So I and probably you playing Warhammer Online and you’re already aware of the video lag of the engine.  (Btw, Warhammer Online is powered by Gamebyro Engine which is already used by many other popular games also like DaOC, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3).

In this article i’ll try to gather up tips & tricks about fine tuning the Warhammer Online’s performance and ask readers for any similar tricks & feedbacks.

Note: Do everything suggested on this article at your OWN RISK!

Updating to latest drivers

The primary perfomance tuning option all the times. Update your drivers now. I’ll explain it from NVIDIA perspectife but if you digg enough, you’ll find similar information for ATI based cards.

Download from Nvidia

Download the latest drivers from Nvidia.com. You can either select your graphic card from drop down menu or use the automatic detection.

As of 07.10.2008 Nvidia.com suggests version 178.13 for my Asus EN8800-GT graphics card.

Search latest drivers on LaptopVideo2Go.com

LaptopVideo2Go.com has a nice feature that can find the latest driver for your graphics card.

1. Navigate to http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers
2. Open device manager on your computer and find Display Adapters and open up your graphic cards Properties.
3. Go to Details tab and get the 4 digit number after DEV_ and string after SUBSYS_.
   
4. Back on LaptopVideo2Go.com write the digits and strings you noted and filter the results;
   
5. You have to use the suitable driver for your system. Also check here for more information about latest drivers.

Try XFastest.com Drivers

This was a hack i used while i was playing Age of Conan (not for a long while and it actually boost my FPS alot. I did not try this with Warhammer Online but you may give it a try. Check xfastest.com for latest drivers.

Misc Driver Info

Also here’s a list of latest drivers benchmarks. Note that test was run on a mobile environment; 8600Mobile. Thing may change on desktop systems.

• Check here for detailed info about benchmark.
• Also Guru3d has a section for modified NVidia drivers.
• Lastly but not directly related with Warhammer Online but there is a FPS benchmarking program called SmartFPS that you can benchmark your drivers performance.It can benchmark your system with games Crysis, Crysis Warhead (full version), Call Of Duty 2, Battlefield 2, Serious Sam 2, Call Of Juarez (full version), Unreal Tournament 3, Quake 4, Prey, The Chronicles of Riddick: EFBB and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and even run multicore benchmark tests with a game running and winrar working.

Warhammer Online Needs CPU Power NOT GPU!

Everything is not graphics cards these days and sure you need a new CPU for latest games. On my gaming system i do miss this part; i own a AMD64 3700+ which is bottleneck of my system. My graphics card is ASUS EN-8800GT and got 3GB’s of memory.

PC Games Hardware has a comparision of one core and two core for Warhammer Online gameplay;

Tuning Warhammer Online’s Graphic Options

PC Games Hardware also tested up the games graphics options and their benefits. Lowering the Draw Distance seems to benefit the performance best. Here’s the table;

GameSpot’s article also have information about options;

The final part of PC Games Hardware’s Warhammer Online Tuning articles benchmarks the hardware options.

Before anything else i want to quote this paragraph;

Since Warhammer Online - Age of Reckoning has a good multi-core support you should use a dual-core CPU. In our processor benchmark you can see that the fps in WAR depend on the CPU in use. But a quad-core processor doesn’t deliver any benefits compared to an equally clocked dual-core. We deactivated two cores of a Phenom X4 9550 (2.2 GHz) and the framerate was still at 53 pictures per second.

CPU-Benchmarks

And it shows why my system sucks with WAR; cause of my Athlon 64 single core cpu. Before anything else get yourself a dual-core cpu for playing WAR which is already on my todo list. Check Gamespots CPU & Memory comparison also.

GPU-Benchmarks

As you can see if you got a dual-core cpu, fairly old GPU’s can just handle high frame rates. Also check Gamespots GPU comparison.

Gamespot’s Minimum Specs

Gamespot’s article have a minimum specs section for WAR.