Yup, it does. May be then that would motivate the op to go back through and flesh out even more of it.
Yea I ran into a problem with that, each reply in a thread can only have 11,400 characters in it. I already had to break it down into two posts and trim it some, if I update it I have to squeeze in what I update by removing other stuff or, reply and hope those that thread scroll down far enough to see the next section.
Maybe tomorrow since I'll have free time before headstart on Friday, I can insert the other screenshots and such I took, help give it more visual since it's a lot of text to dissect.
Yea I ran into a problem with that, each reply in a thread can only have 11,400 characters in it. I already had to break it down into two posts and trim it some, if I update it I have to squeeze in what I update by removing other stuff or, reply and hope those that thread scroll down far enough to see the next section.
Maybe tomorrow since I'll have free time before headstart on Friday, I can insert the other screenshots and such I took, help give it more visual since it's a lot of text to dissect.
Nice. If you need any encouragement or help from us, just give a yell.
I never noticed troubleshooting and the Multi-Core rendering option. If anyone is having problems, even with dual/quads, even try turning it off. For example, Left 4 Dead 2, I can run fine but if multi core rendering is turned on, it will randomly stutter for no reason but with it off, runs perfect.
Although, Is this on by default in STO as I'm having zero problems.
I dont get it, this is not an optimal guide, its for TRIBBLE computers guide?
This is a performance guide to INCREASE game performance. i.e. make it run faster, run smoother, and give an overall higher frame rate per second. Yes it will make the graphics look not as pleasing depending upon what settings you use in-game, it can be used on a high end or low end computer to help improve gameplay. I know what it's like to play MMO's on a low end PC. My laptop runs STO well enough, but I know what its like to love a game and want to play it but can't cause its a slideshow or difficult to run, so I threw this together to help those that might need it.
Just a suggestion here, since turn everything down = best frame rate really is a fairly simple concept, maybe something that would be more helpful to people trying to make STO run on lower systems would be a guide to what options give the best visual benefits with the smallest performance impact.
Lets face it, if you have to turn every setting to mnimum to play, you really shoudn't be playing on your PC in the first place. (For example, if you need hald rez option enabled to get a playable framerate, your PC just shouldn't be running the game) Overall a blend of settings that give decent visual quality without a huge performance hit would likely be far more useful. (Drag all slides to left, select off for everything really works just about as well for a guide to absolute max FPS)
Just a suggestion here, since turn everything down = best frame rate really is a fairly simple concept, maybe something that would be more helpful to people trying to make STO run on lower systems would be a guide to what options give the best visual benefits with the smallest performance impact.
Thanks, but that's incorrect. Not everything affects framerate, and certainly not everything affects framerate the same. Options can affect video and system memory usage, and CPU processing rather than GPU processing.
The OP put this guide up there to help people determine which options to turn down to improve performance without sacrificing everything visually.
"Reduced File Streaming - I believe this lowers how much the game streams and/or loads a zone information to you as you move area to area. I personally don't use it. RS: Off"
As the description says, this keeps some of the objects in memory so you don't need to load them again from the server. It only lowers the amount the game streams if the setting is actually On. So basically, you want to stream in (Redownload) all those random graphics each time you load and not keep them in memory if they can be reused? I am not sure how that improves system performance.....
Edit: I just saw some of the dates on the posts. Apologies for trolling an old thread.
I guess most people reading this thread are doing so because they feel the need to improve performance, that's why I started reading.
No one here has actually said what is a "good frame rate". I thought mine was OK but the /showfps thing says its at about 10-15 fps. If I put everything down to minimum I can peak to 60fps in space and 35fps on my bridge..that's including the half resolution thing on.
On marginal systems, like mine,I think it really depends on what you are doing. be prepared to change your setting to suit the event. I find space battles are fine down to 10fps, but ground pvp needs fps as high as I can get it.
Because of my pc performance I use different settings for ground and space and whether its pvp or pve. Things like ground PVP, and "rock climbing" are harder on the lower FPS settings I get but I can do well just by dropping my settings when I need to.
