Hmm, I noticed that if you change MaxShadowResolution=512 to MaxShadowResolution=256 that you get quite some extra performace. Might have to do with my 4850 cards having only 512mb. Still it is better than disabling dynamic shadows altogether like the SLI dudes are doing. I am running mostly 60fps with drops to 40fps now at 1920x1080 2xAA 16xAF, rest max. With MaxShadowResolution=2048 I get drops to 10fps Especially in conversations.
I can confirm it loads indeed much quicker. Like 3x as fast on my quad-core. I replaced all the loading screens and it's great. You can get all the loading bik files with ME2 logo here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VA4J8P30 I got it from this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTD3NKOm7VE
AA flag 08020205 is your friend. Trust me you will never drop below 60 FPS and you can keep dynamic shadows, you know that thing that makes the game beautiful. The Framerate drops in cutscenes and it's not even a SLI/AA bug, it's a plain bioware bug.
How can it be a bioware bug when it happens only when you enable AA, on this engine AA is NOT official supported.. please care to elaborate..
Seriously man I think I saw the framerate drop with The Illusive Man cutscenes, that's about it seriously. It always stayed 60 FPS in gameplay. Just use SLI compat 13, 22, 25 and 08020205 AA flag and you are good.
I am having the framerate drop also as soon as I enable any AA at all.. doesn't matter 2x or 8x it still drops dramatically. I also find that coming out of cutscenes or discussions, the fps tends to stay lowered and then slowly creeps back up to 60. I hope that it will be remidied by a patch, unless it is just something weird with the engine??
What's the deal with switching the load screens? Load times are pretty much instant except at start up for me. I did have my quad with two cores disabled for testing purposes in a few games and the load times in ME2 became 10x longer with 100% pegged CPU usage...Is that what you guys are talking about?
Why do people keep saying this. AA is not supported in this game, its up to the driver writers to fix any issues with how forced AA performs in ME2.
Here is my gamersettings.ini an I have wonderful results with my ATI card. [SystemSettings] Resolution=_1680x1050 ResX=1680 ResY=1050 DisableAudio=False FullScreen=True BorderlessWindow=True FilmGrain=False MotionBlur=False DynamicLights=True DirectionalLightmaps=True DynamicShadows=True LightEnvironmentShadows=True EnableLightEnvSHLights=True MaxAnisotropy=16 QualityBloom=True MaxCharacterCinematicLightingPasses=5 Trilinear=True MinShadowResolution=32 MaxShadowResolution=4096 DepthOfField=True UseVsync=False bSmoothFrameRate=False MaxMultisamples=8 CompositeDynamicLights=True ModShadowFadeDistanceExponent=0.200000 Though I may turn down the bloom level a tad and in increase light source de-fusion.. However it looks outstanding running at 16xAF and 8xAA Very stable frame rates too. Also, If wearing headphones put windows setting on Quad speaker settings and Creative Launcher on Headphone setting (if you have an Xfi Card). Then Download the new version of OpenAL and replace the DLL found in the Binaries folder in your game directory for improved sound.. I'd recommend using some EQ loving and up the Lower range boom boom for the club areas.. Hope it helps someone..
Can anyone confirm what these settings do and if the work with ME2 also where are you guys getting a list of these extra settings ?
The loading screen makes the loading times longer, like it only starts to load the actual files when the loading animation is done by removing the loading screen the files can be actually loaded right away, you say its instant on your system.. care to make a video on it to prove your point..
Lavans, everything was fine until now except for load_f13m.bik (right before *spoiler* collectors normandy invasion) video loads just fine but nothing happens and I'm left with a blank screen and I can only hear background sound... so I restored the original and it continued just fine. maybe my system wasnt fast enough to load the game and kept crashing...
Odd, you're the second person I've heard that from, XLR8. I'll be sure to include that in the readme and update the links when time allows.
That's what I thought too. Loading times between decks on the Normandy is 1-2 seconds tops, most times it seems instant and there's not long enough to even read ANY of the text, and loading between missions is the longest at around 10 seconds. I'm also playing this game on the 360 where the loading times are slightly longer (by 50-75%) but even so I can't say that I find myself getting impatient at the loading times in either game. Mind you, I grew up with the Commodore 64 and its 20-30 minute loading times so I'm probably more patient than most!
I love it when people say "well the Normandy load screens are uber short!" That's because the .bik file is uber short xD Granted, there's not much difference between the custom Normandy load screens and the default ones in terms of load time. It's more or less the bigger ones, like the ones when you hit "resume" or load a game. Even the ones in the Citadel are a pain. What BioWare essentially did was took a game that loads ultra fast and literally added load times for no apparent reason. The least they could have done was made it so it promoted you to press a button when everything was loaded in.
Funny thing is that ME2 doesn't support Hardware sound. It's all revamped audio engine totally in software