u/Icy-Cress1068

I bought the game for my i3 1005g1, 8 gb RAM, Windows 11 because its a low poly game like A Short Hike, Haven Park.

Smushi Come Home ran beautifully at 30-45 fps at 720p high settings in the dense forest areas.

But as soon as I entered Crystal Caverns (the first cave area), fps dropped to 21-23 with 90% CPU usage, and highly erratic frame time graph with lots of closely spaced severe spikes and dips.

So if the game runs well for you in the outdoor dense forest area, its a deception. The game will run significantly worse in caves. And when I reduced shadows to medium, I got 40-45 fps in the cave, but I lost a lot in visual quality because shadows became severely low detailed. It looks like medium shadows are more aggressively downgraded from high, than they should have been.

Not recommended for intel hd, uhd, vega 3 graphics. Only buy if you have atleast intel iris xe (64 EUs or higher), vega 7/8 graphics with a modern quad core CPU.

Gameplay wise, the game has nice relaxing music, cute player, funny dialogues, enjoyable side activities, beautiful low poly graphics.

I bought the game for my i3 1005g1, 8 gb RAM, Windows 11 because its a low poly game like A Short Hike, Haven Park.

Smushi Come Home ran beautifully at 30-45 fps at 720p high settings in the dense forest areas.

But as soon as I entered Crystal Caverns (the first cave area), fps dropped to 21-23 with 90% CPU usage, and highly erratic frame time graph with lots of closely spaced severe spikes and dips.

So if the game runs well for you in the outdoor dense forest area, its a deception. The game will run significantly worse in caves. And when I reduced shadows to medium, I got 40-45 fps in the cave, but I lost a lot in visual quality because shadows became severely low detailed. It looks like medium shadows are more aggressively downgraded from high, than they should have been.

Not recommended for intel hd, uhd, vega 3 graphics. Only buy if you have atleast intel iris xe (64 EUs or higher), vega 7/8 graphics with a modern quad core CPU.

Gameplay wise, the game has nice relaxing music, cute player, funny dialogues, enjoyable side activities, beautiful low poly graphics.

Fallout 3 runs well at 720p, with vulkan (dxvk 1.10.1). The game is massive, with all the locations to explore and the side missions.

Launch the game through "FalloutLauncherSteam.exe". Go to Options, to change the graphics settings.

Graphics settings: Anti aliasing off, 12x anisotropy, screen effects - hdr.

Advanced settings:

1. Detail: Texture high, radial blur low, depth of field yes, transparency multi sampling no, decal cap 10. High radial blur decreases fps, when enemies hit the player.

2. Water: Water refraction yes, water reflections yes, reflection quality medium, soft reflections yes, full scene reflections no, full detail reflections no, water displacement yes, depth fog yes, water multisampling low. Enabling full scene and full detail reflections decreases fps by 5-10, so not recommended.

3. Shadows: Enable shadows yes, shadow quality medium, shadow filtering medium, max interior shadows 6, max exterior shadows 6.

4. View distance: Object, actor, item fade 9, grass fade 4, specularity fade 8, light fade 20, shadow fade 6.

5. Distant LOD: Tree LOD fade 26, Object LOD fade 43, Land quality 100.

So it can be said to be medium-high settings.

Performance: With vulkan, 40-55 fps outdoors in the Wasteland, depending on the junk in view. Fps changes quickly when you move the camera. When fighting with enemies or when heavy mushroom car explosions go off, fps is still above 30. In areas with multiple NPCs like rivet city market, fps drops down to exactly 30. So it gives a smooth experience, when locked at 30 using riva tuner.

Changing the graphics to low, increases fps significantly, and gets close to 60 all the time, but the game looks significantly lower in quality, so the settings are above are best for performance and quality.

Without vulkan, fps is much lower, like 30 instead of 40. Vulkan gives around 25-35% boost in fps.

Vulkan makes the lighting slightly more bright (due to Intel Vulkan driver bugs), but it's compensated by reducing specularity fade to 8. (With hdr, the lighting in the game is already bright though). Also due to Intel driver bugs, the game completely freezes on rare occasions, requiring a complete restart of the laptop, but it's rare (maybe like 1/30 times).

