Stolen from elsewhere
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1. Reinstall the client
Yes this sounds drastic, but if you're still using the files you downloaded from Open Beta, you can get a performance boost by uninstalling the game and then installing from the DVDs. I just did this and have gotten a massive speed-up of loading times.
2. Defragment your harddrive
A defragmented hard-drive doesn't have to keep searching back and forth to piece together a file - it just reads the entire file off at once, hence things load faster.
"Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter" on XP.
3. Disable virus scanner
Always a resource hog, disabling your scanner while the game is running should again give you a general performance boost and a file-loading boost.
Graphics
4. Download latest drivers
Self explanatory. I always do a full driver clean when installing new ones for my Geforce, which is performed as so:
1. Download Driver Cleaner Pro from Guru3d
2. Download latest nVidia drivers from nvidia.com
3. Uninstall current drivers from Add/Remove programs
4. Reboot the computer into safe mode (achieved on XP by hammering F8 during the bios sequence until the mode-select window appears)
5. Run Driver Cleaner Pro while in safe mode (make sure to tell it to clean the right vendor's drivers!)
6. Reboot into normal mode
7. Install downloaded drivers
8. Reboot, again into normal mode
5. Fullscreen Mode
This is always faster than windowed mode, as the graphics driver only has to draw the game, not the game plus all the crap on your desktop.
6. Create a custom profile in the graphics card's control panel
I only know how to do this with nVidia.
1. "Control Panel -> nVidia Control Panel"
2. "Advanced Settings" if you get asked
3. "Manage 3D Settings"
4. "Program Settings"
5. "Add", and then find war.exe in wherever you installed the game.
6. Set the following:
Anisotropic filtering: off
Antialiasing: none
Force mipmaps: bilinear
Prerendered frames: 1
Anisotropic optimizations: both to "On"
Texture filtering - quality: High Performance
Trilinear optimization: on (we've disable trilinear filtering anyway)
Vertical sync: force off
The game will now look like utter shit, but it should be a lot more responsive. You can then slowly revert back some of those settings until you get a good performance/appearance compromise.
7. Set the in-game graphics option to "Fastest Framerate".
This turns off most graphical effects, giving you much higher performance. If you want/need to see the ability effects on all characters, then change the drop-down box from "Self" to "All".
Audio
8. Disable audio during scenarios
You don't need it and should be paying attention to TS instead. This got me a big performance boost in scenarios.
User Interface
9. Download and install the BuffThrottle mod.
This will allow you to specify how often the buffs/debuffs listed by a character are updated. The bigger the time step, the better performance you have. The mod defaults to 0.5 seconds which should be enough.
Your PC
10. RAM
2gb is a must; Task Manager shows 1.3gb total usage when WAR is running, hence the pagefile will be used which will cause HD thrashing and some slow-down.
No nothing here will fix the desync - that's a coding/networking issue.
