RAGE on PC is a mess, but you can fix some of it

[nsane.forums]

RAGE is a disappointment on the consoles when it comes to gameplay. On the PC, the game may struggle to work at all, depending on your configuration. This is a sad state of affairs for a developer that was once known for its innovative, and in some cases revolutionary, PC releases. RAGE suffers from tearing, massive texture pop-in, and an overall lack of graphical options to tweak and adjust.

There are a few things you can do to fight this, but it's clear we're going to be waiting on a number of patches before things will run smoothly.

How to make things better

The game is going to run better on NVIDIA hardware than AMD video cards, at least at the moment, but you can download the newest AMD drivers to help things along. AMD had released an earlier version of the drivers, but then warned gamers not to use them. The link above is to the latest driver, so it should help performance; ATI promises to release a unified driver that offers the optimizations for both RAGE and Battlefield 3 in the near future.

I've been using the Battlefield 3 beta drivers for my Geforce GTX 580 card, and the game looks great, with no texture issues, although the screen tearing is still prominent in some scenes. I'm also using a pair of SSDs as a hard drive, so I'm able to stream the texture data from the game very efficiently. Players with more traditional hard drive solutions will be more likely to see the pop-in issues. Also keep in mind drivers are being released rapidly, so be sure to check to see if there has been a new update.

If you'd like to enable the developer console, right click on RAGE in your library on Steam, click on properties, select the launch options, and add "+set com_allowconsole 1" in the box. Keep in mind, this will take away your ability to gain achievements. Bring up the console by hitting the tilde button, and then type "listcvars" or "listcmds" to see everything you can tweak. If you don't want to mess with the console or you'd like to keep your achievements, just put the following text into the launch options:

+cvaradd g_fov 12 +com_skipIntroVideo 1 +image_anisotropy 16 +image_usecompression 0 +g_showplayershadow 1 +m_smooth 0

That will increase your field of view, take away the introduction video, set anisotropic filtering to 16X, take away mouse smoothing, and kill the compression that seems to be giving some people trouble. Everyone's rig is different, however, so feel free to experiment and find what works for you. Adding "+r_swapInterval 1" will also force V-sync, which may take care of some of the tearing.

That's it. Those are all the options we're given in RAGE

Bethesda itself has released a few tips for getting the game to run well:

The higher the resolution at which the game renders and the higher the anti-aliasing setting, the more texture data is needed to texture the environment. If you do not have a high-end CPU you may momentarily see blurrier textures and texture popping when the view changes quickly.

If you have a processor with few cores and you have a high end NVIDIA graphics card then you can try turning on the "GPU Transcode" menu option in the video settings menu in RAGE. By enabling this option a large percentage of the texture calculations are moved to the graphics\ processor (GPU). However, this option is not available on all graphics hardware and may not appear in the menu if your hardware does not support the necessary features.

It's interesting to note that while RAGE will work well on a wide variety of graphics cards, this is one of the rare games where storage and CPU make a huge difference in the graphical fidelity and speed at which textures are added. "It is pretty obvious at this point that while the MegaTexture technology is amazing from a purely scientific angle, it was built for the console generation where memory is at a premium and latency is at a minimum," Ryan Shrout of PC Perspective wrote. "While PCs have the exact opposite specifications, lots of memory and higher latency due to software layers, the game engine doesn't take advantage of the performance advantages offered to it."

Shrout also notes that since hard drive speeds and access are so important, the texture quality and speed drops dramatically when you use a program like FRAPs to capture video. This is an interesting situation: the very act of grabbing video makes the issues you're trying to point out worse. Things just got all Werner Heisenberg up in this piece, son.

There may be a good amount of innovative stuff going on with this engine, but much of it doesn't seem to work well at launch. The game is also locked down, and requires a fair amount of tweaking to get it running in an acceptable way for many PC gamers. It's nice to see id trying new things with the company's engines, but in practice, the PC version of the game looks, plays, and feels like an afterthought.

Further reading

• RAGE Steam forum (forums.steampowered.com)

View: Original Article

[myidisbb]

so basically they do not beta test it

also pushed the pretty graphics to over kill of most machines. sad. just looking at it i knew it was graphics eater.

[shajt]

Damn, this game is slow as hell, it's somewhat playable but the pain is guaranteed.

Loading is very fast, no problems with that, but you can feel the drag while playing.

:injured:

[toyo]

I bet it doesn't use much RAM :P

The guy has SSDs in RAID 0 and still experiences problems ...

[shajt]

I think their graphics engine suck.

Doesn't matter how your PC is strong, it will just suck.