Essential fixes: By default, the game doesn't launch properly on integrated GPU. To resolve this, usually Google recommends Fallout 3 Intel hd bypass pack. But it's d3d9.dll file has same name as dxvk's file.

So instead, create a new dxvk.conf file in the game folder (where dxvk's d3d9.dll file is present). Write these commands:

d3d9.customVendorId = 10de

d3d9.customDeviceId = 2205

d3d9.customDeviceDesc = "NVIDIA RTX 3080"

Obviously, it will not make the integrated GPU more powerful, but it will tell the game that it's a dedicated Nvidia GPU, so that the game will launch correctly.

Then, copy paste FALLOUT.INI from intel hd bypass folder to Documents\My Games\Fallout 3.

Some problems still remain: Still, the game slowly increases GPU usage as the gaming session continues, and decreases fps (example, from 42 to exactly 30). This is because the game engine has trouble purging previous assets from memory (it's not intel vulkan driver issue). Similar memory related issues are also present on PS3. I couldn't resolve it fully, but it can be slowed down.

Tale of Two Wastelands (TTW) is recommended to fix the game engine issues, but it's massive in install size (16-17 gb) because it mandatorily includes all the game DLC's. Typing pcb in game console doesn't resolve the issue either.

To slow down the issue, disable dxvk cache file creation globally by creating a new environment variable in Windows: DXVK_STATE_CACHE and setting it to 0. Also, in D3DSCache folder in AppData\Local, create a new user: Everyone to add deny write rule, and move all the folder contents to another folder.

Idk the reason, but these steps slow down the fps drops of 42 to 30 from 1 hour to 2-3 hours of gameplay. If fps drops after 2-3 hours of gameplay, simply quit the game and re launch it. Again quit the game and re launch it, if it doesn't resolve in one go.

When you want to play another game, remember to revert the changes made to DXVK_STATE_CACHE and D3DSCache folder, because games store their compiled shaders there.

You can even write a batch/ powershell script (use an AI assistant like Gemini) to automate the process of DXVK_STATE_CACHE and D3DSCache folder, so you can just click icons on taskbar to instantly make the changes.

Thief deadly shadows runs well at 720p, bloom enabled, all sliders maximum (except multi sampling, which is set to lowest at 1). Low quality textures unchecked (why would you want them?), vsync unchecked. Also don't use Audio Hardware Mixing because modern laptops don't have old EAX sound cards.

Performance: So 720p high settings. Fps = 70-80 indoors, and 45-60 outdoors. As minimum fps is 45, so lock it at 45.

Tools that help: Thief 3 Sneaky Upgrade allows to change between Fullscreen, Windowed and Borderless modes. Sometimes the game can fail to work properly in one or the other mode, you can easily switch between them. Use d3d8to9 wrapper in this tool. Use "SneakyTweaker" to make these changes, and launch the game through "Thief 3 with Sneaky Upgrade" from the Windows Start menu.

You can skip the download of collective texture pack, thief 3 gold etc.

If the game fails to launch after you change your desktop resolution from windows settings, change d3d8to9 wrapper to any other, launch the game, quit the game, and change it back to d3d8to9.

There is one issue in which brightness (gamma) doesn't change from the game settings. I corrected the issue, but I forgot how I did it. It's been a week.

If you can't see msi afterburner fps, cpu usage etc in the game, enable custom direct3D support in riva tuner.

Gameplay review:

1. Graphics: At first, I thought the game is old and simple. But the game renders very sharp dynamic shadows, which are even more sharper than late 2000s games like mirror's edge. This is because the game uses shadow volumes instead of shadow maps, which was very demanding at that time.

2. Mechanics: The mechanics are engaging with various types of arrows, different types of surfaces to walk on.

3. Story: Also, the story of the game is great, especially the various plot twists towards the end of the game.

Doom 3 (2004 original) runs very well at 1366×768 resolution, ultra quality. It gets 50-60+ fps, so it locks perfectly at 45. The game runs natively on opengl, without driver issues or graphics corruption. Looks great with dancing dynamic shadows, illumination caused by enemy spells.

