Low FPS? Try these solutions!

Recently I came across some great tips that helped me to improve my performance in Planetside 2. Here are my specs:

i5 2500k
GTX 560ti
8 GB of RAM

I got anywhere from 20-30 FPS in large battles. Now thanks to some graphics tweaking and unparking my CPU cores, I now get 80 FPS in large battles.

I did a quick video showing some of the tricks I used to improve my performance. If you don't want to watch the video, I will provide a short explanation below to each link I used.



And here are the links and "Rendering" settings I used to help improve my performance.


The "Rendering" settings from my useroptions.ini file. You can find this file in your Planetside 2 folder and open it with notepad.

Credit goes to r3j3k for these graphics settings!

[Rendering]
GraphicsQuality=4
TextureQuality=0
ShadowQuality=0
RenderDistance=1005.000000
Gamma=0.490000
MaximumFPS=250
UseLod0a=0
OverallQuality=-1
LightingQuality=4
EffectsQuality=4
TerrainQuality=4
FloraQuality=4
ModelQuality=4
VerticalFOV=74
ParticleLOD=4
ParticleDistanceScale=0.650000
FogShadowsEnable=0
MotionBlur=0
VSync=0
GpuPhysics=1

CPU Core Parking Utility - If you have a multi-core processor, you may want to check out this article in order to "unpark" your cores.
http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/Disable-CPU-Core-Parking-Utility

Increasing Performance in Planetside 2 by SOE - A list of troubleshooting methods you can use in order to determine whether or not your GPU or CPU is holding your performance back.
http://help.station.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/36462/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzU0MzQwMTM1L3NpZC9aeU5hb0RjbA==

Video cards that support Planetside 2 - Video Card tier list
http://help.station.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/36590

I'll have to try some of this, fps drops to a crazy low number when I'm in a bio lab

interesting, im gonna favorite this post for sure, ty

Tried these tips and saw an improvement. Also allowed me to turn on Vsync.

I have 2 x 260 SLI, which one I take is minimum, and I have to run it on low.

That gets me 40-60 FPS, dropping to 20-30 on large renderings.

Gave up on medium, it drops to 30 just normally and lower than that when working hard.

I'll try some of these to see if it makes any difference.

Guys I know you are all desperate for better fps, but it's a bad idea to put your PC parts in possible danger and subject them to additional wear and tear just to "get more frames".

Just be patient and wait for optimization.

Tried playing with object quality, its supposed to change distance when lower LoDs are drawed, but i cant notice difference at all.
My FPS mostly drop bellow 30 in factories when there is a lot of vehicles around.
My GTX 460 wont drop under 40 with most GPU wise setting on high except shadows

This is grayed out in ingame settings, dont think it works actually
Its supposed to enable PhysX effecs, but with current CPU efficiency, its not much usefull anyway

I'd recommend Render Distance 2000-3000 if you're flying.

Unparking doesn't really do much and just wears out your CPU more.

Do you just set render distance to the number of meters you want to render?
Mine says

RenderDistance=-1.000000

Does that just mean -1 is infinite? Just change this to

RenderDistance=2000 or something?

These settings made my framerate drop by 20-40fps. Not surprising since most of these are ultra settings.

This x9000

Also, what does the render quality actually do? It's a slider bar from 0-100.. what are the effects of lowering it?

I literally can't believe this....
That unpark cpu app....................
I'm running an intel i5 2500k that's supposedly not parking cores anyway.

I ran the app, unparked all, rebooted. Amazed.. Amazed. Affects every cpu intensive game i have installed.
I've built and used computers for 15 years and never known about this. Wtf is microsoft smoking? Introducing such a 'feature' that restricts preformance? On desktop battery-independent pcs??

Intel i5 quadcore.
560TI
8gb ram
Asus Xonar D2

Before running the app. Everything maxed ingame. 8x AF forced in nvidia control panel, latest beta drivers.
30fps average, 15-20fps in heavy battles.

After running the app and rebooting.
40fps average, 25-30fps in heavy battles.

Not to mention 30sec faster bootup (after logging into windows, no more waiting for things to respond).
I'm absolutely stunned....... How the hell is this not common knowledge if it makes such a huge difference to global pc preformance??

I'm simply saying this from vague memory, but I believe it basically renders things at a lower resolution while maintaining your screen resolution.

It's GPU related I'm pretty sure. So mess around with Alt+F in-game. If [CPU] is beside your FPS display a lot of the time you likely won't have to worry about this.

See the official tweak guide posted here in the forums somewhere.

lol? Wear and tear from letting your CPU work the way it's supposed to? Changing the voltage in it all the time is probably worse for it. Anyone with a good fan shouldn't be worried. I myself have a Zalman and sit at 33 idle, with my cores unparked.

I just set my renderdistance to 800. Most of my engagements are below that so i dont care for much past 1000 meters and i dont fly.

I get 80-100 FPS and about 40-60 FPS in combat. Everything set to LOW

I7 3.2
1600 6GB
5870
SSD

This sounds like Adware.

You don't see an issue with having to run the game on low to get 40-60 fps in combat when your pc is 5 times stronger than the system requirements?

I've read up a little bit on unparking cores. I can't verify this but it is said that companies like to take refurbished higher end models (ones that aren't performing like they used to) and let them be used as lower end models. They save money, consumers get the CPU power they purchased. The way that they prevent these refurbished cores from getting worse (and probably to prevent consumers from getting more than they purchased) is to "park" them or limit their speeds.

What this means is that when unparking your cores, you have the potential for better performance. But you also have the potential of over working a core that is not one of those supposedly refurbished cores. That in addition to adding more wear on the other cores.

I obviously don't know anything about computer hardware, but after reading up on it, I'd rather not risk it. In anycase, my cousin has the same build I do from top to bottom and he had issues when unparking and overclocking. So it's a no for me.

Lowering render distance works though, but it might get annoying at 1000. I can see the fog pretty often at 2500, but not to the point where I see it in the back ground of my battles all the time.