essentials for gaming. This improves the overall speed of your game including frame rate drops and lag spikes as well as alt tabbing out of games faster and generally more responsive gaming.
This works due to your PC no longer having any unnecessary overhead running tasks not required whilst gaming. Helps your CPU, RAM and also your connection to the internet.
Return your PC back to its former self by either pressing the Restore button or it happens automatically on your next reboot.
Completely safe with no permanent changes made to your PC.

Download here: www.gzero.com/gboost/home.html

[raynebc]

You can launch programs from batch files with the start command even if they have spaces, you just have to enclose the executable in quotation marks. However there is a catch in that the first set of quotes the command receives is used as the title of the command window that is opened, so the batch file could become:

start /high "" "c:\program files\phase shift\phase shift.exe"

[kamakazikilla]

nice!! i'll definately have to change some of these tomorrow morning

[asskickulater]

Added a couple processes to kill.

[asskickulater]

new trick added:

6)Game booster

ok, well first off:

Game Booster 3 is capable of delivering the best gaming experience to you even if you have an old PC. One-click to boost PC performance is not enough, Game Booster 3 also allows you to tweak your system for top PC performance. By temporarily shutting background processes and unnecessary Windows services, cleaning RAM, and intensifying processor performance, Game Booster 3 concentrates every little system resource for gaming only.

Game Booster 3 is compatible with PunkBuster, Cheating-Death, VAC, and any other anti-cheat software.

now despite how fake this sounds (trust me, I didn't trust it either) but after I decided to try it, I found that it really does give a considerable amount of performance, I've had some games gain 15 fps from this software, I definately recommend this, hopefully it helps others out!

download it here: www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html

[deimosstation]

In addition, you can use a black image as your background (select 2d or it won't work) This is a HUGE FPS boost also.

[asskickulater]

well, yea these are just basic tricks to squeeze more fps out of any game, not neccesarily for people with slow computers.

[Oddbrother]

Wouldn't turning off VSync or turning on VSync and Triple Buffering work as well?

[asskickulater]

well, generally, if you cant stay over 60 fps then you probably dont want vsync on, it mostly depends on how much tearing bugs you, and how much your fps fluctuates when not locked at a solid fps, vsync will basically lock your fps at either 30, 60, 120, 240 fps, meaning, you drop one frame below 60, then your dropping strait down to 30 fps same goes with 120 and 240, now I'm hoenstly not sure what triple buffer does exactly, never looked into it.

so if your reading this thread because your computer cant run PS very well on the lowesr settings, then yes, vsync is probably a good idea to turn off, but this thread isnt really about in game settings as those would normally be the obvious ways to get more fps if your running a really old system, these are more along the lines of ways to make the game run a bit better after you've tried all the settings the game has to offer, and the majority of these tricks can help with comercial games and such

[asskickulater]

7)Gboost
pointed out to me by Chunkatuff, is essentially the same thing as gamebooster but without as many features/options this one excels more in raw performance

A Free windows game booster service that allows you to temporarily strip down your slowing PC to its bare essentials for gaming. This improves the overall speed of your game including frame rate drops and lag spikes as well as alt tabbing out of games faster and generally more responsive gaming.
This works due to your PC no longer having any unnecessary overhead running tasks not required whilst gaming. Helps your CPU, RAM and also your connection to the internet.
Return your PC back to its former self by either pressing the Restore button or it happens automatically on your next reboot.
Completely safe with no permanent changes made to your PC.

Download here: www.gzero.com/gboost/home.html

[Inf4mousKid]

240 frs is good