I am able to play the game perfectly happily with these restrictions. Just experiment with it and see what works well for you.
I've played with the advanced setting quite a lot, to my mind most of them make a very small incremental changes to looks and speed and I No longer bother with them.
My conclusion after reading all this:
FPS do not matter at all. Play with the micro settings if you wish - its fun, so why not. But if they confuse/bore you turn advance settings off, use the big SPEED / QUALITY slide bar.
It works great and can not be simpler. KISS - "Keep It Simple Stupid"
Move the slider towards Speed when you need some Pvp fast reactions or things look a bit too jerky. Slide it towards quality if you want it to look great.
No one here has actually said what is a "good frame rate". I thought mine was OK but the /showfps thing says its at about 10-15 fps. If I put everything down to minimum I can peak to 60fps in space and 35fps on my bridge..that's including the half resolution thing on.
That's partly because what looks good to one person might not look so good to the next. In general, you can't go wrong with 60 FPS, which is what most LCD monitors are limited to for their refresh rate (Hz is cycles per second, similar to frames per second even if different). In general 30+ is enjoyable to most, but 60 should always be your target.
...And FPS goes up and down depending upon different scenes' graphical processing requirements.
FPS does matter. Can you play with 10 FPS? Sure. Would anyone advise it? No.
Case in point, lets say you are in combat. Whichever one gives you the least FPS. Now, lets say you need to rotate your camera around or turn your ship in a rapid speed to kill something before it kills you. Someone with a higher FPS, will have no issues with this. Someone with a much lower FPS will see the game chug along trying to achieve the commands you are giving it (i.e. pan camera here, rotate ship there, etc). It boils down to a higher frame rate, lets you improve how well you play. Now if you're playing something, lets say in space, that doesn't need a lot of fast camera switches or target rotations, it won't be as big an issue. But myself? I play an Escort. I fight at full speed, with all my energy diverted into weapons. I make "attack runs" on a target, I'll keep firing until the target is out of my line of fire or I can't hit it, then I will swoop around in as tight of a circle as I can to get them in the "crosshairs" again and repeat. If I had 5 or 10 FPS, this would be extremely hard.
The guide is here to help performance. You end up choosing one of three things; speed, eye candy or a balance between the two. Do you want shiny pretty things? Or those 5 extra frames you can squeak out to help you improve your playstyle? I did aim the guide for lower FPS players such as myself. I play with pretty much all settings on low / off and depending upon the action on screen, I get anywhere from 20 fps to 45 fps. Little low but playable.
Trust me, I've been playing MMORPG's for a long time now, I've played some MMO's with 5 FPS (every setting on low). And while I could "play" with 5 FPS, if you had given me another 10 or 15 FPS? I could have rocked at playing those mmo's.
Hell if anything, the guide teaches you how to really optimize your Windows install. Clean out clutter, keeping away viruses and spyware, etc That right there is a benefit of itself. If the 11 million people that played WoW followed just that section of the guide? There'd be virtually no accounts stolen, let alone performance increase
nice thread guys! But damn, just saw their last movie on the site and it's all soo smooth and fast. How the hell do they do this? Do they change something to the gamespeed?
nice thread guys! But damn, just saw their last movie on the site and it's all soo smooth and fast. How the hell do they do this? Do they change something to the gamespeed?
Easy. They either use a powerful gaming rig or they render each frame in advance. My guess is the later so that they can adjust it to their 29.97 (drop frame), 30, or higher framerate for video editing.
Not unless you want to see what you've "played" later. Then it would sort of defeat the real-time interaction.
The difference is: rendering frames over time to render the exact amount needed or rendering as fast as possible for something hopefully close to what's needed at any given moment.
I recently sat down and took some screen shots comparing the low vs. high detail settings in STO. These pics can give you a decent idea of what you can expect if following the OP's great advice.
The OP is a good guide for folks with low end systems. I would suggest playing around quite a bit as there are some features that make a big difference and some that make very small differences. More on that in a bit.
