GUIDE: Tweaks to make the game run MUCH better!

[El Asso Wipo]

I'm not sure if many people have seen this Reddit post, but it has a few .ini tweaks that basically make the game MUCH more playable/smooth: https://www.reddit.com/r/insurgency/comments/acgp9m/tweaks_and_optimal_sandstorm_settings_for_higher/

It takes my game from 42-75 fps to 68-112 fps. Just in case anyone is too lazy to check the site themselves, I'll post most of the post here below.

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Before you continue, you might want to remove all your files from this folder (replace UserName with yours):
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Insurgency\Saved\Config\WindowsClient\

This removes all your previous tweaks and in game settings. The files are re-created once you run the game again. There was some talk here earlier that some old settings might still prevail from the beta times and people claimed their performance was boosted by removing these and reapplying their own settings, thus getting rid of all the old, non-relevant settings that might hurt your performance.

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Quality settings:
All quality settings @ Very High except for Shadows, which are on High.
TAA antialiasing (see tweaks)

Advanced settings:

Frame rate smoothing: Off
Frame Limiter: Off (or to your monitor's refresh rate to avoid tearing)
Motion blur: Off
Scope setting: Normal
Dismemberment: On
Ragdoll count: Medium
Foliage Interactions: On
Super Sampling: Off
Ambient Occulsion: Off
Anisotrophic Filtering: 16x
Tesselation: On
Screen Space Reflections: High
Dynamic Shadow Resolution: 512x512
Cascaded Shadow Map Resolution: 512x512
Texture Streaming Pool: High / manual tweak, read further
Keep Loaded Textures: Off

See how my shadow related settings are tuned down a bit - the impact on overall peformance is huge, but I fail to see a relevant change in picture quality while aiming for those sweet heads.

EDIT: As /u/Hyperbowleeeeeeeeeee stated in his comment, the shadow resolutions are system specific. Try out different values regarding those two settings!

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Tweaks:

All .ini files can be found from a path simliar to: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Insurgency\Saved\Config\WindowsClient\

EDIT: Disclaimer about editing .ini files: You can make them read only so that they won't get overwritten by the game or updates (haven't done this myself). However it's not really recommended as some updates are supposed to overwrite your .ini files. Be ready to reapply these changes if they go missing and performance drops! However after each update it's encouraged to try out the performance without these tweaks (or even removing them if they still persist) - some day the game will be so optimized that these won't be needed anymore. Also, if you make ANY changes to ANY of your settings in-game, it will change these tweaks, so you'll have to go back and reselct a preset quality and reapply the settings and tweaks.

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Texture Streaming tweaks to Engine.ini, credit to /u/LolSomeDude77 for providing these earlier on this sub.

[TextureStreaming]
BoostPlayerTextures=1.0
AllowStreamingLightmaps=False
r.Streaming.DropMips=0
r.Streaming.LimitPoolSizeToVRAM=0
r.Streaming.MipBias=0
r.Streaming.UseAllMips=1
r.Streaming.UseMaterialData=1
r.Streaming.UseNewMetrics=1
r.Streaming.UsePerTextureBias=1

As /u/LolSomeDude77 described, the texture streaming seems to be a big pain in the ♥♥♥ right now. These tweaks had a positive impact on my performance as well.

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Further texture streaming tweak to GameUserSettings.ini:

If you have a higher end GPU with plenty of VRAM, you might want to utilize as much of that VRAM as possible. This tweak here might help you out.

EDIT: Be ready to re-adjust this value every now and then as changing certain options (like binds) can overwrite this change with the default value. Thanks /u/LightsOut5774 for bringing this up!