Additional things I used for stability:

Dhewm3 port: It allows to change in game resolution to widescreen (16:9) 1366×768. (Remember to change the Windows desktop resolution to 1366×768 as well, and launch the game through the new dhewm3.exe in the game folder).

Doom 3 essential hd texture pack makes the laptop run out of ram, so not recommended.

To sharpen the computer terminal, PDA text even more, change/ create small and medium font limit in autoexec conf file in base folder of the game to 0. It loses around 3-4 fps in the game, but still 50 fps in demanding area.

Some other settings in autoexec conf file: lod bias = 0, anisotropy = 16, multi samples = 0, image filter = GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR, machine spec = 3, video ram = 1024. Machine spec = 3 will make the game automatically set graphics to ultra, which is desirable.

Easy solution is to download essential hd texture pack and copy paste only the autoexec conf file from base folder there, to the base folder of the game. It has all the suitable values for max graphics quality.

Some problems are still present:

The wall textures in the game are very blurry (even on ultra quality), when viewed up close. It's not a low resolution bug on integrated GPU, because you can see on youtube that it's everywhere like that. The game was a massive graphics powerhouse, so developers had to do this to save VRAM. After 2-3 days, I got used to it.

Ensure that all the image compression, down size, down size limit, ignore high quality variables in autoexec conf file are set to 0 (Google for all the variables), otherwise the game will default to even more low quality textures.

And textures on character models, computer terminal text are sharp.

Another problem is that the game doesn't save settings automatically when you change from in game menu, even after restarting the game. For example, if you want to disable vsync, you have to disable it manually by going to autoexec conf file in base folder of the game (by changing r_swapInterval to 0).

Why not doom 3 bfg edition: Bfg edition brightens up the game and other downgrades, which I don't like.

Fallout 3 runs well at 720p, with vulkan (dxvk 1.10.1). The game is massive, with all the locations to explore and the side missions.

Launch the game through "FalloutLauncherSteam.exe". Go to Options, to change the graphics settings.

Graphics settings: Anti aliasing off, 12x anisotropy, screen effects - hdr.

Advanced settings:

1. Detail: Texture high, radial blur low, depth of field yes, transparency multi sampling no, decal cap 10. High radial blur decreases fps, when enemies hit the player.

2. Water: Water refraction yes, water reflections yes, reflection quality medium, soft reflections yes, full scene reflections no, full detail reflections no, water displacement yes, depth fog yes, water multisampling low. Enabling full scene and full detail reflections decreases fps by 5-10, so not recommended.

3. Shadows: Enable shadows yes, shadow quality medium, shadow filtering medium, max interior shadows 6, max exterior shadows 6.

4. View distance: Object, actor, item fade 9, grass fade 4, specularity fade 8, light fade 20, shadow fade 6.

5. Distant LOD: Tree LOD fade 26, Object LOD fade 43, Land quality 100.

So it can be said to be medium-high settings.

Performance: With vulkan, 40-55 fps outdoors in the Wasteland, depending on the junk in view. Fps changes quickly when you move the camera. When fighting with enemies or when heavy mushroom car explosions go off, fps is still above 30. In areas with multiple NPCs like rivet city market, fps drops down to exactly 30. So it gives a smooth experience, when locked at 30 using riva tuner.

Changing the graphics to low, increases fps significantly, and gets close to 60 all the time, but the game looks significantly lower in quality, so the settings are above are best for performance and quality.

Without vulkan, fps is much lower, like 30 instead of 40. Vulkan gives around 25-35% boost in fps.

Vulkan makes the lighting slightly more bright (due to Intel Vulkan driver bugs), but it's compensated by reducing specularity fade to 8. (With hdr, the lighting in the game is already bright though). Also due to Intel driver bugs, the game completely freezes on rare occasions, requiring a complete restart of the laptop, but it's rare (maybe like 1/30 times).

Essential fixes: By default, the game doesn't launch properly on integrated GPU. To resolve this, usually Google recommends Fallout 3 Intel hd bypass pack. But it's d3d9.dll file has same name as dxvk's file.

