Ensuring baseline system performance

While Quake Champions is still in production there is a lot of work being done that can effect performance, client issues can greatly effect this as well so here are some steps you can take to help ensure that your own system's basics are as tuned up as it can be for the best possible experience.This isn't a tweaking guide however, it's just to ensure your basics are as they should be rather than underperforming.

Each section is being added after it's been noted that it can have a noticeable effect on game performance, though there is no guarantee your own specific issues may be solved, following all of the sections would ensure you have eliminated known sources of problems.

The sections are in order of how time consuming they are to do, shortest first

If these suggestions do not help do please create a support ticket on http://help.bethesda.net/ both to get assistance for yourself and so that the issues are logged for investigation by the developers.

Reset GPU Driver Profile

For Nvidia Users:

• Nvidia Control Panel
  
  • In Manage 3D settings
    
    • On the Global tab hit the restore button to reset the global profile to defaults
      
    • Check 'DSR Factors' are all set to OFF (prevents rendering at higher than screen resolution)
      
    • On the Program Settings tab hit the restore button, and on any specific Quake Champions profile you have

For AMD Crimson users:

• Under Gaming
  
  • Use the reset button top left to reset global profiles to default
    
  • Remove any Quake Champions profile and recreate a clean one.

Nvidia Quake Champions GPU Profile

In your Nvidia Control Panel -> Manage 3D settings -> Program Settings, create a driver profile for Quake Champions, the default location to add for the Steam version if it is not visible in the list is

C:\Steam\SteamApps\common\quakechampions\client\bin\pc\QuakeChampions.exe

then set:

• Anti aliasing mode - you can set this to off to gain a little performance at cost of image quality but QC currently seems to reset it when you visit settings pages again.
  
• Pre-rendered frames 1 or 2 (test for personal preference, 1 gives the lowest possible input lag, 2 may be smoother)
  
• Refresh rate - highest available (optional but can solve the game not choosing 120 or 144hz).
  
• Threaded optimisation on or off (test as this is system specific, on usually gives better frame rate, off has been know to cure a severe input lag issue on some systems)

Reset Quake Champions Config

Take note of your in game settings especially any mouse settings and fov, and wipe following folders to clean the game's configuration, this can currently have a marked frame rate improvement on some systems with old config files. It should be also be considered after game or driver updates, especially if a drop in performance is noted.

Copy and paste the following locations into Windows File Explorer address bar (or winkey-r but you will have to remove the quotation marks) if any of the folders exists rename or delete them for the game to recreate defaults:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\id Software\Quake Champions

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Saber

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Saber Interactive
(will only exist for former beta testers)

Game DVR, Game Bar, Game Mode

Windows Game Bar and Game DVR can negatively affect performance, they are especially unneccessary if you already use Nvidia Geforce Experience or AMD Replay to record game clips.

Windows Game Mode has been shown to also cause performance issues including lower minimum FPS drops on very powerful systems in independent reviews, such as by Linus Tech Tips here, as such I would recommend not enabling it, especially if you are interested in streaming as it will take resources away from your streaming software. (Update: Win10 version 1909 and up should leave Game Mode enabled)

Windows (start) button -> settings -> gaming

Game Bar - "'record game clips ..... " : OFF
Game DVR - "record in the background while I'm playing" : OFF
Game Mode - "Use Game mode" : OFF

NB. the global Game Mode option here is no longer an option in Win10 v1709 Fall Creators Update, and can only be configured per-application via first enabling the Game Bar globally and then running the application you wish to set it for, then opening the Game Bar with WinKey+g with the application and selected. It is off by default for all applications/games.

It is also beneficial to tick "Disable full-screen optimization" found via right click quakechampions.exe -> properties -> compatability. This is only an option in Windows 10 v1706 "Creators Update" (RS2) and newer. If left enabled this mode is known to run applications in a form of borderless window even when fullscreen is selected, disabling 'Game Mode' globally used to disable screen optimization globally but in win10 v1709 that is no longer an option.

While some of these settings could be set per-application via the Game Bar, it wasn't until I forced the game bar itself off also that I gained a considerable amount of FPS back (~40fps in one particular set of CBT builds ) , and was able to stream using OBS and nvec with only a 2-3 fps drop. the Fall Creators Update improved the situation but with the majority of resources being diverted to the game a large amount of audio desync was common when streaming with OBS, as of Windows 10 build 17763.404 released just hours before I made this edit that may be a fixed issue however as it contains the patch note : "Includes a fix for Game Mode that ensures the feature will no longer impact your experiences when using the industry’s top streaming and recording software."

