Computer Hardware Forum - TweakPC - Unreal 2 Performance Tipps

Above normal priority:
This is something that was posted on these forums a while back (by Lilly if I’m not mistaken) and it should help you get better game performance not only in this game but in any game. This is something I do to all my games and it always helps. Keep in mind that if you do this on a lower end system it may cause it to get bogged down a bit.

To start Unreal 2 in above normal priority do the following steps:

Open up notepad and enter the following text without the quotes “start /ABOVENORMAL Unreal2.exe”.

Now save this document as Unreal2.bat in your Unreal 2 System folder.

Now all you have to do is create a shortcut to Unreal2.bat in your Unreal 2 start menu folder or on your desktop and use it to launch the game. You can also change the icon by right clicking on the shortcut and choosing properties. Once the properties menu comes up click the “Shortcut” tab and toward the bottom there should be a button that says “Change Icon”. Just click on that and browse to your Unreal 2 system folder and select your Unreal 2.exe icon.

Some .ini tweaks:
There are several things that can be changed in your Unreal2.ini file that will help you boost your frame rate. Below I’ll list what I know.

[ALAudio.ALAudioSubsystem]
UseEAX=false (Set this to false if you’re experiencing sound problems on your EAX capable sound card)
CompatibilityMode=False
UsePrecache=True
ReverseStereo=False
Channels=32 (You can change this to 8 or 16, although I did not notice a performance difference and my sound problems still persisted)
MusicVolume=0.750000
SoundVolume=0.800000
DopplerFactor=1.000000
Rolloff=0.500000
Use3DSound=False
UseDefaultDriver=True
TimeBetweenHWUpdates=15.000000

[D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice]
UseHardwareTL=True
UseHardwareVS=True
UsePrecaching=True
UseTrilinear=True (Can be disabled to give better frame rates but will affect the visual quality of the game)
UseVSync=False
UseTripleBuffering=False
UseCubemaps=True (Setting this to false might give a slight performance increase, but you will no longer have reflections)
ReduceMouseLag=True (Can be set to false for better performance, but if your frame rates do drop you may notice some pretty heave mouse lag)
AdapterNumber=-1
MaxTextures=0
MaxBlendStages=0
DesiredRefreshRate=70 (This should not effect performance at all, just make sure you know what your monitor is capable of handling before you mess with this)
UseStencil=True
DetailTextures=True
Use16bit=False (If this is set to true you may get better performance, but you might experience some visual problems)
Use16bitTextures=False (If this is set to true you may get better performance, but you might experience some visual problems)
UseCompressedLightmaps=False (Not too sure about this one, if you set it to true you might get slightly better performance)
LevelOfAnisotropy=1 (You can set this to 0 for better performance but it will affect the visual quality of the game)
DetailTexMipBias=0.800000
DefaultTexMipBias=-0.500000
AvoidHitches=True
DescFlags=0
Description=
HighDetailActors=false

Please correct me if I am wrong about any of these ini settings, also the settings I didn’t highlight are the ones I’m not too sure about. If you know what any of them do feel free to add your comments.

Note: If at any point you feel you have screwed up your ini file and want to reset to the defaults all you have to do is delete the file and start the game and a new one will appear.

Miscellaneous tweaks:
Now I’m not too sure about other sound cards but if you own an audigy series card you may notice some performance drops in your games and bench mark scores. This is because these sound cards also rely upon Direct X and can suck the FPS out of your games. Here is something that has helped my performance a bit. Open up the run command and type dxdiag. Now go to the “Sound” tab, you will notice a little slide bar called “Hardware Sound Acceleration Level”. The default setting is “Full Acceleration”, I’ve actually bumped mine down to “Standard Acceleration” and since then I’ve noticed a slight performance increase in many of my games. I’ve also noticed that many sound problems aren’t as bad. You can play around with this setting and figure out what is best for you.