How to make this game run optimally

Crow550 · Sep 15, 2013

Since Saints Row 2 is a wonderful PC port. *Sarcasm*

This is pretty much a direct Xbox360 port....Using 3 cpu cores and running at 30fps.

Get RadeonPro (there are similar programs that offer these options too): http://www.radeonpro.info/download/ Which should work on non-AMD cards. Also along with using Powertools (if not using Windows 8) and right clicking on SR2_PC.exe, going to properties and clicking on Compatibility and ticking disable display scaling and other SR2 tweaks discussed in IdolNinja's FAQ guide: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1715922 & my guide: http://steamcommunity.com/app/9480/discussions/0/846958724811426425/

Run RadeonPro then make a profile & point it to SR2_PC.exe.

Then click on the Tweaks tab: Under VSync control select Always on. Then tick Triple-buffering as well as tick Dynamic Framerate Control and set Keep up to 30fps.

Then down to Misc Tweaks: Under CPU Affinity if you have 4 or more cores only tick 3 and untick the rest. (Since the 360 uses 3 cores.)

Also tick Force Process High Priority.

RadeonPro normally loads when you load it and it's in the tray until you reboot or close it and if you always want it to load when you reboot just right click on RadeonPro in the tray and select settings. Under General tick Start with Windows and Start minimized.

You can also click on FPS counter and choose which keys to Toggle FPS and where the FPS counter is displayed on the screen. Then click Save.

This should be the ideal way to play the game? Give it a whirl and see.

*I'd also suggest turning down the in game Brightness/Gamma Control under Display. The default of 50 seems to a bit high. Unless you use the SweetFX Saints Row 2 Colorful Profile then leave it on 50 or crank it a little higher to your taste.*

This also has SweetFX functions built in if you want to use the Saints Row 2 colorful profile: http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/preset/378/

Instructions for SweetFX:

Download SweetFX: http://sweetfx.thelazy.net/?cat=3 either Standalone (just throw the folder where you'd like it.) or installer which will put it in Program Files. (Presets you download will go in SweetFX Configurator\SweetFX\SweetFX\Presets)

Right click on RadeonPro in the tray and select settings.

Click on SweetFX settings. Tick Enable SweetFX integration.

Under SweetFX files root location. Point it to the SweetFX folder in the SweetFX Configurator folder.

Then click Save.

Now open up RadeonPro and click on SR2_PC then click the Sweet FX tab.

Scroll down and click Import settings. Goto the Presets folder at SweetFX Configurator\SweetFX\SweetFX\Presets and click on SweetFX_Settings_Saints Row 2_Colorful then click Open. You'll see Enable SweetFX ticked.

Leave default settings or tweak to desired taste.

Enjoy!

*Optional. Use at own risk. Advanced users only* One last thing that may or may not help....

Been Googling about this. The answers seem rather mixed....

If you run Command Prompt in Admin mode and type in these two commands:

bcdedit /set useplatformclock true then press enter (First make sure HPET/ACPI is enabled in BIOS)

&

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick true then press enter

& reboot

It can help reduce Latency? (Some cases may do the opposite too)

Whether this is worth tweaking or leaving them both on False, you'll just have to do your own research and try it yourself.

Eerye Vysage · Sep 15, 2013

Nice guide!

Crow550 · Sep 16, 2013

Some further settings to play with. Make sure you click on SR2_PC.EXE in RadeonPro first.

The Advanced tab in RadeonPro you can tick Texture Filtering Quality and drag the slider to High Quality. (Unless you already have it set in your video card driver. Won't hurt if you enable this either way.)

Tick Mipmap Quality to High Quality. (Unless you already have it set in your video card driver. Won't hurt if you enable this either way.)

Tick Texture LOD to turn up the level of detail by dragging the slider all the way to the left to -3.

*Optional to try* Tick Flip Queue Size and crank to 5. May reduce any stuttering but can cause Mouse Lag. Try it and see.

Crow550 · Sep 18, 2013

The in game Display settings of Dynamic Lighting & Ambient Occlusion can cause frame drops on even the latest and greatest hardware.

You can try settings Dynamic Lighting to Simple and try Ambient Occlusion on Simple or Off.

However try setting Dynamic Lighting to Simple and leaving Ambient Occlusion on All. Unless you still have FPS issues then set it to Off or Simple. Also see if you can notice Ambient Occlusion on of off too.

This is if you have RadeonPro setup similar in the posts above.

For me Dynamic Lighting was causing frame drops. Unknown on Ambient Occlusion at the moment.... I have heard others claim it will cause issues.

There is nothing to fix this either. It's just the game engine and the way it was optimized for PC.

Other modern games on my PC run great. So yeah. Give these a whirl.

PlayaOfGames · Feb 2, 2014

This guide worked beautifully and i can play the game now even more smoother with that readon pro software, I was amazed and the sweet fx I never used sweet fx until now but it made the game have actual color and not a over brightened game, I mean a lot of color more then i expected thank you.

Crow550 · Feb 3, 2014

You Welcome.

D K · Feb 8, 2014

Wondering, has anyone had weird vertical alignment issues when using the sr2 powertools? Im running on a thinkpad w500 (core 2 duo 2.5, firegl v5700, 8gb ram) and windows 7 64 bit. I run the game windowed at 1280x1024. The speed hack seems to make the game slower only if i use a negative number in the ini. Setting a value of -8 gives a similar feel to sr4 (which is certainly playable on my machine). The problem is a lot of the world objects are vertically moved from where they should be. Is this something anyone has seen before?