So instead, create a new dxvk.conf file in the game folder (where dxvk's d3d9.dll file is present). Write these commands:

d3d9.customVendorId = 10de

d3d9.customDeviceId = 2205

d3d9.customDeviceDesc = "NVIDIA RTX 3080"

Obviously, it will not make the integrated GPU more powerful, but it will tell the game that it's a dedicated Nvidia GPU, so that the game will launch correctly.

Then, copy paste FALLOUT.INI from intel hd bypass folder to Documents\My Games\Fallout 3.

Some problems still remain: Still, the game slowly increases GPU usage as the gaming session continues, and decreases fps (example, from 42 to exactly 30). This is because the game engine has trouble purging previous assets from memory (it's not intel vulkan driver issue). Similar memory related issues are also present on PS3. I couldn't resolve it fully, but it can be slowed down.

Tale of Two Wastelands (TTW) is recommended to fix the game engine issues, but it's massive in install size (16-17 gb) because it mandatorily includes all the game DLC's. Typing pcb in game console doesn't resolve the issue either.

To slow down the issue, disable dxvk cache file creation globally by creating a new environment variable in Windows: DXVK_STATE_CACHE and setting it to 0. Also, in D3DSCache folder in AppData\Local, create a new user: Everyone to add deny write rule, and move all the folder contents to another folder.

Idk the reason, but these steps slow down the fps drops of 42 to 30 from 1 hour to 2-3 hours of gameplay. If fps drops after 2-3 hours of gameplay, simply quit the game and re launch it. Again quit the game and re launch it, if it doesn't resolve in one go.

When you want to play another game, remember to revert the changes made to DXVK_STATE_CACHE and D3DSCache folder, because games store their compiled shaders there.

You can even write a batch/ powershell script (use an AI assistant like Gemini) to automate the process of DXVK_STATE_CACHE and D3DSCache folder, so you can just click icons on taskbar to instantly make the changes.

On my i3 1005g1, 8 gb single channel ram, I tried Linux because it's recommended for being a lighter OS than Windows 11. Also, I heard intel mesa drivers on Linux are much better for Vulkan than intel Windows drivers.

I dual booted the latest version of Ubuntu.

But the results were very disappointing.

I copy pasted mirror's edge 2008 game folder from Windows D drive to Ubuntu Home directory. I installed Lutris as Flatpak app. I configured everything correctly: Wine (Runs Windows games), executable path, wine prefix path, ge-proton, fsync, esync. Also gave Lutris flatpak the permission to access the required folders. I verified through terminal that all the drivers are installed correctly.

But the results? Continuous audio popping/ stuttering in mirror's edge, with much higher CPU usage (80-90% with spikes to 95%), compared to only 60-70% on Windows 11. In cutscenes or during camera panning in certain areas, severe fps drops from mid 30s to mid 20s. It may be because while gaming, dual core CPU is struggling to convert Windows audio, system calls to Ubuntu's.

I even tried different versions of dxvk in Lutris, also tried disabling dxvk to run the game on WineD3D. But still the same results.

Then I tried Avatar 2009 game, and still the same audio popping.

Another issue is that the CPU temperature goes noticeably higher than on Windows (as reported by MangoHUD). I configured "thermald" through terminal, but it didn't reduce the temperature.

Now, I am back on Windows 11. Now I have to tolerate the Windows driver Vulkan glitches: blindingly bright sun, game freezes.

The strange thing is that even with dxvk on Windows, the fps in games like Avatar increases with no CPU usage spikes, even though CPU still has to translate DirectX instructions to Vulkan. Then why the translation tax on Ubuntu is so high?

This post is meant to be a review for Ubuntu, but if anyone knows how to resolve these issues on Ubuntu, are welcomed.

Thief deadly shadows runs well at 720p, bloom enabled, all sliders maximum (except multi sampling, which is set to lowest at 1). Low quality textures unchecked (why would you want them?), vsync unchecked. Also don't use Audio Hardware Mixing because modern laptops don't have old EAX sound cards.

Performance: So 720p high settings. Fps = 70-80 indoors, and 45-60 outdoors. As minimum fps is 45, so lock it at 45.

