Schnitzel von Krumm

As background, this controls the number of frames rendered before they're needed for the display. From what I read, a lower number (never use zero, though) reduces latency (i.e. the time from when you make a control movement until it shows up on screen) for faster games. A higher number is supposed to give you a smoother but lower frame rate. With DirectX 9, three is the maximum, so setting to eight won't help anyway. Also the effects of this setting can change depending on whether or not you're CPU bound. With OFF, that is fairly probably, unless you have an older videocard. So, results can vary, or so I'm told. I tried different settings, and 2 worked best for me. At least that's what I've convinced myself of, anyway. You'll have to try it yourself to see what works best on your machine. Default is three (i.e. triple buffering). If I have been correctly informed, higher than that won't help with a DirectX 9 game. Setting zero is apparently not a good idea, and can lead to crashes and other oddities. So, that leaves one and two as settings to play with. For me, two helped, but for any other machine . . . who knows?

I'm running all fives at the moment, for no particular reason other than turning things down doesn't make much difference. I have all the sliders up, AA set to 16Q and AF set to 16 at 1600x1200. I'm loving this videocard (BFG GTX285 OCX). The only thing I found that made any difference was setting "Maximum pre-rendered frames" to 2. That eliminated a little "catch" I would get every second or so, where there'd be a stutter when turning tight. Currently, I get a steady 40 fps, which is what I set as a maximum. Occasionally, it drops into the mid to high 30s, but usually only for an instant, then it's back bouncing off the limit of 40. At the moment, I'm mainly playing in QC mode (trying to get the hang of WWI air combat), so there are typically only two planes in the sky. I'm not sure if a big air battle would slow things down. I would think that would stress the CPU more than the GPU, but I won't claim to understand all the intricate technical interactions in a flight sim. OFF really is an extraordinarily detailed game when the graphics settings are maxed out. Now, if only I was a better pilot. At least I leave a good-looking corpse.