Originally posted by: BD2003
Originally posted by: Markbnj
Originally posted by: BD2003
Im finding the performance to be pretty pitiful on anything but a DX10 card w/ unified shaders. Even the 8600gts seems to be smoking my 7900GT in DX9 mode, and turning on shadows drops FPS really hard, but its either full shadows or all shadows.
The solution for those with the geforce 7 and below:
turn on the console
enter in RendererPreference 0 to change it to pixelshader 2.0 mode.
then enter in vid_restart
It looks nearly the same, lighting isnt as good, but still looks good - framerate is practically double. Why this isnt an option in the menus is absolutely beyond me.
If you really wanna enjoy this game at full settings at 1280x1024 or so, get no less than an 8800gts/gt.
Hey thanks, good tip. This made a big difference for me. It doesn't look as good, but still very pretty and the gameplay is much more fluid. Here's how to make it permanent and avoid the console.
c:\Program Files\Activision\Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare\players\profiles\[your name]
Find the file config.cfg and open it in a text editor. Near the bottom you'll see...
seta r_rendererPreference "Default"
Change this to...
seta r_rendererPreference "Shader model 2.0"
Save the file and start the game.
Good stuff. I'm still truly dumbfounded as to why this isnt in the menu. Considering the boost in framerate (seriously, about double) vs. the image quality loss (not too huge, less than most menu options) it doesnt make any sense to keep this hidden. I had to take screenshots to really notice the difference...its primarily some sort of lighting. But even in PS 2.0, shadows, dynamic lights, glow etc - everything is still functioning.
The game is so shader heavy, and you dont have any options to turn things down...just to turn things off. Its either full fps raping shadows, or no shadows at all. But PS 2.0 + Shadows is WAAAY faster than default PS 3.0 w/o shadows, not to mention looks MUCH better...so...wtf?
It really needs a card with unified shaders in order to work well in PS 3.0 mode, and that pretty much leaves everyone without a Geforce 8 and Radeon 2600+ with a really sh*t framerate.
I had to take screenshots to notice the difference between the two modes. Seriously, if you have anything less than a GF8, try this tweak.