Also, as to preferred frame rate, it depends a great deal on what you are doing. In most MMOs where you are playing PVE, framerate will be less essential. Then 20+ fps can be adequate. EQ/WoW and others can be played at 30 FPS just fine.
When playing PvP then framerate=survival. The guy on the slower system will be waiting to see someone come around a corner, in the meantime the guy on the faster system has already pulled the trigger and you are dead. So you want to shoot for ~60 fps if you are playing PvP.
Same thing goes for space vs. ground combat in STO. In space, things are a bit slower, and a lower framerate can be ok, but you really don't want that slow framerate on the ground where it is more like a shooter.
Also remember that the amount of stuff going on in the game will alter your framerate. Many people will shoot for a max FPS of 60+. That means that when things get really really busy they may drop down to 30-45 fps, which remains playable for many people. Your preferences may vary. But if someone says they are getting 60fps "in space" that will usually equate to much less during combat. Few people think to look at their framerates during heavy action, and would be surprised to see how low it drops.
I have a high end system and run at 60+ fps most of the time, 1600x1200 4xAA all features maxed except shadows. Here is a brief rundown of what might effect you the most:
Anti-Aliasing (AA) - This feature will pull down your performance the most. If you can turn it on and get a reasonable framerate the game looks gorgeous. However, if you are getting low framerates, this should be the first thing you turn off. If you feel you must have this turned on, you may want to consider dropping the resolution or getting better hardware. I prefer having the highest resolution my monitor will allow, and turning down AA if I must.
Shadows - In most games the extra processing needed to figure out where shadows go and how many to draw (depending on the number of lights) can take a significant amount of processing power. I almost always turn shadows to Low settings in most games even with a very high end system. When WoW upgraded their game engine back with WOTLK, the shadow option was the one that killed most people's performance. The same is true in STO and other games.
Dynamic Lights (Max Lights per Object) - These can be turned down to less than the max number and still leave the game looking very good. The number of lights you have increases the amount of processing the system has to do to render each frame.
Bloom Effects - This is a new feature that a lot of games are using recently. It adds to the "atmosphere" giving objects a glowing effect. It also can lower the framerate of your game considerably in some circumstances. Some of the first games to use Bloom really overdid it and it made things appear blurry and harsh, IMHO. It doesn't seem to do a lot in STO, but try it and see what you think.
View Distance - Effects how far away you can see people and things. Be careful with this one. While you are on a starbase or in space, the distance has very little effect. However, if you are on a ground mission, this setting can absolutely kill your framerates. Keep this turned down unless you have a high end system and even then I don't recommend 200%.
Texture/Anisotropic filtering - This changes how the game filters textures on the ground as they appear in the distance. It can make a game look better, and new GPU's can do it without effecting performance. However, if you have an older video card it may make a big difference to your performance.
Those are the really big performance hitters from my experience. Changing these can make the biggest difference to your framerate, so adjust them and find out what makes sense for you.
BTW, the command to view framerate while playing STO is:
/showfps 1
Type that into your chat window and a framerate counter will appear in the upper right corner of your game window. I recommend moving the Minimap down slightly so it does not interfere.
Half Resolution - Now this, is a very very very good way to boost your FPS. Basically, everything but the in-game HUDs, get a massive lowering of quality. Poly count, texture detail, etc (from a visual perspective at least). It will make the game look bad, but a large performance increase.
@OP
Would be good if you add in your performance guide at this point the possibilities of the "renderscale" command.
"renderscale 0.5" is the slash command for gameworld-half-resolution and this command allows also other values than 0.5 which can be keybound for fast switching.
In most cases "renderscale 0.75" gives enough performance boost and looks not that ugly like 0.5
I recommend using three keybindings with 0.5, 0.75 and 1. For those who like it to have more nuances they could use six keybindings with values like 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1
@OP great guide dude, while other may gripe about your guide I won't. Like you said before the guide it for performance and frame rate. Some people love the 'pretties' of the game but suffer for it, then gripe that it's a problem with Cryptic's coding or some such nonsense. Look at the thread about over-heating, people *****ed...I mean complained that it was 'Cryptic's coding' that made their computers go poof. Knowing them they had all the settings at max and didn't understand the little nuances of their computers.