Find a line similiar to this:

OverrideOptions=(("r.MotionBlurQuality", (Value=0,bModified=True)),("r.ScopeRenderMode", (Value=0,bModified=True)),("r.Dismemberment", (Value=1,bModified=True)),("r.RagdollMaximum", (Value=8,bModified=True)),("r.FoliageInteractionQuality", (Value=1,bModified=True)),("r.ScreenPercentage", (Value=100,bModified=True)),("r.AmbientOcclusionLevels", (Value=0,bModified=True)),("r.MaxAnisotropy", (Value=16,bModified=True)),("r.TessellationAdaptivePixelsPerTriangle", (Value=48,bModified=True)),("r.SSR.Quality", (Value=3,bModified=True)),("r.Shadow.MaxResolution", (Value=512,bModified=True)),("r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution", (Value=512,bModified=True)),("r.Streaming.PoolSize", (Value=2000,bModified=True)),("r.Streaming.FullyLoadUsedTextures", (Value=0,bModified=True)))

Notice my value of 2000 here:

("r.Streaming.PoolSize", (Value=2000,bModified=True))

I was a little bit annoyed how you can only choose Low or high texture streaming pool and even on high you see textures pop in and out all the time. High means a value of 1000 in the .ini file and my RTX card only used ~60% of it's VRAM with this setting. Doubling that value makes more use of my VRAM without eating it all and has the desired effect. If this value is too high, you get noticable stuttering! You should pay attention to your VRAM max usage during sessions. HWMonitor is a good software for this.

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Make TAA the superior antialias option with this tweak to Engine.ini, thanks goes to a deleted /u/ but the original thread can be found here.

Just add these lines to Engine.ini (option #1):

[SystemSettings]
r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight=0.25
r.TemporalAASamples=2

Or add these (option #2):

[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.PostProcessAAQuality=5
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0.6
r.DepthOfField.FarBlur=0

The latter one seems to produce better overall AA Quality, but some issues with scopes have been reported by u/edbods

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Bonus section by /u/prplBenzo for increasing the process priority via regedit:

I found that forcing "high" priority for the game .exe can also help to reduce game stuttering and increase overall CPU usage. But we cant do it manually from task manager cause of EAC, so here is the trick how to do it:

Open the Registry Editor by typing "regedit" (no quotes) into the Windows search bar

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options

Right click on this folder and create a new key called "InsurgencyClient-Win64-Shipping.exe" (no quotes)

Right click on the new InsurgencyClient-Win64-Shipping.exe folder and create a key called "PerfOptions" (no quotes)

Right click on the new PerfOptions folder and create a new DWORD (32 bit) called "CpuPriorityClass" (no quotes)

Double click on CpuPriorityClass in the right hand window and change the value to 3

Now game .exe will use "high" CPU priority every time when users start it. Hope it can help even more for you other people.

OP: I don't have any data about the effects of this one yet, but the priority did indeed change after this change.

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That's it! Some maps are still a bit more demanding than others but for now this is what makes that stable 100+ FPS reality for me without having to slap all settings on low.

Thanks for reading, I hope this helps.

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[FAFFER]

I've done the texture streaming one and it made a huge impact on my fps on a low/mid end system, that and texture pool to low and now it's very playable. Well worth doing.

[Coldsteel]

Oh wow really? People need a GUIDE just to drop some options down from highest settings? Do we as a species seriously suffering an IQ degeneration epidemic?

[=BB= Pudfark]

That's a pretty interesting guide....It seems you either do all of it or none of it? When/if I have any problems, I'll give it a solid try. Thank You OP

[Atlas]

Originally posted by Coldsteel:

Oh wow really? People need a GUIDE just to drop some options down from highest settings? Do we as a species seriously suffering an IQ degeneration epidemic?

That's really not just 'dropping a few settings'. Some of the tweaks refer to adjusting the .ini and even the registry, which not everyone instantly knows.

[Coldsteel]

Originally posted by Rock:

That's really not just 'dropping a few settings'. Some of the tweaks refer to adjusting the .ini and even the registry, which not everyone instantly knows.

Increasing process priority does absolutely nothing, the game already takes 100% of CPU time that's not system reserved. The only config option that even does anything is the streaming pool size, everything else is either engine default or adjusts settings for effects that are disabled so they have no effect. The entire performance improvement came from disabling and lowering a few computationally expensive effects in options (SSAO, SSAA, motion blur, shadows, PIP scope) and reducing streaming pool size reduced stutter.

