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Page 4 of 4 The Importance of Current Drivers
Keeping your drivers up to date can make or break your system. Newer drivers are generally faster and more stable, not to mention that they often support new features.
To freshen up your drivers, begin by going to Windows Update and clicking on the device drivers link. This little area of the web site will check your drivers against the versions that Microsoft supports, and will update any drivers that need to be.
Next step would be to go to your computer manufacturer's web site and check for the newest drivers they have there. Many times, these drivers will be more up to date than the ones that Microsoft has access to. Another bonus of working with your manufacturer's site is that any drivers that you download off their web site, they are required to support.
You could also go to the manufacturer's web site for each specific component and download their newest drivers. Generally these drivers will be based on the newest internal driver builds, but remember that these drivers, while faster, may not necessarily be any more stable. In fact, some of these drivers are less stable than their older cousins. So if you are planning on using these drivers (especially if they are called beta), make sure you keep a copy of your older drivers to fall back on if there is a problem.
If you are having trouble finding your manufacturer's web site, check out Drivers Headquarters or WinDrivers. They have links to drivers for almost every piece of hardware made in the past few years and some of them go back to Win3.1. System Cleanup Utilities
Commercial system cleanup and optimization packages are the big thing these days. Norton's Systemworks, First Aid, Nuts & Bolts, Safe & Sound, and other such products are out on the market vying for your dollars. The good news for consumers is that because of the large amount of competition, new features are being added all the time. Honestly, you'd think by that by this point, these packages would be full of stuff that optimizes your system - but you'd be wrong.
After testing copies of Nuts & Bolts, Safe & Sound, First Aid, and Norton's Systemworks, I would have to give them a thumbs down. That's not to say they are totally ineffective - the stuff that works, works well. It's just that there isn't enough of the stuff that works, and too much of the stuff that doesn't. Take, for example, the disk defragmenter. Each of these packages come with an excellent disk defragmenter. Not only do they defragment the files, but they also optimize their placement on the hard disk and make sure that the swap file it placed on the fastest part of the drive. The problem is, the disk defragmenter that comes with Windows 98 does the same thing - albeit at half the speed.
The emergency disk that the majority of these programs create do their job well enough, but except for the virus scanning capabilities, they are nearly identical to the startup disk created by Windows 98 - and in some cases, the Windows 98 disk is better.
But that doesn't explain what is so bad about these packages - it just shows places where they could be improved with extra features. The most current package I tested was a copy of Norton's Systemworks. The program touts a registry cleaner that looks impressive. In fact, it detected 80+ entries that were no longer viable. The problem was, it only let me delete two of them. And here's why: most of the other errant entries had been created by the package itself! I don't know why this mattered - they were, after all, errant entries but the program determined that they shouldn't be deleted - and apparently what the program says is gospel, because for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to delete them. There may very well be a way to do it; but if there is, I couldn't find it.
That wasn't the only flaw in the program, however. At one point, its "Crashguard" crashed my system. Yes, you heard me right - and it wasn't just some little shell crash, either - it required a full reboot.
Ok, I know it sounds like I'm taking it hard on Norton's package, but in reality, all of the packages had similar problems. Let's take Nuts and Bolts 98 for example. A launch accelerator is included in this package and, believe it or not, it actually does work. What it doesn't tell you, however, is that in exchange for the extra launch speed, you give up a large amount of system resources that are devoted to a database of quick-load information. If you work with office applications every day, it might be worth your while, but otherwise, it's something to avoid like the plague.
And be warned, any package that touts "RAM-doubling capabilities" or some other such nonsense, is actually compressing the information in the RAM so it can stuff more in - in exchange for speed. Once again, if all you are working with is business apps, this is fine - but for gamers like myself, not a chance.
My recommendation, if you are out to buy a virus scanner, these packages cost just about the same as a stand-alone scanner, so you might as well get one. Otherwise, avoid these packages and take the steps mentioned in this article for a faster, more stable system. Tweaking Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
Tweaking Shogo is fairly easy compared to most other games. There are no console commands that you absolutely must play around with to get optimal performance, although you are more than welcome to.
Begin by starting Shogo and clicking on the advanced button. Then click on the 3D cards button and scroll down to the entry for your particular card. Enable/disable the settings it recommends. If you have v2.2 of the software and a card that supports single-pass multitexturing (Riva TNT and Voodoo2, for example), enabling this feature may give you a large performance increase.