Take me for example *shudder* I'm running on a dell inspiron 1720, damned thing is two years old and with an integrated graphics card. Yes I yell and complain that I Don't have access to the best 'pretties' but I get over it. This game even on the recommended settings give me frame rate I can live with. I don't know if this is connected to anything but I've had a bug or maybe glitch that when I look in fleet anything the game locks down and I have to ctr+alt+delete to bring up task manager and kill the game. More then likely the case is the integrated vid card.
I'd also like to say that the Game Boost program is niffty, I run windows 7 (Which is hella better then vista for performance) I usually peg out at 1.4 gig of mem, but that's with firefox open and tons of tabs open. Yes I'm a forum hunter, but with it closed I shoot down to around 800meg that windows is using by itself. Now turn on the program and I shot down to only 600meg running. So I would say it's a win/win for Game Boost.
Only thing I haven't done is run it and run the game, will have to do that right after I get done burning a movie.
I'd also like to say that BlackVipers Process Guide is awesome if you PAY ATTENTION and DO NOT turn off something that isn't in the "SAFE" side of the guide. I've gone through it when I had vista and yeah it worked fine but I had to be stupid and click something off that I thought it was something else...damned miss clicks. But I have never, and I mean never even on this Dell Laptop using that guide on safe have messed the computer up.
With that being said, if you know about your computer and what you do and don't use then yes go a step beyond 'safe' and tweak your system. Just like CCleaner, if you know what your doing then use the registry cleanup tool.
About Avira, I'd recommend it be turned off when your playing the game. It has a default option in where it will scan every access or read file. And with this game accessing a lot of files (I'm guessing here) it has the potential to put a load on the cpu possibly.
On defragmentation, I would highly consider getting a better defragger then windows. I can't remember the link at this moment, but in it was a report on microsoft admiting that their defragmentation software was not up to par with other companies. Myself I broke down and purchased OO defrag and just recently did a trial of perfecdisk 11. If you use your computer for more then gaming, like a lot of people like me, run a defrag at least once a week. Fragmentation kills your computer more then anything, also the stress of your seek time on the hdd goes up as there is more frags. A good rule of thumb is for a hd of 120-500 gigs is only 2-6% fragmentation. Anything higher and your computer has to work harder to piece together files it needs.
Also memory, make sure you have enough of it, vista users try to go for 2gig+ win7 I'd say the same. And make sure to note if you have a x32 or x64 bit processor and windows. x32 can only handle up to four and most times only show 3.5 or 3.6 being installed. x64's limitations are different. Also your motherboard will tell you how much ram you can have per slot I.E. 2 gigs. If you want a free fast way of knowing what your max is check out www.crucial.com they have a program (that is very small and doesn't install to your hard drive) that scans your computer and determines what your computer can handle.
After season 2 hit, I was excited, then I realized I was getting regular, jerky, fps bumps. These bumps hit about one every half-second, and more annoyingly, did not happen when STO had focus (I was alt-tabbed out). I'd turned all my settings back to practically nothing, then I realized I'd turned on the option to use a Joystick.
{Options}->{Controller} Joysticks -> Off.
As soon as I disabled this, the periodic lag-blips vanished.
I linked this to a friend and it helped him i have no prob with any game i get since i know how to make it work right off the bat (Even win95 classics with a single file DLL):D
Comments
Yup, it does. May be then that would motivate the op to go back through and flesh out even more of it.
Yea I ran into a problem with that, each reply in a thread can only have 11,400 characters in it. I already had to break it down into two posts and trim it some, if I update it I have to squeeze in what I update by removing other stuff or, reply and hope those that thread scroll down far enough to see the next section.
Maybe tomorrow since I'll have free time before headstart on Friday, I can insert the other screenshots and such I took, help give it more visual since it's a lot of text to dissect.
Nice.
Although, Is this on by default in STO as I'm having zero problems.