FYI the v5700 is the same hardware as the radeon hd 3650 but with different areas of the chip enabled by the driver. My particular machine has switchable graphics (i can switch between the ati and intel graphics while windows is running), but only with the firegl driver. The radeon drivers do install without using mobility modder, if i disable the switchable graphics driver and switch in bios only. This is one of the next things I will try but I havent had any firegl-vs-radeon issues with other games so i doubt it will help.

bookus · Feb 13, 2014

I don't think you're supposed to put a negative number in the .ini, it should be a decimal like .8 or some such.

Did you use the powertools stopwatch test to determine how much speed up you had?

(The stopwatch test makes it easier, but you can probably use any race or timed activity and a stop watch to figure out approximately how much you need to slow things down.)

D K · Feb 13, 2014

Thanks. I didnt use the stopwatch test. I was subjectively comparing the walking/running animations to srtt and sriv. After several changes I seem to have it as good as it will get. I set the percentage to 0.75, installed radeon drivers (catalyst 13.9, vs 9.something which i had with firegl drivers), disabled windows themes and dwm, and messed with the in-game graphics settings. At 1280x720 with everything on except motion blur and DoF, the game runs pretty smooth. My only issue is the jerky steering. Nothing i do seems to fix it

PS: from an algorithms standpoint, it seems like the steering (and possibly other things) are tied to cpu clock separately from the world timing. I say this because its not so much that the steering is jumpy, but that it is very very sensitive and fast. Even when the steering behaves reasonable well, the bootlegger can turn on a dime, for example. To me that means there must be clock-dependent function converting player input to steering force. Either that, or the steering system is analog-only and treats keyboard input as hard turns.

PPS: Confirmed with a joystick (for flying) that steering is analog, or at least has steps, but something is wrong with the camera angle and menus when using this controller

FusionH2o · Sep 28, 2016

Crow550 said:
Since Saints Row 2 is a wonderful PC port. *Sarcasm* This is pretty much a direct Xbox360 port....Using 3 cpu cores and running at 30fps.

Get RadeonPro (there are similar programs that offer these options too): http://www.radeonpro.info/download/ Which should work on non-AMD cards. Also along with using Powertools (if not using Windows 8) and right clicking on SR2_PC.exe, going to properties and clicking on Compatibility and ticking disable display scaling and other SR2 tweaks discussed in IdolNinja's FAQ guide: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1715922 & my guide: http://steamcommunity.com/app/9480/discussions/0/846958724811426425/

Run RadeonPro then make a profile & point it to SR2_PC.exe.

Then click on the Tweaks tab: Under VSync control select Always on. Then tick Triple-buffering as well as tick Dynamic Framerate Control and set Keep up to 30fps.

Then down to Misc Tweaks: Under CPU Affinity if you have 4 or more cores only tick 3 and untick the rest. (Since the 360 uses 3 cores.)

Also tick Force Process High Priority.

RadeonPro normally loads when you load it and it's in the tray until you reboot or close it and if you always want it to load when you reboot just right click on RadeonPro in the tray and select settings. Under General tick Start with Windows and Start minimized.

You can also click on FPS counter and choose which keys to Toggle FPS and where the FPS counter is displayed on the screen. Then click Save.

This should be the ideal way to play the game? Give it a whirl and see.

*I'd also suggest turning down the in game Brightness/Gamma Control under Display. The default of 50 seems to a bit high. Unless you use the SweetFX Saints Row 2 Colorful Profile then leave it on 50 or crank it a little higher to your taste.*

This also has SweetFX functions built in if you want to use the Saints Row 2 colorful profile: http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/preset/378/

Instructions for SweetFX:

Download SweetFX: http://sweetfx.thelazy.net/?cat=3 either Standalone (just throw the folder where you'd like it.) or installer which will put it in Program Files. (Presets you download will go in SweetFX Configurator\SweetFX\SweetFX\Presets)

Right click on RadeonPro in the tray and select settings.

Click on SweetFX settings. Tick Enable SweetFX integration.

Under SweetFX files root location. Point it to the SweetFX folder in the SweetFX Configurator folder.

Then click Save.

Now open up RadeonPro and click on SR2_PC then click the Sweet FX tab.

Scroll down and click Import settings. Goto the Presets folder at SweetFX Configurator\SweetFX\SweetFX\Presets and click on SweetFX_Settings_Saints Row 2_Colorful then click Open. You'll see Enable SweetFX ticked.

Leave default settings or tweak to desired taste.

Enjoy!

*Optional. Use at own risk. Advanced users only* One last thing that may or may not help....

Been Googling about this. The answers seem rather mixed....

If you run Command Prompt in Admin mode and type in these two commands:

bcdedit /set useplatformclock true then press enter (First make sure HPET/ACPI is enabled in BIOS)

&

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick true then press enter

& reboot

It can help reduce Latency? (Some cases may do the opposite too)

Whether this is worth tweaking or leaving them both on False, you'll just have to do your own research and try it yourself.

I followed all your directions and this is what happened. Error binkw32.dll and why am I missing it?

Edit:: I also checked into my SR2 install folder DFEngine.dll is in there.