[RE77ACTION]

Hi, my first post...

I think the game is really good playable (offline) with a combination of settings and hardware below. I get frame rates between 30 and 90 with an average of about 50 in most missions. And I think the game still looks good. Only big cities at low altitude are really unplayable (FPS well below 20). I did came to these settings with many runnings of the Black Death track.

The strange thing is that nor my CPU nor my GPU run ever at full utilization. And no, I have luckily no problems with 'underclocking' of the GPU because it scales up nicely when I start the game. In Black Death my GPU runs between 37% and 71%. In the same track my CPU core 1 runs at about 80% on average (never 100% for a moment) while core 2,3 and 4 do respectively 45%,35% and 35% on average.

Two more examples of not using up all my hardware is given in the following.
1) I can put on SSAO (100% GPU powered) and it totally doesn't matter for the frame rate although my GPU gets 5% or 10% more utilization. I leave it off by choice because I don't see any visual improvement.
2) Overclocking my GPU and GDDR5 memory gives totally no difference in frame rate in this game.

I've upped my PCIE bus speed to 110 and it gave me a little improvement in frame rate. I also tried 120 but higher than 110 didn't give better results. I've eventually settled for 114 because my FSB is also 14% OCed and this would possibly prevent any synchronization issues (although not noticeable, so it's only between my ears). WARNING, I don't want to encourage anybody to OC his/her PCIE bus because it brings serious risks, for example data corruption on your storage devices (especially in RAID (as I have)). Do so on your own risk!

At first I installed the game on my HDD. But after some messages of this forum that installing it on your SSD could improve issues with stuttering I tried running it from my SSD. In my opinion it really doesn't matter at all. I see totally no difference. The stuttering looks just the same and keeps being mild in my case.

My biggest question is where the real bottleneck lies for my system and thus for others. I'm thinking of replacing my CPU for a 1090T or maybe 1100T (both 6 cores, more speed per core and better to OC) in the hope my GPU gets a better data delivery. But still have my doubts because (as I said) I'm not utilizing my current CPU for the full. Maybe it's just the (currently unoptimized) code of this game that's keeping the utilization down. I will wait for reports of other users who've upgraded their CPU's for the cause

Settings are as follows:

version: 1.00.14101
resolution: 1920x1200
full screen: on
model detail: medium
buildings detail: high
land detail: medium
forest: medium
visual effects: high
texture quality: original
anti-aliasing: off
anti-epilepsy filter: off
SSAO: off
damage decals: high
building amount: low
land shading: medium
grass: on
shadows: on
roads: on

Hardware is as follows (also in signature, but that's probably dynamic and will change in every post when updated):

cpu: Atlon II X4 640 @ 3.42
memory: 8 GB DDR3 1600 @ 1824
gpu: 6970 2GB @ 910 / 1425
storage: SSD 180 (3 in raid 0) + HDD 500 (7200)
mb: ASUS M4A79XTD EVO @ FSB 228 / PCIE 114