This is a performance guide to INCREASE game performance. i.e. make it run faster, run smoother, and give an overall higher frame rate per second. Yes it will make the graphics look not as pleasing depending upon what settings you use in-game, it can be used on a high end or low end computer to help improve gameplay. I know what it's like to play MMO's on a low end PC. My laptop runs STO well enough, but I know what its like to love a game and want to play it but can't cause its a slideshow or difficult to run, so I threw this together to help those that might need it.
Lets face it, if you have to turn every setting to mnimum to play, you really shoudn't be playing on your PC in the first place. (For example, if you need hald rez option enabled to get a playable framerate, your PC just shouldn't be running the game) Overall a blend of settings that give decent visual quality without a huge performance hit would likely be far more useful. (Drag all slides to left, select off for everything really works just about as well for a guide to absolute max FPS)
Thanks, but that's incorrect. Not everything affects framerate, and certainly not everything affects framerate the same. Options can affect video and system memory usage, and CPU processing rather than GPU processing.
The OP put this guide up there to help people determine which options to turn down to improve performance without sacrificing everything visually.
Just one thing:
"Reduced File Streaming - I believe this lowers how much the game streams and/or loads a zone information to you as you move area to area. I personally don't use it. RS: Off"
As the description says, this keeps some of the objects in memory so you don't need to load them again from the server. It only lowers the amount the game streams if the setting is actually On. So basically, you want to stream in (Redownload) all those random graphics each time you load and not keep them in memory if they can be reused? I am not sure how that improves system performance.....
Other than that, good thread.
I guess most people reading this thread are doing so because they feel the need to improve performance, that's why I started reading.
No one here has actually said what is a "good frame rate". I thought mine was OK but the /showfps thing says its at about 10-15 fps. If I put everything down to minimum I can peak to 60fps in space and 35fps on my bridge..that's including the half resolution thing on.
On marginal systems, like mine,I think it really depends on what you are doing. be prepared to change your setting to suit the event. I find space battles are fine down to 10fps, but ground pvp needs fps as high as I can get it.
Because of my pc performance I use different settings for ground and space and whether its pvp or pve. Things like ground PVP, and "rock climbing" are harder on the lower FPS settings I get but I can do well just by dropping my settings when I need to.
I am able to play the game perfectly happily with these restrictions. Just experiment with it and see what works well for you.
I've played with the advanced setting quite a lot, to my mind most of them make a very small incremental changes to looks and speed and I No longer bother with them.
My conclusion after reading all this:
FPS do not matter at all. Play with the micro settings if you wish - its fun, so why not. But if they confuse/bore you turn advance settings off, use the big SPEED / QUALITY slide bar.
It works great and can not be simpler. KISS - "Keep It Simple Stupid"
Move the slider towards Speed when you need some Pvp fast reactions or things look a bit too jerky. Slide it towards quality if you want it to look great.
That's partly because what looks good to one person might not look so good to the next. In general, you can't go wrong with 60 FPS, which is what most LCD monitors are limited to for their refresh rate (Hz is cycles per second, similar to frames per second even if different). In general 30+ is enjoyable to most, but 60 should always be your target.
...And FPS goes up and down depending upon different scenes' graphical processing requirements.
Case in point, lets say you are in combat. Whichever one gives you the least FPS. Now, lets say you need to rotate your camera around or turn your ship in a rapid speed to kill something before it kills you. Someone with a higher FPS, will have no issues with this. Someone with a much lower FPS will see the game chug along trying to achieve the commands you are giving it (i.e. pan camera here, rotate ship there, etc). It boils down to a higher frame rate, lets you improve how well you play. Now if you're playing something, lets say in space, that doesn't need a lot of fast camera switches or target rotations, it won't be as big an issue. But myself? I play an Escort. I fight at full speed, with all my energy diverted into weapons. I make "attack runs" on a target, I'll keep firing until the target is out of my line of fire or I can't hit it, then I will swoop around in as tight of a circle as I can to get them in the "crosshairs" again and repeat. If I had 5 or 10 FPS, this would be extremely hard.
