Unfortunately this 'fix' is for nvidia cards only. Maybe someone on the red team can post below if Catalyst has a similar feature. iGPU users are SOL. If you don't understand anything in this guide,
Google is your friend.
Why would I want to limit my framerate?Good question. There are a couple reasons. Be default, this is my how my PC runs RA2 at the title screen:
It can go up to 5,000 FPS at times, which is not only totally unnecessary, it produced an unholy amount of coil whine, which I never usually get on my gtx 970. It also puts unnecessary strain on your GPU. My 970 really doesn't need to be running at 87% capacity like it is in the above screenshot. After capping the framerate, my GPU is only running at 11% usage, which is much better.
In addition, the follow camera breaks above a certain framerate for some reason. You can prevent that by limiting your framerate.
How do you limit your framerate?OK first off I'd like to re-iterate that this is for people with NVIDIA GPUS ONLY.
First off, you'll want to
download nVidia Inspector (direct download link). Unzip that bad boy, place the contents wherever and open up nvidiaInspector.exe. You should be greeted by a screen that looks a bit like this:
Click the button that I've helpfully highlighted in red. Another screen will pop up that looks a little something like this:
Now click in the box at the top that I've highlighted in red, and type in it "Robot Arena", and then hit enter. The rows of techno mumbo-jumbo below it should change. Now look for the "Frame Rate Limiter" option under the "Refresh and Sync" section, as I've highlighted in the image below. Set that to whatever framerate you want, I'll talk more about that later. I've set mine to 120fps.
So we're done, right? Nope! Now you have to click on the "add new game" icon I've highlighted in blue on the image below, and select your ra2 exe. I renamed my .exe just to make this guide more confusing, but yours should just be called "Robot Arena 2.exe". Look at the image below for reference. (If you have multiple copies of RA2, for example one for Stock, one for DSL etc, you should repeat this for each different version, adding each version's .exe).
Now you can click the big green "Apply Changes" button in the top right, and close nVidia Inspector. We're done!
What framerate should I choose? The main choice here is 120 or 60. I chose 120fps because a 60fps lock gives me ghastly input lag, but I'm not sure if that's because I use a 144hz monitor like a weirdo. Your monitor is 60Hz, so it shouldn't make a massive difference. Try them both out I guess, I think 120fps will feel better but it might still break the follow cam whereas I'm fairly sure 60fps won't.
You might have also seen that you can choose a temperature instead of a framerate. Don't bother.
Why don't I just force enable V-sync, record with FRAPS or do one of the other million methods of FPS capping?A few reasons. I couldn't force V-Sync through inspector the the nvidia control panel, which is really weird. And it causes input lag, although i'm not sure if it would cause more than this method at 120fps. Recording everything with fraps is obviously incredibly impractical and comes with a performance penalty. While my method is a PITA to implement, it has no real downsides except the minor input lag introduced (which will be an issue with ANY FPS-limiting method).
It didn't work! How do I fix it???You messed up. Go google it or re-read the tutorial, dumbass.