Geez, ever heard of scientific method? Implement changes one at a time and monitor the difference it produces, because if you change multiple variables at a time you'll have no idea what did what.

[Desmond]

I just hope people dont need to follow some guide to make their games playable but instead they run fine out of the box. Sadly this happens to so many games nowadays and this one is especially bad.

[Atlas]

Originally posted by Coldsteel:

Originally posted by Rock:

That's really not just 'dropping a few settings'. Some of the tweaks refer to adjusting the .ini and even the registry, which not everyone instantly knows.

Increasing process priority does absolutely nothing, the game already takes 100% of CPU time that's not system reserved. The only config option that even does anything is the streaming pool size, everything else is either engine default or adjusts settings for effects that are disabled so they have no effect. The entire performance improvement came from disabling and lowering a few computationally expensive effects in options (SSAO, SSAA, motion blur, shadows, PIP scope) and reducing streaming pool size reduced stutter.

Geez, ever heard of scientific method? Implement changes one at a time and monitor the difference it produces, because if you change multiple variables at a time you'll have no idea what did what.

You completely missed the point. I don't care what the changes do in terms of performance. You implied that the guide only asks to drop some options down from highest settings when it clearly asks of more than that. Editing the .ini and the registry is not something everyone knows unless they have an idea or two about game engines and operating systems.

[Coldsteel]

What I'm saying that only lowering the settings actually did anything and nearly everything else didn't, so beyond a suggestion to lower graphics settings it's all clutter and/or misinformation. You don't need a guide to lower some settings and a guide that has no effect shouldn't even exist. You think if I told you that you need to put some settings to medium and also to compile your own MSVCRT with specific compiler settings, it would've been a good guide? Lowering settings is the first thing you should do if performance is bad without a guide to tell you this, and doing esoteric crap like that accomplishes nothing and more often than not only hurts the performance. Computers ain't magic, specific things produce specific results, you don't just do a voodoo dance with the configs and expect it to work out by the power of digital deities. Most of these config flags do nothing and some of them straight up make it run worse, the only one that actually helps is the pool size value. Geez.

[El Asso Wipo]

Wow, some Negative Nancys in here... These tweaks are NOT just "dropping settings", if you'd take a second to READ the .ini tweaks... They have helped people (including me) make this game much smoother while keeping most of the highest quality settings. If you don't want to try them, then don't. Stop crapping on my thread. Others can try these and be grateful.

[Coldsteel]

I'm pretty sure the entire "streaming" config edit makes stuttering worse, because it basically increases texture swapping. Maybe the lightmaps restriction makes the map load faster while disabling baked lighting or setting it to lowest quality or something. The TXAA flags aren't even improving anything, they're just visual tweaks, and they do absolutely nothing if you don't use TXAA which you shouldn't, it looks terrible - with just 2 samples especially, you might as well disable anti-aliasing at all. Post processing quality flag is overridden in menu settings and DoF is not even enabled whatsoever, so again this flag has no effect.

Are you even sure anything beyond lowering settings and adjusting pool size actually did anything?

[SOG.BrianD]

Have been experiencings serious lag and stuttering with the latest Nvidia updates. Began fiddeling with the settings, but nothing helped, not even installing older drivers. I tried just about every adjustment possible, no luck. Ordered more RAM, considering a new GPU. Half desperate, I tried and just resetted all video settings to deafult, on the video setting page. And magically, most of the settings went maxed out, except for keep loaded textures and maybe some more, and all stuttering, lag and hickups just vanished. Everything in the menus got offset, but still running smoothly. Rebooted again and that resetted the menu offset. Now everything just works perfectly! It must be one or several bugs in the setting/apply settings system. Should be angry, but just a happy camper now! Please feel free to try the same method! (I'm running an old 980 GPU on 1440. I dont get much more than 60 fps, but lowering to 1080 increases the fps of course)

[Smeef]

These tweaks gave me an extra 40 fps (runs constant 130 now) and completely eliminated the frame hangs/hitching issue I was having. I have an older cpu, i7 8700k with a 3080ti FE