Edit: Users of Windows 10 version 1909 and later will probably find performance slightly better now with Game Mode On (the default for a new installation), especially as system updates/reboots are suspended automatically while you play.

Clean Graphics Drivers

AMD and Nvidia users should consider using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)[www.wagnardsoft.com] in Windows Safe Mode[www.wikihow.com] to wipe your graphics drivers completely removing all traces of past installs, and then install the latest from nvidia[www.nvidia.com] or amd[support.amd.com] (not opting to accept cookies may cause scrolling the page to fail).

Clear DirectX Shader Cache

If you are having problems with games taking a very long time to load even on an SSD, do ensure that your shader cache is not disabled for the game in your graphics card driver. On AMD systems especially there was a driver bug that limited the size of cache files to 64k, this has caused some severe loading issues for some users. You can fix this without reinstalling or rebooting by

• Hit your windows key to open the start menu,
  
• Type 'clea' and select 'Disk Clean-up' , it will give a UAC prompt you will need to accept,
  
• Once the program has opened deselect all of the tick boxes except 'DirectX Shader Cache' which should be ticked (you don't have to deselect the rest, but it might take a long time if you don't) and then hit ok.

On some systems this may not fully clear the cache files, though you cannot usually delete the files unless you either boot to Windows Safe Mode, or disable "Shader Cache" in your GPU driver and reboot don't forget to re-enable the shader cache afterwards, the locations to perform this manually are -

For Nvidia :
%LocalAppdata%\NVIDIA\DXCache

Nb.
OpenGL and Vulkan uses the separate %LocalAppdata%\NVIDIA\GLCache
Drivers pre-june 2021 used %ProgramData%\NVIDIA Corporation\NV_Cache

For AMD:
%localappdata%\AMD\DxCache
(copy and paste the relevant line into the Winkey+R Run dialog or the Windows File Explorer address bar)

If the files in these folders are not megabytes in size then there is a problem (AMD driver bug leaves only 64k files or less) and the folder should be manually cleared.

Update Operating System

Check Windows (Start) button -> Settings -> Updates and Security (windows update on older systems) and hit 'check for updates', ensure you have all updates installed.

Consider upgrading to Windows 10 v1809 "October 2018 Update" especially if currently using Win10 v1703 "Creators Update" as that version has specific stuttering bugs in many games which Microsoft has sought to address with later versions (source).
You can force an upgrade, download an ISO or build a USB memory stick to upgrade or install clean via https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10 .

After install it is recommended to then follow the instructions above in the Clean Drivers section to DDU wipe and then install the latest GPU drivers, as windows updates often install driver versions that cause major problems for games.


There is a user compiled list of known changes in the Fall Creators Update more comprehensive than the Microsoft changelog here

The Windows Pagefile

It is a myth that disabling the Windows page file gains performance, Windows attempts to flush out to the page file when things are idle, leaving more system ram free to be used by active applications thus letting them perform well or in some cases - at all. The other main uses for the page file is only if an application attempts to exceed the amount of physical ram in the system it will fail over to the page file, this is slower than system ram but at least still allows the operation to complete instead of the program throwing an error or closing in best cases, or simply crashing in the worst. For these reasons some applications suggest or even require that the page file is enabled.

There is an article on the page file by Microsoft's Mark Russinovich on their Technet blog - Introduction of page file[support.microsoft.com] , or Mark also wrote Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory[blogs.technet.microsoft.com], which covers the subject in depth, but the basics are:

• The system memory commit limit is RAM + page file - a small overhead.
  
• The system commit charge is the amount of ram committed (promised) to the system and all processes running on the system
  
• The system commit charge can exceed physical ram, but if it approaches the commit limit the system and running processes may not get committed memory, and can this "can cause freezing, crashing, and other malfunctions".

The simplest solution for users is to ensure that at least one partition on their system is set to System Managed for the best performance and importantly stability of their games.

There have been several users who reported game crashes, even with significantly more ram than required (32GB), who found that re-enabling a page file on their system solved their stability issues.

