Black Ops 2 PC Optimization Guide *DETAILED*

[HikaruSwift | Twitch]

Hey guys! Another USEFUL Guide on Optimizing BO2! Original Post Link is at the bottom!

BO2 Optimizations Summary

This 1st post in thread is kept updated.
New NVidia driver 337.50 is out and has some performance changes for Black Ops 2.
The new Twitter go-to person for Black Ops 2 is pcdev_assist. Link below.
Drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us and http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-arti...dows-beta.aspx
Twitter: pcdev_assist https://twitter.com/pcdev_assist
Official support site: http://support.activision.com/pkb_Ho...n=Black_Ops_II
NVidia's tweak guide: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gui...-tweak-guide#1
If lagging after patches, verify integrity of game cache on the multiplayer game and defrag hard drive if it's not SSD.
The most important things to notice below here are marked with a green asterisk *.

Graphics Menu

• Screen Resolution: Options such as 1920 x 1080, etc.
  
• Display Mode: Fullscreen or Windowed (Fullscreen) are both good options. See which works better for you.
  
• Monitor: Tells the game what monitor it should display the game on.
  
• Brightness: ....
  
• Field of View: 65 - 90 Adjust your FOV to allow a wider or narrower view in game.
  
• Shadows: * Lower shadows perform better but users on higher end machines may find Medium is a good choice because it doesn't degrade game performance too much for the visual improvement they get.
  
• Ragdoll: Disabled gives better performance.
  
• Player Name Indicator: Full Name is one of the options.
  
• Color Blind Assist: On or Off
  
• Chat Message: Show or Don't Show

Advanced Menu (Graphics)

• Texture Quality: Extra is the best-looking choice - Adjust the resolutions of the textures used by the game.
  
• Texture Filtering: High is the best-looking choice.
  
• Anti-Aliasing: * - Fairly low AA set in game menu plus high amounts of AA added onto that with NVidia or AMD software outside of the game may show you a benefit as far as being a lag-reducer. See Most Kills Settings section down below.
  
• FXAA: * Off - Many seem to prefer the other AA choices instead. The in-game FXAA will override the NVidia Control Panel FXAA so use the in-game FXAA if you're going to use any at all.
  
• Ambient Occlusion: * Off in the game menu but may perform better if turned on with NVidia Inspector instead.
  
• Depth of Field: Low performs the best but the setting may not matter if you never zoom in.
  
• Sync Every Frame: * Off - To keep your FPS from being capped by your display's refresh rate.
  
• Max Frames Per Second: * It depends. The more high you have your Max FPS, the less high you need to have the amount of antialiasing you use. The less high you have your Max FPS, the more high you need to have the amount of antialiasing used. Either way desirable high GPU-usage can be achieved. Sync Every Frame usually must be off to be able to set this.
  
• Draw FPS: Gives the ability to see what your FPS is while in the game.

Most Kills Settings ***

You don't want the enemy to see you before you see them. High GPU-usage which is consistent will get you the most kills. High FPS gives high GPU-usage, but so does large amounts of Antialiasing. Setting moderate amount of antialiasing in the game menu + a fairly high amount of antialiasing outside of the game menu seems to be best for moderate to high-end machines. This technique makes the GPU-load/CPU-load ratio more like that of a game console and improves the timeliness of the network packets you send to the server. With these combos use medium Shadows, no Ambient Occlusion, no FXAA, and low DoF. Three different suggested settings combos:

2x TXAA (game menu) + 3x3 Supersampling (NVidia Inspector) + MaxFPS set to 60 (game menu)
2x MSAA (game menu) + 3x3 Supersampling (NVidia Inspector) + MaxFPS set to 60 or 90 (game menu)
2x MSAA (game menu) + 8xSQ AA (NVidia Inspector) + MaxFPS set to 120 (game menu)

To add on additional AA with NVidia Inspector, Antialiasing Mode must be set to Enhance Application Settings and some amount of AA (other than FXAA) needs to be set in the game menu. The Supersampling setting mentioned here is not Antialiasing Transparency Supersampling, but rather fullscreen Antialiasing Supersampling.

Antialiasing Descriptions

Supersampling increases the natural resolution by 2, 3, or 4 times the original for the whole screen and is then down sampled. MSAA is basically polygon edge AA, while Coverage Sample AA (CSAA) extends MSAA with less sampling of shaders and textures while applying coverage samples to polygons (at a higher resolution) to sample the whole rendered image. Transparency AA detects transparent/opaque textures and re-samples those over the chosen AA (SSAA/MSAA) used. Sparse Grid Super Sampling AA (SGSSAA) renders the whole image/scene with Super Sampling but with a lower number of samples. Not all games support SGSSAA as it can conflict with some post processing effects.

Mouse Drivers

Mouse drivers, and how they are configured, are another major factor for getting the most kills. Logitech mouse users may see a benefit from increasing the mouse report rate to 1000. Razer mouse users, on the other hand, may see a benefit from lowering the mouse report rate to a low value. It's also possible that best benefit can be had by uninstalling your gaming mouse drivers and just use the default Windows USB mouse drivers.

NVidia-Specific *

Power Management Mode in NVidia Control Panel/3D Settings/BO2 game profile:
"Prefer Maximum Performance" may reduce any stutter you have in the game because card won't ever throttle down.
"Adaptive" may be the better choice because it would make your machine appear to be weaker before match when server is evaluating how much antilag to apply to you.

Quality of Connection to Server *

You can set the quality of your connection to the server by going to Multiplayer menu/Public Match/Find Match/Search Preferences (bottom right corner)/Max Ping and lower or raise the value. Those who are getting into laggy games or it takes too long to join a game will want to lower their Max Ping.
Also verify your Download Region in Steam settings/Downloads+Cloud. Steam might have changed it to somewhere which is not close to you. Reduce the value for Max Pings/Min in that same menu if you have connectivity issues.

Game Process Priority

There are some people who have found a performance benefit in lowering the process priority at which the game runs on their PC. Most of us won't need to change it. Windows 8 instructions here:
First start up game. While in game menu press Windows Key to get to desktop/do Ctrl + Alt + Del/Task Manager/right-click the running game exe/Go to Details/right-click t6mp.exe/Set Priority/change to Below Normal or Low/confirm change/exit Task Manager windows/go back into the already-running game seen in your desktop tray.
This procedure would have to be done each time you start up the game.

Sound

Original issue of crash occurring when a PCI-e soundcard and motherboard onboard sound are both enabled at the same time may have been corrected in later game patches.

Config File & Game Console

The game's config file is encrypted and cannot be modified.
The game's console cannot be accessed.

ORIGINAL POST:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3001545
FULL CREDIT GOES TO:
Infinity7