Tag Archives: Performance

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The Ultimate ‘Alien Isolation’ Performance Guide

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Once Alien Isolation got announced a few months ago, I immediately went back and rewatched the 1970s Ridley Scott classic movie “Alien”. No AlienS, no Alien 3, no Alien 4. The plain old Alien! And it still holds up as one of the scariest sci-fi movies ever, dealing with the struggle of one women versus one alien.

With the blockbuster game, Alien Isolation, by Sega and The Creative Assembly, that very spirit of one versus one is back big time. Set 15 years after the events of Alien you play Amanda Ripley, the daughter of famous alien hunter Ellen Ripler from the movie. And while it’s set in probably the most beautiful graphics out there right now, it mimics the 1970s wonderfully:

Alien Isolation

It’s all about cassette decks, monochrome monitors, and wonderful sci-fi furniture art of that decade.

However, you need a fairly powerful system to run Alien Isolation but – lucky you – we’ve played the game over the course of the past couple of days and found ways to improve the performance of the game and even unlock some hidden features to make it run significantly faster on slower PCs. Here’s how:

 

#1 – Basic PCs and Laptops

Before you start tweaking performance settings for Alien: Isolation, I recommend that you follow the 9 essential steps to boost your PC or laptop speed that I published a while ago. This covers the basic steps to get your machine in top shape, including how to:

  • Upgrade your graphics drivers and even use beta drivers
  • Overclock your graphics card (safely!)
  • Use our AVG Zen Performance to turn off all performance-sapping background activity
  • Defrag your hard disk
  • …and more!

As Alien Isoluation takes its toll on your hardware, you got to be sure that it’s tweaked to its absolute limit before you jump into the game-specific settings.

 

 

#2 – Enhanced 2k/4k/8k and Level of Detail

Gamers have immediately found a way to increase the visual quality of the game greatly by increasing both the level of detail level beyond what’s possible in the “in game” settings menu as well increase the resolution of the shadows. Now instead of using shadows with a 1k resolution, they managed to crank that up to 2k, 4k or even 8k resolution.

We’ve done the tests and the visuals are noticeably better. Click on the before and after images:

Before:

Alien Isolation

After:

Alien Isolation

It’s relatelively easy to see the difference between the shots: the shadows appear much crisper and clearer. However, while it’s easy to see in bright spots, it’s relatively tough to differentiate in other more darker scenes. We noticed a drop of 20% in performance, though that was on a relatively “weak” mobile GeForce 650M. If you feel it’s worth the drop, it should be enabled.

All you have to do is download the tweaked “ENGINE_SETTINGS.XML” from this page. Put the XML file right in your Alien Isolations “Alien IsolationDATA” folder and overwrite the existing file with it. For example, if you purchased the game on steam, the file sits under: C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonAlien IsolationDATA

To enable the setting, launch the game and go to “OptionsVideo”. Make sure to set the “Shadow Map Resolution” to “8K”.

 

Alien Isolation

 

#3 – Enhance Reflections

Another great addition that comes with the enhanced engine file (see #2) are enhanced reflections that the developers turned off. Now while these may look significantly “nicer”, they also have a shiny look to them which some gamers feel disturb the overall atmosphere of the game:

Before

Alien Isolation

After

Alien Isolation


Source: Steam Community

To enable it, you set the “Planar Reflections” to “Alternative” – see how you like it. If you want to go back, you can always set it to “On” (which is the game’s default setting). In my tests I noticed no drop in performance whatsoever with the reflections enabled or disabled.

 

#4 – Increase the Level of Details for Distant Objects

Some objects tend to pop up out of nowhere. In order to prevent this rather annoying (and tension breaking) effect, you should increase the level of detail for distant objects. This, too, can be done by applying the hacked file (#2) and enabling it under the “Level of Details” – simple go for the “Ultra” setting once you’ve enabled the tweak!

 

#5 – Skip the Videos

The introduction videos are somewhat annoying and they can’t be skipped at a push of a button. Here’s how to get rid of them. Simple solution: Delete them! Here’s how: Navigate to your Alien Isolations “DATAUIMOVIES” and delete or rename the files “AMD_IDENT.USM”, “FOX_IDENT.USM” and “CA_IDENT.USM”.

Alien Isolation

 

 

#6 – Get Smoother Mouse Movements

We’ve talked about VSync in the past and it still holds true, especially with Alien Isolation. With the vertical synchronization turned on you may get some delays. That’s why we recommend turning it off either completely using the in-game setting or via the NVIDIA or ATI control panel:

NVIDIA: To get to the NVIDIA Control Panel, right-click on your desktop, select “NVIDIA Control Panel” and head over to the “Manage 3D Settings” category on the left. Go to Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames first: This controls the number of frames that the processor prepares before transferring them to the graphics card. Increasing this value results in smoother game play, but you may notice a lag when using the mouse and keyboard. To eliminate the lag, try the “1″ setting. Next, move over to VSync: It synchronizes the frames that your graphics card renders with the refresh rate of your monitor. If you disable it, you will notice that Alien Isolation may not lag as much or not at all anymore.

