Performance Problems

[gaoesa]

In case you have performance problems, some guids here to solve the problem.

1. Configure your graphics card properly for the game. If you have laptop, make sure you are doing drawing for only one screen. At least for me, it did give quite a bit FPS boost when I turned off the other screen. There are usually several other settings too you can look into. ET is an old OpenGL game if you need this information for the configuration.

2. Clean your registry with some proper program. Search the internet for such a program and remember to read user comments from various forums before using. This type of program can mess up your computer if it doesn't work properly.

3. Defragment your hard drive.

4. Edit your ET settings. There aren't much you can do to improve FPS from ET settings. At least that don't make the graphics suck really bad. Beyond the settings that are given in the options menu. Using com_hunkmegs at least 128 should give some improvement because it allocates mor RAM for the ET engine to use. I have posted a separate thread about this.

5. Stop all the unneeded programs from the background when your playing. This includes game launchers and expecially web browsers. Proper game launchers have an option to shut them off while playing.

6. If your confident configuring Windows, stop processes that aren't needed by you. Default Windows installation sets a lot of processes to start automatically and if you don't need them for your use, edit the settings to disabled or manual start. Several websites give information about processes and tweaking the processes. Be carefull when doing the tweaks though. Stopping some processes can render your Windows installation unusable and recovery can be really hard when it doesn't start properly.

7. Delete all unneeded files (.pk3) from etmain and the mod folders. You can see the needed files to play on Himalia from the download section of this website.

8. You can try to delete the punkbuster folder and then doing the manual installation/update. It should clear that folder but punk buster is also known for having different types of problems and the best advice is to not touch it unless it gives problems already.
You can find the manual setup program from the Evenbalances official website: http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=pbsetup.php

9. If your using a Mac, buy yourself a computer. Macs are known to have performance problems with games and from several forums I have read about them, there aren't really effective ways to solve it.

Little assistance in clearing the background processes while gaming, I found this website.
http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html
I haven't tested or used it so I can't say anything about it. It promises a lot (clearing RAM, defragging game files), but I can't guarantee it doesn't give problems also or that it even works. If someone has used it, please could you give some expreriences from the program.

[gaoesa]

Some client side pb settings that might help you with punk buster related performance problems:

pb_system 0 // uses the old scanning method
pb_security 0 // will accept all update files without them being verified, only use this on servers you trust.
// actually, since there aren't much pb updates, i would leave this to 1
pb_sleep 500 // Holds the period of time (milliseconds) between pb processing cycles, 60 default value. Possible values 20-500

None of these has been said to be highly effective but you can try if they give any help.

EDIT:
Notice that you cant change the setting for pb_system while you are connected to a server.