The guide is here to help performance. You end up choosing one of three things; speed, eye candy or a balance between the two. Do you want shiny pretty things? Or those 5 extra frames you can squeak out to help you improve your playstyle? I did aim the guide for lower FPS players such as myself. I play with pretty much all settings on low / off and depending upon the action on screen, I get anywhere from 20 fps to 45 fps. Little low but playable.
Trust me, I've been playing MMORPG's for a long time now, I've played some MMO's with 5 FPS (every setting on low). And while I could "play" with 5 FPS, if you had given me another 10 or 15 FPS? I could have rocked at playing those mmo's.
Hell if anything, the guide teaches you how to really optimize your Windows install. Clean out clutter, keeping away viruses and spyware, etc That right there is a benefit of itself. If the 11 million people that played WoW followed just that section of the guide? There'd be virtually no accounts stolen, let alone performance increase
Easy. They either use a powerful gaming rig or they render each frame in advance. My guess is the later so that they can adjust it to their 29.97 (drop frame), 30, or higher framerate for video editing.
Not unless you want to see what you've "played" later.
The difference is: rendering frames over time to render the exact amount needed or rendering as fast as possible for something hopefully close to what's needed at any given moment.
My low res looks like your high res...;/
And my low res looks like YOUR high res.
Also, as to preferred frame rate, it depends a great deal on what you are doing. In most MMOs where you are playing PVE, framerate will be less essential. Then 20+ fps can be adequate. EQ/WoW and others can be played at 30 FPS just fine.
When playing PvP then framerate=survival. The guy on the slower system will be waiting to see someone come around a corner, in the meantime the guy on the faster system has already pulled the trigger and you are dead. So you want to shoot for ~60 fps if you are playing PvP.
Same thing goes for space vs. ground combat in STO. In space, things are a bit slower, and a lower framerate can be ok, but you really don't want that slow framerate on the ground where it is more like a shooter.
Also remember that the amount of stuff going on in the game will alter your framerate. Many people will shoot for a max FPS of 60+. That means that when things get really really busy they may drop down to 30-45 fps, which remains playable for many people. Your preferences may vary. But if someone says they are getting 60fps "in space" that will usually equate to much less during combat. Few people think to look at their framerates during heavy action, and would be surprised to see how low it drops.
I have a high end system and run at 60+ fps most of the time, 1600x1200 4xAA all features maxed except shadows. Here is a brief rundown of what might effect you the most:
Anti-Aliasing (AA) - This feature will pull down your performance the most. If you can turn it on and get a reasonable framerate the game looks gorgeous. However, if you are getting low framerates, this should be the first thing you turn off. If you feel you must have this turned on, you may want to consider dropping the resolution or getting better hardware. I prefer having the highest resolution my monitor will allow, and turning down AA if I must.
Shadows - In most games the extra processing needed to figure out where shadows go and how many to draw (depending on the number of lights) can take a significant amount of processing power. I almost always turn shadows to Low settings in most games even with a very high end system. When WoW upgraded their game engine back with WOTLK, the shadow option was the one that killed most people's performance. The same is true in STO and other games.
Dynamic Lights (Max Lights per Object) - These can be turned down to less than the max number and still leave the game looking very good. The number of lights you have increases the amount of processing the system has to do to render each frame.
Bloom Effects - This is a new feature that a lot of games are using recently. It adds to the "atmosphere" giving objects a glowing effect. It also can lower the framerate of your game considerably in some circumstances. Some of the first games to use Bloom really overdid it and it made things appear blurry and harsh, IMHO. It doesn't seem to do a lot in STO, but try it and see what you think.
View Distance - Effects how far away you can see people and things. Be careful with this one. While you are on a starbase or in space, the distance has very little effect. However, if you are on a ground mission, this setting can absolutely kill your framerates. Keep this turned down unless you have a high end system and even then I don't recommend 200%.
Texture/Anisotropic filtering - This changes how the game filters textures on the ground as they appear in the distance. It can make a game look better, and new GPU's can do it without effecting performance. However, if you have an older video card it may make a big difference to your performance.
Those are the really big performance hitters from my experience. Changing these can make the biggest difference to your framerate, so adjust them and find out what makes sense for you.