ATI/AMD: You’ll find the Wait for Vertical Refresh feature in your 3D settings control panel. Disable Vsync for Alien Isolation and you may find it to run smoother.

Alien Isolation

 

 

 

#7 – Fix Your SLI RIG (Nvidia)

Got yourself a gaming rig with two (or more) graphics cards? Then you may in for a negative surprise as Alien: Isolation could completely crash on you at any moment or run even slower than with a single GPU. Here’s how to solve the problem: Download nVidia Inspector from this place and run the tool. Go to the SLI Compatibility form and change it to x080912F5. Done.

 

#8 – Enjoy!

As I’ve been super-busy as of late I couldn’t really play more than a few hours but I can tell you that the enhanced graphics tweaks really made the game more immersive and enjoyable. Now I can’t wait for the weekend to hit so I can crawl under a blanket, light up a candle and get hunted down by an Alien.

 

Zen Performance

 

 

AVG

Cleaning Up Your Right Click Menu

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In this blog post, we’ll show you how to easily clean up your context menu in no time. It requires a little bit of tinkering with Windows, but if you follow our instructions you’ll find it easy to follow. Let’s do it:

All entries that show up under your “Right-click menu” or “Context menu” are stored in a rather secret location, called the Windows registry. Here’s how to open it:

  • Hold down the “WINDOWS” key on your keyboard and then press the “R” button. This will bring up the following screen:
Command Menu

  • Type in “regedit” and hit Enter.


I recommend creating a back up before making any changes

 

  • To create a backup, simply click on “FileExport” and type in the file name.
  • Next, open the following folders: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlers. All the folders you see below represent entries in the right-click menu:

 

OK, let’s move on to actually getting rid of that folder. So, for example, the “AVG Shredder Shell Extension” folder represents the following item:If you like to get rid of it, simply delete that entire “Folder”.

  • In this example, I want to get rid of the entry for a nice desktop organization tool called “Fences” that I use a lot. Click on “FencesShellExt” (don’t touch the OpenWith or WorkFolders entries, though!) and hit the “Delete” key on my keyboard.

 

Now, once I cleaned it up, my context menu looks very clean:Plus, you may even be able to solve problems related to the context menus and delays when working with files.

 

Pro Tip:

If you’d like to add or remove items in your “Create New…” menu there’s a great (and much easier) solution for you. All you need is AVG PC TuneUp:

  • Once installed, go to “Personalize” and click on the “Personalize and behaviors”.
  • Head over to “File Types” and “New”
  • In this area you can easily get rid (or even add!) items that appear under the “New” menu, which I personally like to keep very clean as I only create a few files that way.

 

Got any questions? Let us know!

 

AVG

Cleaning Up Your Right-Click Menu

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Does it take several seconds for the right click menu (called the “context menu”) to load when you right-click on a file, a folder or even just the desktop?

Are you tired of looking at completely overblown context menus like this:

2014-10-07_04-10-57

Then it’s time to clean up!

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to easily clean up your context menu in no time. It requires a little bit of tinkering with Windows, but if you follow our instructions you’ll find it easy to follow. Let’s do it:

    1. All entries that show up under your “Right-click menu” or “Context menu” are stored in a rather secret location, called the Windows registry. Here’s how to open it: Hold down the “WINDOWS” key on your keyboard and then press the “R” button. This will bring up the following screen:
      2014-10-04_19-09-45
      Type in “regedit” and hit Enter.

 

    1. Before we make any changes, I strongly recommend you perform a backup of the entire folder structure so you can go back to the original menus any time you want. To do that, simply click on “FileExport” and type in the file name.

 

  1. Next, open the following folders: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlers. All the folders you see below represent entries in the right-click menu:
    2014-10-04_19-11-21
  2. Ok, let’s move on to actually getting rid of that folder. So, for example, the “AVG Shredder Shell Extension” folder represents the following item:If you like to get rid of it, simply delete that entire “Folder”. So for example, I wanted to get rid of the entry for a nice desktop organization tool called “Fences” that I use a lot:So I click on “FencesShellExt” (don’t tough the OpenWith or WorkFolders entries, though!) and hit the “Delete” key on my keyboard. Now, once I cleaned it up, my context menu looks very clean:2014-10-07_06-36-04Plus, you may even be able to solve problems related to the context menus and delays when working with files.

 

Pro Tip:

If you’d like to add or remove items in your “Create New…” menu there’s a great (and much easier) solution for you. All you need is AVG PC TuneUp (you can get the trial here: http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-pctuneup):

Once installed, go to “Personalize” and click on the “Personalize and behaviors”.   Head over to “File Types” and “New”:In this are you can easily get rid (or even add!) items that appear under the “New” menu, which I personally like to keep very clean as I only create a few files that way:

2014-10-07_06-45-46

Got any questions? Let us know!

