Free FPS (7$ tops I promise), or how to make Warhammer III fast

Tired of having an unoptimised game? Exhausted of having developers prioritise DLC over playable campaign? Deranged over having to pay the executives' tonight's lobsters while you can't even run your game on a RTX 3070? Wait no more! This guide should give you FREE FPS.

Proof (46.8% gain)

BEFORE (RECOMMENDED BY CA): 52.6 FPS

AFTER MODIFYING GRAPHIC SETTINGS: 63.7 FPS

AFTER MODIFYING RESOLUTION: 77.2 FPS

How to know your FPS

Firstly, to really know if we are gaining any FPS, we must know what we currently have. For this we must activate Steam's FPS overlay. Simply go to settings, and allow the FPS to be shown. I find bottom right corner to be the best place, and high contrast to make sure it is always visible.

GPU's settings

NVIDIA Section

These are the settings I recommend. With the reduction of pixels there is a lot of problems with blurriness, and pixelation. Increasing AA and sharpness should resolve it.

Simply open the NVIDIA control panel and choose:
3D Settings > Program Settings > Select a program to Customise > Add > Total War: Warhammer III





You may also limit the FPS the game can produce. This should help with the heating of the GPU, and make it so it is not so overloaded. You can be a radical and go for 30fps, which is how old games used to function. 60 would be noice tho. It all depends on your computer's power.

AMD Section

Say thanks to @A guy with a guitar for these settings advise:

In Game Settings

Here are my game settings:



On my 3070 RTX what I have noticed is:

• AA: FXAA is best. Having none is too pixelated. Anything above is too blurry.
  
• Texture Filtering: 16x. It allows you to see the units far away without them looking like monkeys.
  
• VFX: Low. It is really too demanding. It makes the peaks of GPU use too high. Produces lags.
  
• Tree: Low. If you make it higher it actually starts producing complex shadows.
  
• Unit: High. I like to zoom in (personal prefference).
  
• Depth of field: Off (?).
  
• Screen Space Reflections: Off (?).
  
• Lighting Quality: Low (?).
  
• Corpse Lifespan: 120. Anything above starts lagging the game.
  
• Texture: High. I would use ultra but it does consume a lot. I love zooming in. Did I say that already?
  
• Shadow: High. I don't like to see shadows suddenly appear. This does consume a lot. I recommend you lower it.
  
• Grass: Low.
  
• Terrain: High. To actually see a map and not a blur.
  
• Building: Low.
  
• Unit Size: Ultra. BIG BATTLES!
  
• Porthole: 3D. I like to see them nod at my orders!
  
• Fog: Low.
  
• Unlimited Video Memory: Yes (?).
  
• V-sync: Yes. To eliminate tearing. Do not use if with GSYNC. (This requires a tutorial of its own.)
  
• Vignette: (Optional).
  
• Proximity fading: (Optional).
  
• SSAO: No. Consumes a lot. Makes it look strange in the snow.
  
• Sharpening: Yes. Counter-act pixelation.
  
• Screen space shadows: No (?).
  
• Cloth simulation: No (?).
  
• Dismemberment: Yes.
  
• Blood Particle Scale: 0%. Seems very consuming.
  
• Blood stain scale: 100%. Recommend to reduce it.

Limit your pixels

Reduce Brute Resolution

The more pixels there are on screen, the more calculations there must be made. Therefore it is our goal to reduce their numbers.

• 1920x1080 (Full HD): 2,073,600 pixels.
  
• 2560x1440 (QHD): 3,686,400 pixels.
  
• 3840x2160 (4K UHD): 8,294,400 pixels.

As you can see, each resolution varies in the number of pixels greatly. From 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 there is a 77% increase. That means that either you need a GPU that's 77% more powerful, or you will have a the same percentage tank in performance.

Therefore I do the following trick; I choose a resolution lower than the one I have.

On my 2560x1440 monitor, I go for 1920x1440. What does it mean? My screen will be horizontally reduced, but vertically, it will remain the same. But I do gain performance (25% less pixels to draw).

This creates problems of its own. I like to play in widowed mode, so my windows bar actually hides the game, and I get to look at whatever is behind my game, distracting me in the process.