Take DeusEx HR for example, it has much more better graphics and it runs very very smooth.

[shajt]

Rage PC players experiencing laggy textures and low framerates

btw comments are great.

Oh man .... if I bought this crap I think I would nuke their servers :D

Console, tweaks, config files, phucking with the drivers settings ... I mean cmon ffs ... don't release the game if it isn't ready.

Doom1 and Quake1 were great , everything else by Id software was a nightmare IMO.

[bashar]

i dont know , everytime i see some games preview on PC , i get sure that Pc gaming is gone , and Devs are pushing forward to console-top preformance

[mrsmith]

I dnlded and installed Rage (SKIDROW Release) The game runs fine on my rig @ 1280x1024 . The only issue I have is the "blurrier textures and texture popping when the view changes quickly" due to my older CPU, as mentioned in the article. If you stop and look around real fast you'll notice it, but during normal gameplay I dont see it at all. Gameplay is very smooth. I have had good results with this PC. I remember when Crysis2 came out my buddy was pissed because his rig struggled with the game where mine didnt and his rig being a couple yrs newer than mine.

My rig is about 5 yrs old except for the video card.

AIDA64 reports my specs as follows:

Computer Type ACPI x86-based PC

Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium

OS Service Pack Service Pack 1

Internet Explorer 8.0.7601.17514

DirectX DirectX 11.0

Computer Name -edit-

User Name -edit-

Logon Domain -edit-

Date / Time 2011-10-09 / 01:07

Motherboard

CPU Type DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2200 MHz (11 x 200) 4400+

Motherboard Name Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe (3 PCI, 1 PCI-E x4, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR DIMM, Audio, Dual Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)

Motherboard Chipset nVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16, AMD Hammer

System Memory 4 GB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)

DIMM1: G Skill NS 1 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (2.5-3-3-6 @ 200 MHz)

DIMM2: G Skill NS 1 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (2.5-3-3-6 @ 200 MHz)

DIMM3: G Skill NS 1 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (2.5-3-3-6 @ 200 MHz)

DIMM4: G Skill NS 1 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (2.5-3-3-6 @ 200 MHz)

BIOS Type AMI (07/13/06)

Display

Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 (1024 MB)

3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce GTS 450

Monitor Samsung SyncMaster 930B (Digital) [19" LCD] (HVEY800001)

Multimedia

Audio Adapter Creative SB X-Fi XtremeMusic/Platinum Sound Card

Storage

IDE Controller Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

IDE Controller Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

Storage Controller NVIDIA nForce RAID Controller

Storage Controller NVIDIA nForce RAID Device

Storage Controller NVIDIA nForce RAID Device

Storage Controller NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller

Storage Controller Virtual CloneDrive

Disk Drive NVIDIA STRIPE 298.10G (298 GB)

Disk Drive ST3320820AS ATA Device (320 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)

Optical Drive ASUS DRW-24B1ST a ATA Device (DVD+R9:12x, DVD-R9:12x, DVD+RW:24x/8x, DVD-RW:24x/6x, DVD-RAM:12x, DVD-ROM:16x, CD:48x/32x/48x DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM)

Optical Drive ASUS DVD-E616A2 ATA Device (16x/48x DVD-ROM)

Optical Drive SONY DVD-ROM DDU1615 ATA Device (16x/48x DVD-ROM)

SMART Hard Disks Status OK

bla

bla

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[niharjhatn]

Rage PC players experiencing laggy textures and low framerates

btw comments are great.

Oh man .... if I bought this crap I think I would nuke their servers :D

Console, tweaks, config files, phucking with the drivers settings ... I mean cmon ffs ... don't release the game if it isn't ready.

Doom1 and Quake1 were great , everything else by Id software was a nightmare IMO.

Comon man, quake 3 arena was one of the greatest deathmatch shooters ever, and one of the best engines ever.

Some of the best games I have played are based on the q3 engine - ever play jedi knight jedi outcast and jedi knight jedi academy? Never had an experience like it (save, Half-life 2)

[toyo]

There's an update available for RAGE, but from what I've read in the release notes, it actually doesn't solve any of the issues :D

[shajt]

There's an update available for RAGE, but from what I've read in the release notes, it actually doesn't solve any of the issues :D

It actually does, now it runs great on my rig with no slowdowns, but textures are still kinda freaky and fcked up.

