Modem Tweaks

The modem is one of the most important pieces of hardware to optimize for Internet gaming. Fortunately, speeding it up is very simple. First, perform the port tweaks from the previous section. Then type sysedit in the Run box in the Start Menu. Go to the system.ini window and scan down to the [386Enh] section. Find out what Com port your modem is on and use the appropriate setting from below:

1). Com1Irq4Buffer=1024
2). Com2Irq3Buffer=1024
3). Com3Irq4Buffer=1024
4). Com4Irq3Buffer=1024

If your modem is using a non-standard COM port or IRQ (particularly when dealing with WinModems), use the models above to create a setting that will work for your computer. A modem's data buffers are very small and at higher speeds get full faster than they can get rid of information, these buffer settings loan the modem some RAM to use to clear out the information.

Windows does a lousy job of handling TCP/IP dialup connections. But there are several solutions for this problem. My particular favorite is iSpeed [http://www.hms.com/ispeed.htm]. This program allows you to optimize all of the network settings for your modem without hacking the registry. Here are the settings that I recommend for 33.6 and 56k modems:

MTU: 576
MSS: 536
WIN Value: 2144
TTL: 128
MTU Auto Discover enabled
NDI CacheSize: 16

These settings should improve your downloading and uploading speeds, particularly in Windows 95.

Winboost 98

Winboost 98 is one of the better tweaking programs around. It allows you to do some of the tweaks mentioned above automatically, as well as many other performance and OS enhancements. Below are my recommendations for increasing the speed of your system.

System and Booting Section:

- Disable Autoscan (stops that annoying Scandisk after a "bad" reboot)
- Disable Boot Logo (gets rid of the boot up logo, same as Tweak UI)
- Disable Bootlog (Stops the bootlog.txt file from being generated every reboot)
- No More Stacks (adds the Stacks=0,0 line to the CONFIG.SYS file - do not use if you have already entered it)
- Maximizing CD-ROM Speed - Cache size: Large - CD-ROM speed: Set to your CD-ROM Drive's specifications
- Contiguous File Allocation Size (Optimizes the computer for multimedia apps)
- Disable FIFO mode for disk drives (Speeds up disk drives)
- Remove Temp files on startup (do not use if you have already added the deltree line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file)
- Disable Doublespace Driver (Do not disable if you are using Doublespace)
- Disable Drivespace Driver (Do not disable if you are using Drivespace)

Powertweak

Powertweak is the premier processor and chipset optimizer there is. Each processor/chipset configuration will have its own optimal settings, so experimentation within Expert mode is encouraged. Warning: do not disable the cache!

If you aren't sure which of the settings to use, go into the optimization menu and click "Optimize for speed." This will enable all of the enhancements that are available for your system. You may have to go out of expert mode to perform this.

Note that the No Lock feature won't work on some PII based processors (all 233~266 MHz models, as well as the older 300~333 MHz models) - but the setting is not detrimental to those systems, so try it out anyway.

General Video Card Tweaks

Particularly when dealing with 3D rendered games, the speed of your video card can be very important. There are a few general tips that apply for all 3D cards. First, begin by downloading and installing the most recent drivers. This is a particularly important step for video cards because of the vast changes in the drivers between versions. I personally recommend using the reference drivers from the chip manufacturer, and not the drivers supplied by the board manufacturer. Reference drivers are frequently newer and faster than the drivers that the board maker can supply, because they base their drivers on the reference drivers.

Also, it is imperative that you only run your desktop in 16 bit color, even if you are running 3D programs in 32 bit color mode. The only exception to this rule is when dealing with some OpenGL games that do not have the ability to dynamically change the bit depth of the screen. Changing the bit depth of the screen can be done through the Display applet in the Control Panel. 

Registry and System File Optimization

Besides some of the System applet tweaks, these tweaks are the most dangerous to your system, so before you continue, make a backup of your registry. To do this, run regedit and select the export registry function. I recommend calling it backup.dat. If this procedure is successful, you can delete the file.