Tools that help: Thief 3 Sneaky Upgrade allows to change between Fullscreen, Windowed and Borderless modes. Sometimes the game can fail to work properly in one or the other mode, you can easily switch between them. Use d3d8to9 wrapper in this tool. Use "SneakyTweaker" to make these changes, and launch the game through "Thief 3 with Sneaky Upgrade" from the Windows Start menu.

You can skip the download of collective texture pack, thief 3 gold etc.

If the game fails to launch after you change your desktop resolution from windows settings, change d3d8to9 wrapper to any other, launch the game, quit the game, and change it back to d3d8to9.

There is one issue in which brightness (gamma) doesn't change from the game settings. I corrected the issue, but I forgot how I did it. It's been a week.

If you can't see msi afterburner fps, cpu usage etc in the game, enable custom direct3D support in riva tuner.

Gameplay review:

1. Graphics: At first, I thought the game is old and simple. But the game renders very sharp dynamic shadows, which are even more sharper than late 2000s games like mirror's edge. This is because the game uses shadow volumes instead of shadow maps, which was very demanding at that time.

2. Mechanics: The mechanics are engaging with various types of arrows, different types of surfaces to walk on.

3. Story: Also, the story of the game is great, especially the various plot twists towards the end of the game.

Edit: Changed 720p to 1366×768, it was a mistake before. I ran the game at slightly higher resolution of 1366×768 because the textures in the game are already blurred.

Doom 3 (2004 original) runs very well at 1366×768 resolution, ultra quality. It gets 50-60+ fps, so it locks perfectly at 45. The game runs natively on opengl, without driver issues or graphics corruption. Looks great with dancing dynamic shadows, illumination caused by enemy spells.

Additional things I used for stability:

Dhewm3 port: It allows to change in game resolution to widescreen (16:9) 1366×768. (Remember to change the Windows desktop resolution to 1366×768 as well, and launch the game through the new dhewm3.exe in the game folder).

Doom 3 essential hd texture pack makes the laptop run out of ram, so not recommended.

To sharpen the computer terminal, PDA text even more, change/ create small and medium font limit in autoexec conf file in base folder of the game to 0. It loses around 3-4 fps in the game, but still 50 fps in demanding area.

Some other settings in autoexec conf file: lod bias = 0, anisotropy = 16, multi samples = 0, image filter = GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR, machine spec = 3, video ram = 1024. Machine spec = 3 will make the game automatically set graphics to ultra, which is desirable.

Easy solution is to download essential hd texture pack and copy paste only the autoexec conf file from base folder there, to the base folder of the game. It has all the suitable values for max graphics quality.

Some problems are still present:

The wall textures in the game are very blurry (even on ultra quality), when viewed up close. It's not a low resolution bug on integrated GPU, because you can see on youtube that it's everywhere like that. The game was a massive graphics powerhouse, so developers had to do this to save VRAM. After 2-3 days, I got used to it.

Ensure that all the image compression, down size, down size limit, ignore high quality variables in autoexec conf file are set to 0 (Google for all the variables), otherwise the game will default to even more low quality textures.

And textures on character models, computer terminal text are sharp.

Another problem is that the game doesn't save settings automatically when you change from in game menu, even after restarting the game. For example, if you want to disable vsync, you have to disable it manually by going to autoexec conf file in base folder of the game (by changing r_swapInterval to 0).

Why not doom 3 bfg edition: Bfg edition brightens up the game and other downgrades, which I don't like.

I am aware of PS3 exclusives like Uncharted, that were unmatched in their graphics quality. Let's talk about multi platform games.

I am playing Dirt 2007. It really looks photorealistic with all the vehicle reflections, sun drenched bright areas, baked tree shadows. I couldn't find a game that's more photorealistic from that era.

Dead space 2, although not photorealistic, is much more visually upgraded than dead space 2008. It has color grading, and sharp shadows from multiple light sources that looks so ahead of its time. And it's very well optimised at the same time.

What other games you think aged very well?

Did you just look at the summaries on the first page, or did you read every entry line by line? I know most people even don't read full summaries. What did you do?