Here's the changelog :

Rage Update 1 info:

RAGE Patch Release Notes - October 8th 2011

-------------------------------------------

RAGE defaults to lower video settings to allow the game to work on a

wide variety of hardware and software configurations.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to anticipate all possible graphics

driver issues in combination with unique end user hardware and software

configurations. For this reason RAGE does not automatically increase

video/graphics settings as this could result in negative side effects

on specific hardware and software configurations. The original release

of RAGE does not expose many video/graphics options for people to tweak

because some of these settings, although desirable from a quality

perspective, simply will not work on specific configurations either due

to hardware limitations and/or driver bugs. Due to popular demand for

more video and graphics options, this patch updates the video settings

menu and exposes several quality and performance settings. However, not

everyone may be able to increase the settings due to hardware limitations

and/or driver bugs.

VSync

-----

The new "VSync" option in the video settings menu allows you to remove

screen tearing. There are three options: ON, OFF and SMART.

When VSync is turned OFF you may experience screen tearing.

When VSync is turned ON you should not see screen tearing. However,

any time your frame rate drops below 60 frames per second you will

get a sudden more severe drop to 30 frames per second. This is how VSync

inherently works. If your computer cannot maintain 60 frames per

second and you miss the synchronization to the vertical retrace of

your monitor then you will miss a whole frame and synchronize to

the next frame instead.

Some graphics drivers now support a so called "swap-tear" extension.

You can try using this extension by setting VSync to SMART.

If your graphics driver supports this extension and you set VSync

to SMART then RAGE will synchronize to the vertical retrace of

your monitor when your computer is able to maintain 60 frames per

second and the screen may tear if your frame rate drops below 60 frames

per second. In other words the SMART VSync option trades a sudden drop

to 30 frames per second with occasional screen tearing. Occasional

screen tearing is usually considered less distracting than a more

severe drop in frame rate.

If your graphics driver does not support SMART VSync and you set VSync

to SMART in the video settings then RAGE will automatically fall back to

turning VSync OFF and you may experience screen tearing. The "swap-tear"

extension is brand new and may still present some issues on certain

graphics hardware. If you experience any problems using SMART Vsync

then set VSync to either ON or OFF. We are actively working with the

graphics hardware vendors to improve the "swap-tear" extension.

If changing VSync in the RAGE video settings menu does not appear to

make any difference then make sure you are not overriding the VSync

setting in the graphics vendor control panel. You can find the

graphics vendor control panel by right-clicking on the Windows desktop

and selecting the " control panel" option from the pop-up menu.

If you force VSync to the 'on' setting in the graphics vendor control

panel then you should not see any screen tearing in RAGE but you may

get a more severe drop in frame rate if your computer cannot maintain

60 frames per second.

If you force VSync to the 'off' setting in the graphics vendor control

panel then you may experience screen tearing no matter what setting you

use for the VSync option in the RAGE video settings menu.

Texture Cache

-------------

The new "Texture Cache" option in the video settings menu allows you

to increase the texture cache size to keep more texture data in

video memory.

If the Texture Cache is set to LARGE then RAGE will keep more texture

data in video memory. This may not only significantly reduce blurry

textures and texture popping, it will also allow complex scenes to be

rendered with more texture detail.

However, this may not work on computers that do not have enough system

or video memory, or you may experience a significant drop in performance.

If you experience issues due to hardware limitations you will have to set

the Texture Cache back to SMALL.

If after changing the Texture Cache to LARGE you experience a crash or

texture corruption (like a partially or completely blue world) then

the graphics driver may have run out of memory.

We are actively working with the graphics card vendors to resolve

any crashes.

If you do not experience a crash but you see texture corruption then you

may be able to get the large Texture Cache to work by accepting the change

and restarting the game. If you still experience texture corruption after

restarting the game you will have to set the Texture Cache back to SMALL.

You may also be able to improve the memory situation on your computer by

changing the Windows paging file management. Note that making changes to

the Windows paging file management may change the performance characteristics

of your computer. Any changes you make to your system configuration are

at your own risk. Always make backups of your system and revert these

changes if you notice undesirable side effects.

To change the paging file management on Windows Vista and Windows 7, first

press the "Start" button, then right-click on "Computer" and then select

"Properties" from the popup menu. Then select "Advanced system settings"

on the window that appears. Select the "Advanced" tab on the

"System Properties" window that is displayed and press the "Settings"

button under "Performance". Select the "Advanced" tab on the

"Performance Options" window that shows up next and press the

"Change..." button under "Virtual memory". Now uncheck the option

"Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" and make

sure that the option "System managed size" is selected on the

"Virtual Memory" window. Confirm the change by pressing the "OK" button

on each window. After making this change you will have to restart your

computer for the change to take effect.