We'll begin this process by clearing out all the extra .dll files in your windows\system directory. These orphaned files clog up the OS and generally create havoc at the worst possible times, so getting rid of them is to our benefit. The program we will use for this is Clean System Directory. Open up this program from the start menu. Select the check-boxes for all of your hard drives, and click the Start Scanning button. After it is done scanning, a box will appear. Click on the Select All button and then the Move Selected Files button. This will move those .dll's to the system\backup subdirectory. I recommend waiting at least two months before permanently deleting those files, in case they are needed.

Next, run RegClean (a Microsoft product that is definitely a candidate for the "Shoulda but didn't make it into Windows" award). This program is fairly self-explanatory, so I won't go into the details. The next registry cleaner is called Easy Cleaner. This program has several parts. Go into the Clean Registry part and run the program. Delete all the entries that appear and run the program again. Repeat this process until no more entries pop up, then move on to the last registry cleaner.

The last registry cleaner, called CleanReg, totally lacks any form of automation. Everything has to be deleted key by painful key in this program. It picks up everything that the other two pick up, as well as some other stuff, so normally I'd recommend just using this, but it takes too long to delete all of the bad entries in this program. This program also doesn't create a start menu icon, so you will have to browse the hard drive to run the program. Go through the entire list of bad entries, using the delete key button to remove them (not the delete value key). After you are done this step, reboot your computer and you will be ready for the last, and most important, step.

Once Windows boots up successfully (if it didn't, restore your backup by going into DOS and running the command regedit /I backup.reg), exit windows to the DOS prompt and go to the windows directory (NOTE: if you are a Win95 Service Pack 1 or before user, you will need to install the regedit replacement before continuing on to this step - Simply copy the file into the Windows directory and continue). Type the following commands:

- smartdrv
- regedit /e all.reg
- regedit /c all.reg
- win


After Windows starts back up, run FixReg. To use FixReg, run the program, go to the import function and browse to the all.reg file in the Windows directory. Click ok and it will run automatically. This program is designed to fix another problem with importing condensed registry files.

All in all, this process should speed up computer responsiveness, increase stability and bootup speed, not to mention letting an install of Windows last longer before it starts randomly crashing. Basically, it is the Holy Grail of Windows tweaking. You're welcome.

A link to the files mentioned within this section can be found at http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/cleanup.

Riva TNT

The Riva TNT/TNT2 is currently the leading 2D/3D chip on the market. Luckily for you, it is also one of the most easily tweaked video cards to date. Begin by downloading the Detonator drivers from NVidia [www.nvidia.com]. Before continuing with the tweaks, you will have to do a little registry hacking.

1. Open regedit
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/NVIDIA Corporation/RIVA TNT/NV4Tweak
3. Create a DWORD key called Poweruser (case sensitive).
4. Modify the key - insert the settings:

Value Data: 1
Base: Hexadecimal

Now you are ready to tweak any Riva TNT based video card. Open up the Display applet in the control panel, go to the settings tab, and click on the Advanced button. Go to the Riva TNT tab and click on the Additional Properties button. This will take you into the heart of the TNT tweaking zone, otherwise known as the Additional Riva TNT Properties window. Here are my favorite D3D and OpenGL settings for the Riva TNT:

Direct3D:

- Auto generate 12 Mipmap levels
- Auto-mipmap method: Trilinear
- Mipmap detail level: Best Image quality
- Enable Anti-aliasing: Best Image Quality

Click on the Advanced button.

- Disable Fog Table Emulation
- (for PCI card users) PCI Texture Memory size: 8 - 10 Mb
- Disable wait for Vblank: Render no more than 12 frames ahead. If you have control lag, set this back to 4 or 6 (particularly in Shogo).

OpenGL:

- Enable Buffer Region Extension - Allow dual planes extension
- Disable Buffer Flipping
There are also some registry hacks for OpenGL. Open regedit and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/NVIDIA Corporation/RIVA TNT/OpenGL. Set "EnableVBlankWait" to 0 and set "TextureQuality" to 01. This should improve the speed and visual quality of OpenGL games and apps.

Ed. Note: These settings were based on the 1.76 Detonator drivers and may not work with newer driver revisions