Then startup the actual game, set it at 800x600x16 with the detail setting at high, and play the game. If you are using a Riva TNT based card and the detonator drivers, make sure you set the Render no more than [x] frames ahead down to 4 or 6. If you continue to have speed problems, disabling light-mapping should solve the problem for almost all users (this may seriously degrade the lighting within the game, however).
If you are playing an Internet multiplayer game, use the following settings:
- Set MaxFPS to 30 (console command MaxFPS 30)
- Set the update rate of the client/server connection to 6 (console command Updaterate 6)
- Make dead bodies disappear faster (console command Bodylifetime 5)
If you are on a very fast connection or a LAN user, try turning up the update rate setting to improve responsiveness. By the time this article goes to press, Monolith should have also released a 3DNow optimized D3D renderer. Any AMD users should check out the new renderer because it should speed up the games rendering engine by up to 50% for some users. Tweaking Tribes
If you are a 3Dfx card owner, you're in luck - Tribes works flawlessly with 3Dfx cards almost universally. Intel i740 and Riva TNT owners, however, should listen up, because Tribes requires some very tedious tweaking for you. Begin by downloading the newest patch for Tribes. You will then need to browse to your tribes\config folder and create a file called autoexec.cs (if it doesn't already exist). Then open it up and enter these two lines into it:
$OpenGL::Enabled = true;
$OpenGL::OverrideLights = true;
Also, within the console.cs file, the following lines should have these values:
$pref::OpenGL::AlwaysRGBA = "False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoAddFade = "False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoMipmapping = "False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoPackedTextures = "False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoPalettedTextures = "False";
$pref::OpenGL::Use32BitTex = "True"; (only works if your desktop is in 32 bit color mode)
Save the file and then start Tribes. Go to the options/display menu, and select OpenGL as your full screen renderer. In the OpenGL setup section, choose the option that is most appropriate for your card (Note: this was done with a beta version of the OpenGL renderer - by the time of publication, you may no longer have to take these outlandish steps to enable OpenGL rendering).
Now for general tweaks, I recommend using 800x600 resolution and the highest detail settings. Also, within your config.cs file, the following lines should be changed to read as follows:
$pref::interiorLightUpdateMS = "20"; (smoothes things out...)
$pref::waitForVSync = "False"; (if you have problems with flickering or artifacts, set this to True)
$pref::TerrainVisibleDistance = "10000"; (increases visual range in sniper-mode)
$pref::mipcap = "13"; (13 for TNT, lower for other cards - default is 9)
$pref::dynamicLightDistance = "300"; (changes the length of the dynamic lighting ) Tweaking Half-Life
It is almost as difficult to tweak Half-life as it is Tribes, except that the config files for this game are less cryptic. Here is my personal favorite config for Half-Life:
gl_d3dflip "0"
r_mmx "1"
r_dynamic "1"
r_drawviewmodel "1"
gl_keeptjunctions "1"
r_shadows "0"
firstperson
gl_ztrick "0"
cl_himodels "1"
s_a3d "0"
joystick "1"
s_eax "0"
_snd_mixahead "0.100"
m_filter "1"
gl_texsort "1"
cl_allowdownload "0"
cl_allowupload "0"
s_reverb "0"
loadas8bit "1"
hisound "0"
gl_texturemode "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR"
gl_polyoffset "4.0"
texgamma "2.0"
lightgamma "2.5"
brightness "2.0"
r_decals "200"
fps_modem "33"
fps_lan "45"
gl_picmip "0.0"
rate "3000"
pushlatency "-600"
scr_conspeed "3000"
gamma "4.0"
Type this into notepad and save the file as d3d.cfg (DirectX Renderer), opengl.cfg (OpenGL renderer), or 3dfx.cfg (Glide/Voodoo renderer) in your sierra\half-life\valve\hw\ folder. If this config doesn't work with your card or you just want to make your own config, check out the Half-Life Autoexec Creator at www.tweak3d.net.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading my article. I'm sure PC Gamer and Imagine Media would still appreciate your business though. Our friend Kyle from HardOCP has an article in the magazine as well, and there are several other very good technical resources in the magazine as well. Definitely worth the money... at least in my opinion.
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