To change the paging file management on Windows XP, first press the

"Start" button, then right-click on "My Computer" and then select

"Properties" from the popup menu. Select the "Advanced" tab on the

"System Properties" window that is displayed and press the "Settings"

button under "Performance". Select the "Advanced" tab on the

"Performance Options" window that shows up next and press the "Change"

button under "Virtual memory". Make sure that the option

"System managed size" is selected on the "Virtual Memory" window.

Confirm the change by pressing the "OK" button on each window.

After making this change you will have to restart your computer for

the change to take effect.

Anisotropic Filter

------------------

The new "Anisotropic Filter" option in the video settings menu allows

you to increase the anisotropic texture filtering.

Anisotropic filtering is a method to enhance the image quality of

textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles.

The anisotropic texture filtering in RAGE defaults to a low value to

accommodate for low-end graphics hardware. However, the anisotropic

filtering can be increased for high-end graphics hardware by setting

the Anistropic Filter option to HIGH in the video settings menu.

Do not force anisotropic filtering to the ‘on’ setting in the graphics

vendor control panel because this may cause rendering artifacts in

the game.

Note that increasing the anisotropic filtering may improve the

texture quality while it may also decrease the frame rate.

Patch Changes / Fixes

---------------------

- Implemented workaround for AMD driver crash right after intro cinematic

on Win 7 32-bit systems.

- Disabled UBOs because they are causing animation issues with AMD drivers.

- Don't allow swap-tear to be enabled on AMD while the extension is not

exposed because it may crash.

- Support for new video settings: "texture cache", "vsync" and

"anisotropic filter"

- Automatically adjust vt_maxPPF based on the number of available cores.

- Improved performance for SLI cards when GPU transcode is enabled.

- Fix for GPU Transcoding option being disabled after exiting gameplay.

- Added safe mode to restore video settings to default values.

- Allow g_fov to be changed from the RAGE launch options in Steam.

- Server now forwards text chat from clients to all other clients while

in-game.

Known Graphical Issues

----------------------

The following issues were found using NVIDIA graphics hardware with

the GeForce R285 Driver or AMD graphics hardware with the AMD Catalyst

11.10 Version 2 Preview Driver.

- If you turn up both the screen resolution and anti-aliasing settings

to high values in the video settings menu and/or you enable

"GPU Transcode" then the screen may no longer update on some hardware

configurations. This means your system does not have the necessary

video memory to run with these high settings. You can re-enter the video

settings menu and lower your settings to restart screen updates.

- If you turn up both the screen resolution and anti-aliasing settings

to high values in the video settings menu you may experience a crash

if your system does not have the necessary memory to run with these

high settings. To avoid this problem you will have to re-enter the

video settings menu to lower the settings. If you can no longer launch

the game after changing the video settings to high values you can add

the following to your RAGE launch options in Steam:

+com_safemode 1

The launch options can be found by right-clicking on RAGE in Steam

and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Set Launch Options" in

the dialog that pops up. Adding this option will reset your video

settings to the default values the next time the game is launched.

When the game is launched in safe mode the game will show "safe mode"

in the corners of the screen. Do not forget to remove the safe mode

launch option after launching the game once to make sure you do not

lose your video settings each time you launch the game.

- Using a NVIDIA graphics card on Windows XP 32-bit or XP 64-bit, you

may experience a crash or hang when changing the screen resolution in

full screen mode or switching from windowed mode to full screen mode.

This has been identified as a graphics driver problem. We have spent

significant effort trying to work around this problem and were

successful in reducing the frequency of occurrence but a driver update

is necessary to completely fix the problem. We are actively working with

NVIDIA to make a solution to this problem available as soon as possible.

- Using an AMD graphics card, you may experience black flickering

artifacts on flags, banners and zip-lines if you run in full screen

mode. This has been identified as a graphics driver problem. We are

actively working with AMD on a solution to this problem.

- Using an AMD graphics card, you may experience black grid lines on

some graphical user interface (GUI) elements like the in-game mini-map.

This has been identified as a graphics driver problem. We are actively

working with AMD on a solution to this problem. If you find the grid

lines particularly distracting, you can add the following to the RAGE

launch options in Steam as a temporary workaround.

+vt_maxAniso 1

The launch options can be found by right-clicking on RAGE in Steam

and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Set Launch Options" in

the dialog that pops up. However, note that adding this setting will

lower the general texture quality in the game.

- If you have an AMD graphics card with a dual core CPU system you may

experience severe hitching and low frame rates. This has been

identified as a driver problem. We are actively working with AMD on

a solution to this problem. As a temporary workaround you may add the

following to the RAGE launch options in Steam:

+jobs_numThreads 0

The launch options can be found by right-clicking on RAGE in Steam

and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Set Launch Options" in

the dialog that pops up.