BTW, the command to view framerate while playing STO is:
/showfps 1
Type that into your chat window and a framerate counter will appear in the upper right corner of your game window. I recommend moving the Minimap down slightly so it does not interfere.
@OP
Would be good if you add in your performance guide at this point the possibilities of the "renderscale" command.
"renderscale 0.5" is the slash command for gameworld-half-resolution and this command allows also other values than 0.5 which can be keybound for fast switching.
In most cases "renderscale 0.75" gives enough performance boost and looks not that ugly like 0.5
I recommend using three keybindings with 0.5, 0.75 and 1. For those who like it to have more nuances they could use six keybindings with values like 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1
Take me for example *shudder* I'm running on a dell inspiron 1720, damned thing is two years old and with an integrated graphics card. Yes I yell and complain that I Don't have access to the best 'pretties' but I get over it. This game even on the recommended settings give me frame rate I can live with. I don't know if this is connected to anything but I've had a bug or maybe glitch that when I look in fleet anything the game locks down and I have to ctr+alt+delete to bring up task manager and kill the game. More then likely the case is the integrated vid card.
I'd also like to say that the Game Boost program is niffty, I run windows 7 (Which is hella better then vista for performance) I usually peg out at 1.4 gig of mem, but that's with firefox open and tons of tabs open. Yes I'm a forum hunter, but with it closed I shoot down to around 800meg that windows is using by itself. Now turn on the program and I shot down to only 600meg running. So I would say it's a win/win for Game Boost.
Only thing I haven't done is run it and run the game, will have to do that right after I get done burning a movie.
I'd also like to say that BlackVipers Process Guide is awesome if you PAY ATTENTION and DO NOT turn off something that isn't in the "SAFE" side of the guide. I've gone through it when I had vista and yeah it worked fine but I had to be stupid and click something off that I thought it was something else...damned miss clicks. But I have never, and I mean never even on this Dell Laptop using that guide on safe have messed the computer up.
With that being said, if you know about your computer and what you do and don't use then yes go a step beyond 'safe' and tweak your system. Just like CCleaner, if you know what your doing then use the registry cleanup tool.
About Avira, I'd recommend it be turned off when your playing the game. It has a default option in where it will scan every access or read file. And with this game accessing a lot of files (I'm guessing here) it has the potential to put a load on the cpu possibly.
On defragmentation, I would highly consider getting a better defragger then windows. I can't remember the link at this moment, but in it was a report on microsoft admiting that their defragmentation software was not up to par with other companies. Myself I broke down and purchased OO defrag and just recently did a trial of perfecdisk 11. If you use your computer for more then gaming, like a lot of people like me, run a defrag at least once a week. Fragmentation kills your computer more then anything, also the stress of your seek time on the hdd goes up as there is more frags. A good rule of thumb is for a hd of 120-500 gigs is only 2-6% fragmentation. Anything higher and your computer has to work harder to piece together files it needs.
Also memory, make sure you have enough of it, vista users try to go for 2gig+ win7 I'd say the same. And make sure to note if you have a x32 or x64 bit processor and windows. x32 can only handle up to four and most times only show 3.5 or 3.6 being installed. x64's limitations are different. Also your motherboard will tell you how much ram you can have per slot I.E. 2 gigs. If you want a free fast way of knowing what your max is check out www.crucial.com they have a program (that is very small and doesn't install to your hard drive) that scans your computer and determines what your computer can handle.
just my 2 cents
Reported for trolling.
After season 2 hit, I was excited, then I realized I was getting regular, jerky, fps bumps. These bumps hit about one every half-second, and more annoyingly, did not happen when STO had focus (I was alt-tabbed out). I'd turned all my settings back to practically nothing, then I realized I'd turned on the option to use a Joystick.
{Options}->{Controller} Joysticks -> Off.
As soon as I disabled this, the periodic lag-blips vanished.
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/4583/showfps.png
(Sorry, I'm too braindead to figure how to actually link the image in properly)
Nice find. I wonder why this was causing issues?