I was testing various options for their effects on frame rate. The biggest effect so far is ambient occlusion which even just on the options screen will lower my FPS from about 60 to 28.

I then put my attention towards muzzle break flash effects. Using a 6 break, sustained fire with any weapon consumed a whopping 8-10 FPS for the duration of fire. Using no front mod, firing then only cost about 1-2 FPS. Using a silencer, there was no noticeable loss. Since the breaks do help stability I looked for a compromise, the down break muzzle only cost 2-3 FPS. I tested this in multiplayer, and regardless of what other weapon/break the player in front of me fired, there was a far less, although still noticeable, of an impact on FPS. The other player using a silencer also took 0 to 1 FPS, which at that point could be a normal fluctuation.

I then noticed something that I found quite puzzling about this effect. The higher my current FPS, the more fps was consumed. At around 60 FPS, the cost was 8-10. Around 42 it was 5-7. At 28-32, it was only 2-3. So the lower my average frame rate is, the less of an fps loss the effects consumed.

Could just be on odd effect of my system, but if you're having FPS issues it's worth a shot until a patch better addresses the issues many people are experiencing.


My in game options are:

High Quality Post Processing, Anti-Aliasing, On

Ambient Occlusion, Motion Blur, VSYNC: Off

Shadows/Texture: High

1680x1050 16:10

My System:

Intel Core2Duo 2.93Ghz
4GB G.Skill RAM
MSI Twinfrozr 1G OC PCI/E (NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1GB)
MSI P6N-SLI-FI