AVG

Five Hidden Features to Boost Windows Performance

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So, you think you know Windows 7 and 8 inside and out? Think again! In this week’s blog post, I am going to show you five little known features in Windows you may have never even heard of…

 

Power efficiency report

Here at AVG, we love our laptops to last as long as possible which is why this Windows feature is one of our favorites. Microsoft developed an in-depth method for checking power deficiencies in Windows 7 and 8, which is originally meant to be for the IT pro but can still be useful for everyone. The “Energy Efficiency Report” provides detailed information on processes, devices, and Windows settings that increase power levels and, thus, drain your battery quickly. So how can you access this feature? The process can be a bit tricky for less experienced users, but if you follow these instructions, you should have no problems. First, open the Start menu or the Start screen (in Windows 8) and type in “cmd”. Right-click on the “cmd” entry and select “Run as Administrator”:
2014-09-22_17-09-16

 

Once you’re in the command prompt, type in “powercfg /energy” and wait for the 60-second energy check to complete. When done, go to the location given by the powercfg command, such as displayed in the following image:

2014-09-22_17-12-16

 

Note: Depending on your User Account Control settings, this report might also be stored in your user directory. To determine this, just look at the last line that tells you its exact location. Once you’ve opened the report in your browser, you will see several power errors and solutions. Not all errors found in that report will make sense, but you will see quickly when drivers or programs are the cause for poor battery life, such as:

2014-09-22_17-15-27

 

System health report

PCs lose performance and stability over time—this is a fact of computing life. The causes usually vary from too many third-party tools and junk to an old or faulty device driver, to malware and unfixed Windows bugs. You can check overall system stability by using another hidden tool called “System Diagnostics Report”.
To access this tool, begin by pressing the “WINDOWS” and “R” keys at the same time. Doing so will open the “Run” window. Type in “perfmon.msc” and hit “OK”. On Windows 8 and 8.1, you have to click on “ReportsSystemSystem Diagnostics” and then double-click on the report for your PC. Yet again, your system will be observed for 60 seconds. Once completed, the “Diagnostics Results” should provide some ideas about what’s happening with your system. For example, it shows overall system utilization and Device Manager error codes. Going through each of these sections will help you figure out what’s wrong with your PC.

2014-09-22_17-22-24

Record your problems

This is a great tool for Windows experts who are tired of hour-long support calls to their family and friends, helping them with their computer issues. Instead of having them describe what’s wrong with their PC, you can let them record each step that leads to the problem using “Problem Steps Recorder”. With this neat feature, Windows logs each step using text and screenshots and puts it into an easily readable HTML file for you to analyze! It’s also a good way to guide less experienced users through complicated steps—simply record each step for them, and send it over. This approach is much easier than writing massive guides via e-mail or spending another hour on the phone.
Here’s how you can launch Problem Steps Recorder: First, open up your Start menu or Start screen and type “Recorder” into the search box. Then, click on “Record steps to reproduce a problem” (Windows 7) or “Steps Recorder” (Windows 8). It’s that simple!

2014-09-22_17-23-11

 

Once you’re ready to record your problem or step-by-step instructions, just hit the record button and you’re good to go. When finished, hit “Stop record” and enter a name to save the session. Problem Steps Recorder automatically packs all the recorded images and HTML files into one nice and neat ZIP package that you can share! To look at the problem report before you send it, extract the ZIP file and double-click on the MHTML file, such as:

2014-09-22_17-24-51

 

If the steps are clearly visible and understandable, feel free to send the ZIP file to your friends or family so they can help you with your problem (or ask them to send the report to you if you’re trying to troubleshoot for them).

Repair system files

Does your Windows report missing or damaged files? Does your system crash for no reason or some applications fail to install or start? There’s something you can do to fix this. It entails letting Windows check on the integrity of important system files and replace them with the original (working) ones. To do this, consider the “System File Checker” as your little helper. Begin by opening up a command prompt with administrative privileges (see instructions in feature #1) and type in “sfc /scannow”. With this, Windows checks critical system files, informs you about any errors and tries to fix them—that’s it!

2014-09-22_17-25-46

 

Calibrate your screen

Are the colors of your desktop or photos not quite as brilliant as they should be? Do your images appear to be washed out? Windows can help you fix these issues and optimize your screen by using a built-in calibration feature to adjust brightness, contrast, sharpness, and color levels appropriately. To launch this feature, open up your Start menu or Start screen (in Windows 8) and type in “dccw” and hit the “Enter” key.

2014-09-22_17-26-51

 

The wizard pictured above will guide you through all the necessary steps to optimize screen levels.

These were just five features, but there are dozens of more (very hidden) gems in Windows 7 and 8. What’s your favorite feature that you discovered by accident or have just heard of? Share it with us in the comments section.