In my never ending quest to improve framerates I stumbled upon another odd thing. The background programs (remember when everyone called these things TSR - Terminate and stay resident - programs?) that come with PowerDVD are incompatible with a few known video games. By going into MSConfig and disabling the two programs associated with PowerDVD I was able to gain another 10-15 FPS. I know. silly. These programs take up near 0 CPU and about 5 megs of memory.
Pdvdserv.exe is some program that looks for a remote control attached to the computer.
I don't know what language.exe is from them, but I can watch DVDs fine without it.
Both are installed as start up items by powerDVD.
I am the 3rd person to confirm that both Xfire and PowerDVD seem to sap framerates from FFoW. Xfire has had compatibility issues with games in the past, they are usually resolved quickly.
you've made fps savings everywhere
you running on a 26" monitor at 140fps now
It really is strange. I was getting high teens FPS regardless of settings and now I am at 1600x1050 mix of high and medium settings at a fairly solid 60 FPS. the game is visually stunning.
It drops to low 30s with fraps recording, playable, but choppy at times.