I read every entry line by line, whatever I could find. At the end, I had 70% of the entries unlocked.

Was I mad to read every line?

Personally, I found it interesting, as it helped me connect deeply to the game's world. Reading physics and biology stuff was interesting too. I usually try to absorb myself into the game by looking closely at the graphics, listening to the background music, taking my time to explore. I don't rush. Does anyone do like what I do?

For example, in a 5-6 hours game, I usually have atleast 20 hours. I don't care about total playtime.

Specs: i3 1005g1, intel uhd G1, 8 gb single channel ram.

I don't know if this sub is right for this.

So I dual booted Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on my i3 1005g1, alongside Windows 11.

I setup Mirror's Edge 2008 in Lutris as a test. It's using GE-Proton, and Dxvk is enabled.

I was getting usual fps as I used to get on Windows.

But when first cutscene triggered, where Cel says "Welcome back Faith", after 2-3 seconds (while cutscene was still going on), fps dropped from 33 to 24.

When cutscene finished, fps didn't go back up again. Even in previous area where it was above 30, it dropped to 25 fps.

When I restarted the game, it got back above 30, but only till that cutscene again triggered.

Fixes I tried: Disabling Physx in game settings and in game config file

Gpu and media acceleration drivers are already installed

This issue was not present on Windows.

Edit: In another area, when I turned camera 180°, fps dropped without any cutscene. When I reverted camera back to original position, it didn't revive.

Specs: i3 1005g1, intel uhd G1, 8 gb single channel ram.

I don't know if this sub is right for this.

So I dual booted Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on my i3 1005g1, alongside Windows 11.

I setup Mirror's Edge 2008 in Lutris as a test. It's using GE-Proton, and Dxvk is enabled.

I was getting usual fps as I used to get on Windows.

But when first cutscene triggered, where Cel says "Welcome back Faith", after 2-3 seconds (while cutscene was still going on), fps dropped from 33 to 24.

When cutscene finished, fps didn't go back up again. Even in previous area where it was above 30, it dropped to 25 fps.

When I restarted the game, it got back above 30, but only till that cutscene again triggered.

Fixes I tried: Disabling Physx in game settings and in game config file

Gpu and media acceleration drivers are already installed

This issue was not present on Windows.

Edit: In another area, when I turned camera 180°, fps dropped without any cutscene. When I reverted camera back to original position, it didn't revive.

On i3 1005g1 single channel 8 gb ram, Windows 11, I am playing Avatar 2009 game. I am using vulkan (dxvk 1.10.1) to stablize fps. I am not using higher versions of dxvk because they cause the sun to fully lose its light (glorious intel's vulkan driver bug).

On intel, vulkan games freeze randomly from anywhere 5-30 minutes, especially Ubisoft games like assassin's creed 2, Avatar 2009. Non Ubisoft games like Fallout 3 freeze very occasionally.

When I first started playing the Avatar 2009 game 3 months ago, the game froze, but maybe 3 out of 10 times. Now 3 months later, I am unable to play the game because it's freezing 8 out of 10 times (I feel extremely lucky if it doesn't freeze on a specific launch). When it freezes, I have to force end it from task manager and restart the laptop. If I don't restart the laptop, it definitely freezes again on the next launch.

I know these are glorious intel's vulkan driver bugs, but please help me out, if there's any fix. I want to play the game, it's really good.

I have tried rolling back to old drivers (31.0.101.2135), but it's of no advantage. Something changed silently in the three months. I can't remove dxvk, because otherwise, fps frequently drops below 30.

I learned that riva tuner causes freezes in vulkan games, but on launch time. So it's not due to riva tuner. It's probably intel's driver bugs.

TD;LR We will enable a hidden Windows setting in control panel by using cmd and registry edit: Maximum processor frequency, to set a custom CPU clock speed. It doesn't work on all laptop manufacturers though. It can be tweaked for almost no loss in fps.

My specs: i3 1005g1, Dell Vostro 15 3510 laptop.

It's completely safe as we will reduce CPU clock speed, not increase it. It will help you to increase the lifespan of your machine because constant 90°C+ puts stress on internal components over years.

