How to fix poor performance/stuttering in Jade Empire

Bought this classic RPG and are disappointed with how it performs on your more than competent rig?
Here's a very simple solution that should get Jade Empire playing smooth as silk!

Intro

So I bought Jade Empire, a classic game that I used to play way back on my original Xbox console, for the PC, expecting it to perform great out of the box, seeing as it's a rather old title.
Much to my dissapointment, this wasn't the case, as I was greeted with disgustingly choppy performance my first time booting up the game.

This is a common problem, and I have a strong feeling everyone who bought this game is experiencing it. But don't despair, there's a very simple fix ahead!

The Fix(es)

The fix itself is actually very simple and straightforward.
All you have to do is navigate to your Jade Empire folder (the default being something like "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Jade Empire\") and look for a file named JadeEmpire.ini.

Open/edit the file with Notepad (or alternative of your choice) and look for the following line:

ClampFPS=1

What this line in the config file does is limits your framerate in the game to 30FPS, which is a big no-no for a modern PC gamer.
All you have to do is change that line to

ClampFPS=0

In addition you should also check that the line RefreshRate has the appropriate value for your monitor (this should be setup properly by default, but doesn't hurt to double check).

If that doesn't improve things for you, look for D3DAdapter, which is set to 0 and set it to 1. So the line should look like this:

D3DAdapter=1

That's it! You're all done. Save the file and close it.

Extra Tweaks

Want to improve the performance and visuals even more? Here's some more tweaks I personally use and highly recommend.

Go into your graphics card control panel and force VSync on the game executable (JadeEmpire.exe). This should make sure that you won't experience any screen tearing.

If you want to get rid of the game's inherent jaggies, I'd also recommend you force some Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering (personally set AA to 4x and AF to 16x, which make the game look incredibly smooth).

Also, if you're on Windows Vista/7/8 and haven't already done this, I strongly recommend running JadeEmpire.exe in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2/3 and as an Administrator. This should help eliminate any remaining performance issues.

Stutter Fix

Apparently some people are having issues where the game would be running at a solid framerate but still wouldn't actually play smoothly.
Fortunately somebody from the GOG forums posted a fix.

Download:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180604111220/https://bitbucket.org/fk/jade-empire-stutter-fix/downloads/ (archive of the original link)

http://www. mediafire .com/file/lzampxsmpevthnu/file (reupload, remove spaces)

Installation:
- Extract the contents of this archive (in particular `d3d9.dll`) into your
Jade Empire installation directory, next to `JadeEmpire.exe`.
- Run the included `vcredist_x86.exe` installer to install the *Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 x86 Redistributable*. You may already have it
installed in which case the installer will do nothing.

Source:
Can be found at https://bitbucket.org/fk/jade-empire-stutter-fix. Builds with VS2015.

Original post:
https://www.gog.com/forum/jade_empire_special_edition/stuttering_fix

The End

That's it!
You should now have a perfectly functional and (for it's age) beautiful looking game!

I hope people find this guide helpful and enjoy Jade Empire as it was meant to be enjoyed on PCs!

Notes

• 5. 9. 2020 - updated broken links. (thanks to SpareGoblin for the archive!)

[Mashadaar]

Download worked great, thanks!

[prgryan]

Tried to change the "ClampFPS" setting and while the fps counter did went from 30 to 144, I was still experiencing issues. The stutter fix, however with the "d3d9.dll" file did fix the issue. Thanks !

[being•in•the•world]

Changing the D3DAdapter to 0 killed my boot, but the stutter-fix file worked like a charm. Great resource

[QweSteR]

Ничего не помогло. FPS 75, но игра очень тормозит.

[ArkhCthuul]

Answer: It doesnt, asthe fffline you decribe does not exist. simply creating it neither.....??

Any Ideas? I need my4yearish regula dosage of JE !"!

[terror]

Love you for this, thanks man

[Griffith]

What an amazing and thorough guide to making Jade Empire run flawlessly. You have my thanks for taking the time to make my experience with this game the best that it can be and for that I thank you.

[Zaku]

This spared a headache
Cheers!

[SotiCoto]

Oh, and setting D3DAdapter=1 can cause the game not to boot up at all. I reinstalled the whole thing twice before I realised that one tweak intended to improve performance completely stopped the game loading at all.

[SotiCoto]

INI files don't tend to be generated unless you've started the game once and changed the settings in-game. So run the game, change the settings, then save and exit the game... and you should have an INI file.