To solve this, I strongly recommend you buy:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/993090/Lossless_Scaling/

It is a software that allows you to scale gaming windows. With the following settings I get to have my game centred, with a black background, and work perfectly:



Once you have it, go to the game, press CONTROL + ALT + S. It will make the game be overtaken by Duck Scaling and make it centred. However, do not change resolution after you are in duck mode. Make sure to press the same keys again, and exit duck mode, so you can alter resolution again. Doing otherwise tanked my system and made me reset.

Reduce Brute Resolution With Scaling

There are "scaling" settings, so you can actually make your resolutions even smaller, and scale them up. For example, 1920x1080 resolution, with a 1.2 scaling, would give me a similar effect to playing borderless window on a 2560x1440. However, I have noticed that anything above 1.1 scaling makes it too rugged. This is my personal opinion however.

AI Frame Generation

There are more settings such as AI frame generation with this software, these I do not know how to use yet. Please leave a comment if you do!

Reduce Scale Resolution

There is a setting in the graphic options that allow you to reduce the scale of the graphics. I have noticed that going for 90% does increase FPS and has no effect on visuals. 80% is when it starts becoming noticeable. This is, however, a personal appreciation. Choose at your own desire.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4i8TPSQi2M

Make your game beautiful (Optional)

After all this optimisation, it is likely that your game now looks worse.

To solve this, we are going to use RESHADE:

https://reshade.me

This guide is for ROME II, but it works for Warhammer III:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2448313603&searchtext=reshade

It is a great tool to make your game look beautiful. It should compensate all the pixel butching we have been doing.

You will have to lookup RESHADE tutorials for more information.

Here are my settings:



Ideally one would share the file, but I do not know which file-sharer to use, so please recommend me one.

BEFORE I

AFTER I

BEFORE II

AFTER II

BEFORE III

AFTER III

Conclusion

• 1. Reduce the Pixels to gain graphical efficiency.
  
• 2. Use scaling techniques to make sure the game is not stretched in the wrong manner.
  
• 3. Use sharpening and anti-aliasing from the GPU to balance the pixelation.
  
• 4. Use RESHADE to make your game look beautiful.

A personal story:

I am a huge fan of Total War: Warhammer franchise.

When Warhammer I came out, I was able to play it on my 970 GTX without a problem.
But everything changed with Warhammer II came out. Suddenly it was impossible to play it without lags, low FPS, sudden stops. I was unhappy.

When Warhammer III was announced, I decided to pay for a 3070 RTX (last gen at the moment). I was so excited and waiting for my great new game. What happened? Warhammer III launch happened. That's what.

Since then, the game has gained some optimisation, but has still left most of us with the suffering that this is simply the only game that compares in slowness to the latest Microsoft's Flight Simulator.

I have tried everything under the sun. I just want to play my game without having to pay top dollar again to just increase some FPS. This has been the result of my journey.

I hope that I have helped you, and that you can now enjoy the game with more FPS without having to buy a 5090 RTX.

Have a nice time battling Chaos out of your lands! I invite you to watch these portraits of Kislev. For Ursun!

[kreia]

cool il check it out all id like is just more fps

[Turow ☦]

At first I found it over complicated, but then it became easy. It depends on what you want to do.

1. Turn a widowed window to have a black background: This makes it so the game you play on widowed mode doesn't have anything distracting you.

Turn all settings off, except for "Clip Cursor". Select Capture API for WGC (Another may work for you). press Control + ALT + S when you are in game. To exit duck mode, press those keys again. Do NOT change resolution when in duck mode.

2. Upscale:
Select scale factor, select scaling type. Press the mentioned keys.

3. Frame Generation
Select generator, X Factor. Press the mentioned keys.

[kreia]

interested in buying but how do i use the program itself is it easy or over complicated

[Turow ☦]

@SerNogey ReShade is used best with "presets", using files from others. If you go on youtube you can obtain files that are displayed there, and you can choose one for your taste. Or none)

[SerNogey]

With ReShade everything became very soapy and dark, everything looks very strange.

[Turow ☦]

@Forlorn, can you tell me what you've done with it? I'm interested myself to gain some FREE FPS

[Forlorn]

Lossless scaling is legit. I used it with Factorio and bypassed the hardcoded game limits of 60 fps and doubled it to 120 fps. You can do all kinds of crazy stuff with LS.

[Tessarakonteres]

Works for me thanks