---

Introduction:

Many people want to set custom clock speed on locked CPUs like i3 1005g1. But if I do the usual -> change "maximum processor state" in control panel to 99%, my CPU gets locked to its base speed of 1.2 GHz (completely disables turbo boost). I tried reducing it to 92%, 90%, 88%, but it locked the CPU even below it's base speed (as shown by msi afterburner in the game).

On my laptop, in Throttle Stop, the options to change CPU multipliers are greyed out.

So what if you want to cap your 3.4 GHz CPU to a custom 3.0 GHz or any other speed, to reduce heat output? I recently found a way to do it. It works perfectly on my laptop, and hopefully works on yours too.

---

The steps:

Open cmd as admin. Copy paste

powercfg -attributes SUB_PROCESSOR 75b0defe-600e-4d9a-9c55-5219b8d3d414 -ATTRIB_HIDE

and hit Enter.

Command source: Google search AI.

This command enables a hidden setting in control panel, called "maximum processor frequency." Type "edit power plan" in windows search bar, open the app. Go to "Change advanced power settings", then expand "processor power management" to see the option.

If the above method fails:

If the above method doesn't show "maximum processor frequency" option in control panel, then

Press Win+R to open run dialog box. Type regedit and hit Enter to open registry. Paste

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\\75b0ae3f-bce0-45a7-8c89-c9611c25e100

into the search bar of registry. You will see "Attributes" in the right pane. Double click on it and change its value to 2. It will force the Windows to show the option in control panel.

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How to change the CPU clock speed:

Now, in "Maximum processor frequency", change both plugged in and on battery values to your desired value. The values are in MHz. For example, 3.4 GHz means you need to write 3400, and 3000 for 3.0 GHz. Remember to avoid typos like 300, as it will make the CPU unresponsive. Set both values to zero, if you want to reset the CPU clock speed to its default behaviour.

---

Reduce CPU clock speed gradually in small decrements:

Slowly, decrease the value from your max turbo speed. My turbo speed is 3400, so I tried 3100, 3000, 2900. For each value, observe the impact on fps and temperature in different games by using msi afterburner overlay. Ideally, include modern 2D multi threaded games like silksong, old well optimized 3D games like mirrors edge 2009, heavily single threaded games like prince of persia 2008/ assassin's creed 2 (last two games run with vulkan on my laptop: dxvk 1.10.1). Feel free to replace these games with what you play, but cover a broad category.

---

Example on how to interpret the results:

After launching a game, in msi afterburner overlay, observe the temperature of the usual hot CPU cores, and not the overall CPU temperature. On my laptop, they are core 1 and core 2.

On my laptop, I observed that going from 3400 to 3100 reduced temperature by 5°C on core 1 and core 2, with no loss in fps. Further going to 3000 reduced temperature by another 2-3°C, again with no loss in fps. So I got down from 3400 to 3000 with no loss in fps, and temperature reduced by 7-8°C. When I further reduced to 2900, temperature reduced further by 3-4°C, but depending on the game, I lost 5-10% fps. So 3000 became sweet spot for me: 7-8°C lower temperature with almost no loss in fps (only 2-3% reduction in fps: like 39 to 38, 30 to 29).

After this process, remember to cap fps at 30 or 60 using riva tuner, as uncapped fps naturally generates more heat.

---

The benefits I got:

My CPU's core 1 and core 2 were running much hotter (10°C or more) in every game, compared to core 3 and core 4.

Now on core 1 and core 2, it's max 90°C in unoptimized games like assassin's creed 2. And 80-85°C or even lower than 80°C in well optimized games like mirrors edge 2009 and silksong. Before this, it was 90°C even in well optimized games, and 95°C in unoptimized games.

Now, the laptop is much cooler to touch from the back, near the vents.

All of this, with no noticeable loss in actual fps in any game. Also when fps is capped to 30 or 60, there's no new stuttering in games after applying this method.

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Why this method works:

It happens because the top few MHz in every CPU are power inefficient. To get those few extra MHz, the CPU generates exponentially more heat. By shaving those extra MHz, you get an efficient CPU clock speed, with almost no loss in performance. And second reason is that budget CPUs like these, throttle down to around 3.0 GHz anyways after some minutes in demanding games, when they cross 93°C.

