How To Improve Performance (All Video Cards) + (Driver links)

Ok I see a lot of "I have bad performance, What do I do to improve it?" questions.
So I'm writing a quick "How To" on improving the games frame rate.

If UberLauncher.exe crashes!!

Please try installing the 2012 visual c++ runtime
Visual C++ 2012: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679

And this version of direct x
DirectX (June 2010): http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109


Before you try Anything or if PA.exe crashes!!
Try updating your Graphics card drivers again to the latest versions available.

(ATI GPUs ,, Windows) http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
It's recommended you use the most up to date drivers available.

(Nvidia GPUs ,, Windows) http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx
It's recommended you use the most up to date drivers available.

(Integrated Intel GPUs ,, Windows) https://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx

Drivers on laptop manufacturer websites are usually outdated!, don't use them to update video card drivers if possible.


How to view your in-game Frame-rate counter..!
Press "Ctrl + P" 1 time to view FPS and other client information relating to GPU performance.
Press "Ctrl + P" again to cycle through more performance and debugging information.


Performance Boosting Tips To Improve In Game Frame Rate!!

1, The game runs at the native desktop resolution. (Even when using the "Fullscreen" Setting!)
The "Best Way to Improve Game Performance" is to "Lower your Desktop resolution" to 1280x720 or something lower than your current resolution.

2, Set your in game settings like this:
Virtual Texturing : Low,
Headlights : Off, turning this and shadows will offer best framerate improvement
Shadows : Off,
HDR : Off,
Anti-Aliasing : Off,
Resolution : 50% or 75%, <- This only affects the 3D game engine, The UI uses desktop resoultion.

3, If your using an nVidia or ATI chipset,
Go to your Video Card's "Control Center" and in the Advanced 3D settings set these options:
Vsync : Always off,
Anisotropic filtering : Application Controlled,
Anti-Aliasing : Application Controlled,
Texture Filtering : Performance, <-- using "High performance" makes game textures "Very Low Quality", I recommend using the "Perfomance" setting
Threaded Optimazation : ON (Try both ON and OFF).

4, Windows Power options!!
Don't forget to set your windows "Power Scheme" to "High Performance", a lot of Desktop PC's, Laptop's and Tablets have this option set to "Balanced", this reduces overall PC performance and limits the speed of embedded GPU's it also limits hyperthreading/turbo boost timing too (It slows down both Laptops and Desktops so they are "Energy Star Compliant" and save power) .

(Steam User's)

I have heard that disabling the Steam Community Overlay helps improve the running of the game with certain ATI card's,
I haven't tried this as i haven't converted any of my keys to steam keys yet.

How to:
1) In Steam click on the "Settings" button. Click on the "In-Game Settings" tab.
2) Uncheck the box next to "Enable Steam Community In-Game" and click OK.
3) Disable the Steam Overlay on specific games only by right-clicking on the game title, click on "Properties" and uncheck "Enable Steam Community In-Game" in the "General" tab.
(Thank-you brianpurkiss)

(Mac User's)

1, If your using an older Mac OS
The new Mac OS has been released for free, Go to the Mac appstore for the free OS update

2, I have noticed the game runs on Mac's if you install "Bootcamp" and run the game on a "Windows" partition.
It's not a real fix,
But.. I have noticed that i get less graphical issues in windows on my Mac Mini mid 2010, core 2 duo 2.4ghz, nVidia GT320M, 4gb ram.
This could be due to windows allowing me to update the graphics card drivers beyond that of the Mac OS driver Revisions.


How to minimize RAM useage!

This will be most helpful on systems with 4Gb of ram!

Try keeping the size of planets for battling on below 600 in size.
A custom made system should contain no more than 3 or 4 planets, here are some examples of what i use to play.
4 Planet system : 2 Small Planets (400 size) and 2 Moons (200 size)
3 Planet system A : 1 Medium Planet (600 size) and 2 Moons (300 size)
3 Planet system B : 1 Medium Planet (600 size) 1 Small Planet (400 size) and 1 Moon (200 size)
2 Planet system : 1 MASSIVE Planet (800-1000 size) and 1 Moon (350 size)

I hope this helps people with 4Gb of ram with performance issues!!

My favorite system is a tiny planet (360 size) and a small moon (300 size).
It great for fast furious battles.

---Warning---
If your custom system is too big for your RAM your SWAP/Page File is used to help add extra Virtual Memory to assist in the loading/running of the game.
This is very slow and often leads to crashes and bad performance.
If you have this issue try reducing the size of your custom planets.

