I've noticed over time as the game developed that the Linux version, once compiled, runs rather smooth compared to the Windows build of the 2.4 dev branch, which runs at a godawful crawl on Windows 7 machines with multiple cores, and I've found a fix to this issue.
I found this works well and makes a *profound* performance difference on my new 64-bit Windows 7 i7 (eight cores) machine. Before this method I had to turn all graphics options down to lowest settings, and still the battlescape was painfully slow to the point of making it un-playable. After doing this method I'm about to describe, I can now turn everything all the way up and get smooth framerates.
This involves editing the config.cfg file inside the APPDATA folder with a text editor.
- First, you need to know exactly how many cores your machine has.
- Change the "set sys_affinity" value to exactly one greater than the total number of cores in your computer.
- If you don't plan on running other apps while playing, you can also change the "set sys_priority" to "1" instead of zero.
- In my case I also found it helped to increase the "set cl_maxfps" value to a multiple of my screen refresh rate, which in my case is ~60 (I live in North America, EU players might have a different default screen refresh rate, I really don't know for sure - I know that TV sets are different but don't know if the same is for computers over there). In my case I put it up to "120" and got very nice results.
That's really it, just those steps made a huge difference. I noticed that the default sys_affinity when I set up the game was "3" which would have meant both cores on a dual-core machine, but since I have eight cores the game - according to the console log - was confused and used just one core, the third one. Now it uses all 8 of them.
P.S. - I've installed NSIS installer system again and I hope to have a new, complete 2.4 dev test build for win32 uploaded soon, in the usual thread - for those who want to try this out.
