Ultra High Settings 720p stream

[Sardus]

For a while now I've been trying to increase my frame rate and quality of my Planetside 2 twitch stream.

Recently I've been messing around with my overclock, in-game settings, and x-split settings and I discovered some things I wanted to share with people. I think I hit the jackpot.

Currently I am able to run textures on ultra settings with 720p definition on my stream with almost no compression and VERY solid frames. This is VASTLY different to the crappy 480p and slow frames I was getting on LOW settings before! Here is what I did:

First off, if you are able to overclock, or know someone who is good at overclocking, I recommend you overclock your CPU. I have an I7-960 which isn't particularly good for overclocking because the multipliers are locked but I managed to do a 33% overclock bringing it from 3.2 ghz to 4.25 ghz. Because I had to mess with the baseclock, I also ended up overclocking my ram in the process.

Here's the thing..... the CPU is the bottleneck for PS2 as many of you know. But the textures are mostly handled by the GPU. So even if you're getting decent frames on low settings, you can actually up your textures and see no decrease in frames. If you have a good GPU you can run ultra settings EASY. Some of them anyway. Even if what I post below doesn't work for you, mess with the GraphicsQuality settings and try to up them from what you're using.

Here are the settings that are key. Go into your Planetside2 directory and look for the useroptions.ini file and open it in word.

RenderDistance= 1000 or 2000 (try both, see how you like it. 2000 is better for aircraft users)
GraphicsQuality=4 (Ultra - this is the key thing. Use 3 or 2 if you're GPU doesn't like it)
TextureQuality=0
ShadowQuality=0 (IMPORTANT! shadows are really bad right now on CPU)
OverallQuality=-1 (sets the in-game graphics to "custom" so you can make all these changes without it resetting when you log in)
LightingQuality=5 or 2(Try either one, seems to make a difference for some people)
TerrainQuality=4
ModelQuality=4
VSync=0
GpuPhysics=0 (currently disabled due to bugs, but once its enabled, Nvidia cards can get better fps with it on)

Now if you want to stream, the HUGE thing that made a difference for me was to REDUCE YOUR COMPRESSION. But this only works if your upload can handle it. Reducing compression places a huge burden on your upload bandwidth. But by reducing your compression you put far less stress on your CPU, there is less blurring on your stream, and I saw a 30 frame rate boost automatically. Additionally, I wasn't getting anymore random lock ups or slow downs like I was before.

Note: the in-game streaming tool does use compression. A lot of compression. You can't turn that off or reduce it as far as I'm aware.

The result, this is my stream from last night, I never went below 50 frames:
http://www.twitch.tv/trg_gaming/b/385857256

My key computer stats (not exactly the newest thing on the market, but solid parts from about 3 years ago):
2TB SATA III 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
CORSAIR 6GB 1866 MHZ DDR3 DOMINATOR
THERMALTAKE CLP0575 FRIO OCK CPU COO
THERMALTAKE LEVEL 10GT FULL TOWER CAS
MSI X58A-GD45 USB3 SLI/CROSSFIRE USB
CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX V2 POWER SUPPLY
MISC ONBOARD 7.1 SOUND
SUPERCLOCK EVGA NVIDIA GTX 580 1.5GB
INTEL i7-960 3.20GHZ 8M 1366

I also have an intel 200gb SSD for my OS