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(More Assistance if all else fails!!)

Post a comment below briefly describing the in game graphical issue
And can you please attach these

A copy of your DxDiag.txt


And a copy of your most recent log file too.
C:\Users\"YourUserName"\AppData\Local\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation\log\PA-00-00-00.000.txt
"Click sort by date so the most recent one is at the top, And post that one here."

It will help us fault find any issues and allow us to offer a better solution to your problems
I will also add anything new to this sticky thread to help people so its easy to find an answer to common issues

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Your internet Bandwidth (kb/s) will impact game performance while playing online!.

If your game runs smoothly and your framerate is not an issue, but you still get occasional frame rate pause this is usually due to your internet bandwidth or Ping to server.
When my bandwidth lowers (i use a mobile 3g modem) i get bad game pauses and frame rate drops, this is due to the game trying to resync lost or missing data with the server data.
Nothing can be done about this except improve your modem or ping,
My suggestion is "Don't use Wifi ( It lowers ping! ) , use an Ethernet cable to modem. if you can"

How to assist with performance optimizations..

Create a post in the UberProbe Performance Upload Thread

You capture by pressing ctrl+F11 to capture a 500ms snapshot. It creates a roughly 2mb file. It will be located wherever you are running the game out of - either where PALauncher is located, or wherever you're installed on Steam.

The file in question has a .upf extension, with the following type of naming convention:
quick_yyyy_m_d__hh.mm.ss.upf

Please attach that file to a post in this thread.. UberProbe Performance Upload Thread


Please only post to the "UberProbe Performance Upload Thread" if you're uploading an UberProbe file.

1. Don't do dozens of uploads. One upload per person in bad frame rate situations should be plenty. If we want more, we will PM you about it.
2. Do provide information about the situation (Tons of units, lots of factories, a nuke going off, etc).
3. Do not fill this thread with conversation about other peoples posts. We will delete it. We need to make this thread lean and mean and focused on uploads for peoples perf.

Nice... Will definitely try thulis when i come home. Maybe i can increase the emount of plabets i can play on to 7 then.

I'll report back the increase.

-- edited --

wouldn't be the simplest low resolution fix be a mouse click and drag to resize the window?

This is mostly for fullscreen, i only had game in window to get screenshots (in fullscreen mode my screenshot button gives me a nice picture of my empty desktop .. lol)

I just checked my drivers.. they have been set to that since ever

Maybe not at this point of Beta development.


UI scaling isn't fully implemented.
and scaling window down too much causes buttons to appear off screen

It's will great if you can spend some time on testing performance with slowbars mod:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-slowbars-54357.50349/
I'm not sure if this still working in current version or not.

I will give it a try soon

I will also ask uber to implement a slider in the settings to CAP the amount of emitter particles rendered or spawned.

I noticed biggest framerate drop when i have many builders emitting nanites, so maybe a global cap of how many are drawn at any given time that we can set in options would be "Uber Cool"
cough*hint hint*cough

--- Edited ---

Or have a setting like
Particles : Min / Meduim / Uber

Min = fabbers and factory's emit only 1/4 of the normal amount of nanite particles.
Meduim = fabbers and factory's emit only 1/2 of the normal amount of nanite particles.
Uber = fabbers and factory's emit normal amount of particles (as they do now)

need uber to answer or modder who might know

is there a command or an engine value for particle limits/cap?
In example
engine.call("set_maxparticlelimit", value);
then i could add it to settings.js and then some code for a slider to adjust its value.

They probably haven't implemented something like that. Probably low on priority list. Great idea by the way.

"Update your graphics drivers."

This needs to be right at the top!!

Thank-you Done

+1 for Mac.

Thanks! I did not know about this setting and my gaming PC was set to balanced!

It's a commonly overlooked thing many people don't even realize its set like this in most default windows setups on both Desktops and Laptops.

I'm glad i pointed it out

-edited-
changed my nonsense sentence and typo's, i really do need to read what i type before sending post *sighs*

Yeah I went and set it on my home and work PCs after seeing the post. Definitely makes a difference!

@maxpowerz

Your work on improving the frame rate is very helpful.
I used it successfully.
Uber also read your posts which gives hope that future versions of the games will have implemented similar to your solution.
Disable any "fireworks" straight from the game menu, for example.
Please continue to do what you are doing