System Memory

• Quake Champions benefits from high memory bandwidth, do check if you have two physical sticks of memory that they are running in dual channel mode by being in the correct slots on your motherboard (cpu-z will inform you on the memory tab if dual channel is enabled), if you only have one memory stick, adding a second in order to enable dual channel mode as well as increase your systems capacity can make a noticeable difference.
  
• Overclocked memory is often the cause of system crashes, if you are overclocking your ram, it is vital that you try testing with no overclock as well. If one application is crashing or bringing down the whole system when you're overclocked but stable when not overclocked, no matter what that application is then the ram has been pushed too far and the overclock is the issue resulting in memory errors or overheating.

Windows Power Profile

Press Winkey+r, enter powercfg.cpl and hit enter.

If your Power profile is set to 'balanced' you are very likely to have frame rate performance issues in game, you should set this to 'high performance' instead at least when intending to play.

Process Priority

This is more of a tweak than I had originally intended to include, but for those having frame rate problems since the last update, setting the game process to high priority can alleviate this a fair bit, but usually this has to be done manually on every load.

This registry file can be opened to add a key to your windows registry that will make it a permanent setting. A second reg file to remove the keys and return it to default has been included.

Running registry files requires administrator access. This change is done at your own risk, check the contents of the files by opening them with a text editor.

set high priority -

** WARNING ** steam is reformatting the slashes even in a code block and can't be fixed, they should all be \ and not / please edit before saving your version of the .reg.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options/QuakeChampions.exe/PerfOptions]
"CpuPriorityClass"=dword:00000003

remove the modification -
javascript:ValidateEditSubSectionForm()

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MicrosoftWindows NT\CurrentVersion\\Image File Execution Options\QuakeChampions.exe]

Download the files here: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=01882999685056237981

Disclaimer

Driver and software updates, Windows updates and the use of uninstall tools are taken entirely at the users own risk, and subject to the disclaimers of the driver, update or uninstall tool authors. Should any problems occur with the process the support of the tool or update's author should be sought.

[NargaCat]

Yo same here with a Radeon 6700XT. This game doesn't even use my fucking GPU.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fm7Yo4GXEAI8d6Q?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

[evo]

i5 10400k Radeon 6600XT And I only get 3 fps. Only game that this happens to.
There is no fixing it, It seems.

[ByzKing]

As someone who grow up playing quake and competed in some of the first ever quake tournaments seeing this come to life is such a nostalgic joy. I battle many injuries from my tours in Iraq and may not be able to move like I could with mouse and keyboard but it's still an absolute joy for me to get on and play a couple rounds against bots and the occasional live match every night. Sometimes I can only do 1 or 2 practice matches but the joy from this is immeasurable.

That being said, I have zero issues with performance. 5120x1440 everything set on ultra and averaging 105 FPS no issue. No tuning or anything, I just let my AMD drives make it's own profile and then turned AntiLag, Image sharpening, enhanced sync and left all auto-clocking to auto for 5950x and 6900xt.

[^1Rs ^2=^0U^4?]

Season 13 Early Access with Battlepass . . .

id lieware

Thankyou

[XCT3]

My best performance tips are using a stable connection (wired or 5 Ghz) and ensuring 30+% of 16 GB RAM free. QC needs about 5 GB of RAM.

[Rifluvr]

Thank you very much!

[УАО]

Disabling game mode, GameBarPresenceWriter, full-screen optimizations and making sure all cores are unparked through registry gave me 30-40 fps. Latest Win10, Haswell CPU.

[RocKet Scientist]

As it is on newest windows build and newest Quake version Disable Game Mode and Disable full-screen optimization will hurt your performance a lot. Could be much as 30-40 fps with more "lags" "hiccup" using Coffee Lake based CPU.
Also don't use High Windows Power Profile people (unless you overclocking and want to test the system stability) won't do anything other than using shit ton of electricity running you processor at high clock speeds all the time even in idle. When u game or start a program the cpu will switch to the highest gear anyway.

[KORBEN - BABY]

Well, after I set the settings to low, QC works like a charm.

[smugg]

This guide got me so hard, i went to mcdonalds and the cashier saw the bulge in my pants. a real life saver this guy is. i also lost my autism skimming through something that every reddit goat simulator player knows...