- If you are running RAGE in full-screen mode and you ALT-TAB to a

different application you may lose your VSync setting. When you

switch to a different application VSync stops functioning.

RAGE detects that VSync is no longer working and automatically switches

back to synchronizing to real-time to make sure the game time advances

in a consistent manner. We are actively working with the graphics

vendors on a solution to this problem.

Game is okay, nothing special but not too bad either.

[toyo]

I should have been more specific, I was referring to the textures and performance issues. I didn't even download the game, but it has a thread on one tracker with more than a thousand comments, and man, people were crying in anger about the texture pop-ins and the performance. It's good this patch solved some issues for you though.

I don't think I will even try it... it looks to me like a boring Borderlands, watched an hour or so of gameplay.

[shajt]

I don't play the game actually cause of the issues , but yeah, it really runs better with the update (in my case, don't know why), but still I can't play it because textures are so bad, they're hurting my eyes.

I mean sometimes they are fine (depends on the location), but when you move around they are kinda redrawn and can't really properly explain how it looks, but it's ugly.

I think I'm gonna wait for the new ATI driver or another update from Id software before I start to play this game.

[toyo]

I hate when companies release Betas (although having such prominent issues, Rage looks more like an alpha) and ask for 60 USD for entry in the Beta-test. Then they complain about piracy.

It's impossible that they didn't know about the textures, and still they released it, instead of working a few more weeks, or maybe even months to fix issues and ensure stability. Maybe they would have been able to release it just in time for the winter holidays. But no, they had to push-push-push the unfinished product on the market. These publishers should be lawfully obligated to mention "Known Issues" on their releases, so people know what they can expect.

[myidisbb]

I hate when companies release Betas (although having such prominent issues, Rage looks more like an alpha) and ask for 60 USD for entry in the Beta-test. Then they complain about piracy.

It's impossible that they didn't know about the textures, and still they released it, instead of working a few more weeks, or maybe even months to fix issues and ensure stability. Maybe they would have been able to release it just in time for the winter holidays. But no, they had to push-push-push the unfinished product on the market. These publishers should be lawfully obligated to mention "Known Issues" on their releases, so people know what they can expect.

and that is one of the biggest reasons people download a copy to verify its really worht purchasing

[shajt]

'Take the money and run' approach at its very best.

[mrsmith]

I dont realy like the game. I will prolly uninstall soon same as I did with Duke Nukem Forever (what a joke). If you use ProcessLasso try adding rage.exe to the "gaming mode" list and also exclde it from probalance restraint. I dunno if it will help but thats how I run all my games. g/l guys.

[shajt]

I was itchy to uninstall it , but I'm gonna leave it for reasons unknown, maybe some future sets of patches will make things right although I highly doubt that.

btw this is great , very funny :lol:

Re-Dubz #13 - PC Gamers Are in-RAGE-ed

Player One is so enraged by the terrible textures and streaming issues on his high end PC that he no longer wants to be in the game Rage. Mayor Clayton persuades Player One to finish a final menial task before he leaves Wellspring

[toyo]

Player One is so enraged by the terrible textures and streaming issues on his high end PC that he no longer wants to be in the game Rage. Mayor Clayton persuades Player One to finish a final menial task before he leaves Wellspring

The bridge was awesome.

[shajt]

The bridge was awesome.

:rofl:

Ending of the video is also great, kinda sums the game nicely.

[mrsmith]

@ shajt

really funny video. I love how they included Wolfenstein 3D from 1992 in it. I used to play that game for hours and hours. I remember upgrading from a 386 SX/25 to a 486 DX/100 to play the game.

[shajt]

@ shajt

really funny video. I love how they included Wolfenstein 3D from 1992 in it. I used to play that game for hours and hours. I remember upgrading from a 386 SX/25 to a 486 DX/100 to play the game.

Same here :lol:

Those were the days my friend ^_^

[mara-]

OOHH DO NOT TELL ME A BRIDGE JUST STREAMED IN THERE!?!

LOL! :lol:

Cheers ;)

[shajt]

Wow , grabbed some time and decided to play a little and ended up playing 2 hrs :showoff:

Game is actually good , too bad that textures are messed up here and there, but not a big deal ATM, didn't encounter any bugs.

I think that new video drivers will sort those texture problems.

[shajt]

ROFL ... same thing (from the video) with the bridge happened to me :fool:

I uninstalled the game , not just cause of the issues , but the game is stupid actually, was interesting at first but then it became boring ... 'take this and bring it over there, then return back' , 'now go there and do this' etc.

Makes no sense and the story is lame.

Gone from the system and will never return back -_-