APB Reloaded Making the Game Run Smoother Guide

APB Reloaded Making the Game Run Smoother Guide by Lazerbeams

Hi guys, since the servers are down I wanted to tackle a few issues I’ve been hearing friends complain about a lot. Simple fixes will greatly improve your performance when running APB. I’ll list it like a Q&A; and then throw some random tidbits in the bottom.

Q: I’m having to restart the game frequently, and it kicks the crap out of my computer when I shut the game down.

A: Try turning off Desktop Windows Manager (DWM). Desktop Windows Manager is a flashy tool inside of Windows Vista and Windows 7 that renders your game view into an onHover type display. When you’re APB is loaded it also renders for DWM for tabbing purposes. Turning off DWM will reduce the amount of memory APB uses by 400-600 meg.

Q: I’m having a lot of “bursty” type lag when driving, and when near other players. It seems to get really bad when I am rendering new people in the area.

A: Most likely, you’re connected to your router via wireless. To put this in perspective, your internet connection may be 10 meg down, but if you’re on wireless, you’re probably only getting the benefit of about 5% of that internet connection. Wireless, while it is great for most purposes, is horrible for online gaming, especially games with heavy download/upload capabilities like APB (not only do you need to get the other player’s location, you also get his outfit + any customizations to that outfit).

To put this question in perspective for you: When I play via wireless I get about 300 ms ping to the NA-East server. When I plug in via a CAT5 cable, I never break 45 ms. The heaviest issue you’ll notice with wireless is the packet loss you’ll see when you’re really having to render a lot of items – and your bandwidth can’t keep up.

Q: My ping is fine, but my graphics are really choppy and I seem like it’s stuttering a lot. I have good hardware, and should be able to play this game fine.

A: First, refer to my first Q/A answer, which is disabling Desktop Windows Manager service. That might very well end your issue. If this doesn’t there’s a good chance your hardware is overheating. http://blog.orbmu2k.de/sidebar-gadgets/gpu…-sidebar-gadget is a good sidebar for windows 7 to monitor your GPU heat levels. An overheat is very easy to get, even with top-end hardware and cooling products. Sometimes putting a fan near your PC is the simplest way to narrow down this issue.

If you’re having no latency-related issues, but it seems when a lot is going on around you (people on missions near you crashing/shooting, etc) it may be your network card drives. I’d say 99% of the people reading this right now have pre-installed Microsoft versions of their network drivers, whereas the manufacturer has a much more updated and relevant version. Check your NIC drivers, and see if there’s an update. This was a big issue for a friend of mine (he’d get very choppy gameplay, and he’d always have issues with driving and combat) and a simple 2 meg download fixed him right up.

Q: The game runs fine on my PC, but I seem to get a bit weighed down when in-game. It feels like the game is just a bit sluggish.

A: If you’ve disabled DWM, updated your NIC drivers, and are still getting weird issues where the game feels like it’s not rendering fast enough, or you feel very choppy when things are happening around you, try the simple registry hack to adjust your TCPAckFrequency. This removes a limit on how your computer handles TCP requests and packets. This link is a good walkthrough of how to do this: http://www.youtube.c…h?v=XbWQnvytvqk .. You’ll notice in that video when he opens the Interfaces subfolder, there are 4 devices listed. Add the TCPAckFrequency DWORD value for each that your computer has.

Q: How can I see where a bottleneck in my system is?

A: If you’re running Windows 7, the quickest and easiest way to see where your computer is coming up short is the “Windows Experience Index”. This rates your individual components on a scale of 1.0 to 7.9 – if you have anything under 5.0, you may want to check into upgrading it. Example: if you have a 3.8 on your hard drive, but everything else is above 5.0 – look into if you have a 5400 RPM drive. A simple upgrade of about $60-80 with a 7200 or 10,000 RPM drive will have a huge performance boost on your machine. Each machine is different, but having the best video card and then having a cheap hard drive will cause a bottleneck in a machine. Because your hard drive handles all the data loaded and also handles virtual memory, it’s important to have a finely tuned hard drive (try a defrag, etc). Hard drives are the most common “skimp” item, meaning people will buy a beastly machine with great CPU, mem, and video card, but then get a 5400 RPM drive and be mad that their PC is running well below expectations.

Hopefully this helps, I’ll add to it as I find new ways to correct common issues I hear about.