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Same CPU can have slightly different sweet spot for clock speed:

Remember that even if you have exactly same CPU and same laptop as mine, your sweet spot can slightly change from 3000, because every CPU built in the factory naturally has some micro differences in the silicon wafer.

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This method is NOT guaranteed to work for all the laptop models:

Note that it's not guaranteed to work. Some laptop manufacturers strictly don't allow Windows to interfere with the power states of the locked CPU. In that case, when you will try to change values, the CPU will simply ignore it.

TD;LR We will enable a hidden Windows setting in control panel by using cmd and registry edit: Maximum processor frequency, to set a custom CPU clock speed. It doesn't work on all laptop manufacturers though. It can be tweaked for almost no loss in fps.

My specs: i3 1005g1, Dell Vostro 15 3510 laptop.

It's completely safe as we will reduce CPU clock speed, not increase it. It will help you to increase the lifespan of your machine because constant 90°C+ puts stress on internal components over years.

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Introduction:

Many people want to set custom clock speed on locked CPUs like i3 1005g1. But if I do the usual -> change "maximum processor state" in control panel to 99%, my CPU gets locked to its base speed of 1.2 GHz (completely disables turbo boost). I tried reducing it to 92%, 90%, 88%, but it locked the CPU even below it's base speed (as shown by msi afterburner in the game).

On my laptop, in Throttle Stop, the options to change CPU multipliers are greyed out.

So what if you want to cap your 3.4 GHz CPU to a custom 3.0 GHz or any other speed, to reduce heat output? I recently found a way to do it. It works perfectly on my laptop, and hopefully works on yours too.

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The steps:

Open cmd as admin. Copy paste

powercfg -attributes SUB_PROCESSOR 75b0defe-600e-4d9a-9c55-5219b8d3d414 -ATTRIB_HIDE

and hit Enter.

Command source: Google search AI.

This command enables a hidden setting in control panel, called "maximum processor frequency." Type "edit power plan" in windows search bar, open the app. Go to "Change advanced power settings", then expand "processor power management" to see the option.

If the above method fails:

If the above method doesn't show "maximum processor frequency" option in control panel, then

Press Win+R to open run dialog box. Type regedit and hit Enter to open registry. Paste

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\\75b0ae3f-bce0-45a7-8c89-c9611c25e100

into the search bar of registry. You will see "Attributes" in the right pane. Double click on it and change its value to 2. It will force the Windows to show the option in control panel.

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How to change the CPU clock speed:

Now, in "Maximum processor frequency", change both plugged in and on battery values to your desired value. The values are in MHz. For example, 3.4 GHz means you need to write 3400, and 3000 for 3.0 GHz. Remember to avoid typos like 300, as it will make the CPU unresponsive. Set both values to zero, if you want to reset the CPU clock speed to its default behaviour.

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Reduce CPU clock speed gradually in small decrements:

Slowly, decrease the value from your max turbo speed. My turbo speed is 3400, so I tried 3100, 3000, 2900. For each value, observe the impact on fps and temperature in different games by using msi afterburner overlay. Ideally, include modern 2D multi threaded games like silksong, old well optimized 3D games like mirrors edge 2009, heavily single threaded games like prince of persia 2008/ assassin's creed 2 (last two games run with vulkan on my laptop: dxvk 1.10.1). Feel free to replace these games with what you play, but cover a broad category.

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Example on how to interpret the results:

After launching a game, in msi afterburner overlay, observe the temperature of the usual hot CPU cores, and not the overall CPU temperature. On my laptop, they are core 1 and core 2.

On my laptop, I observed that going from 3400 to 3100 reduced temperature by 5°C on core 1 and core 2, with no loss in fps. Further going to 3000 reduced temperature by another 2-3°C, again with no loss in fps. So I got down from 3400 to 3000 with no loss in fps, and temperature reduced by 7-8°C. When I further reduced to 2900, temperature reduced further by 3-4°C, but depending on the game, I lost 5-10% fps. So 3000 became sweet spot for me: 7-8°C lower temperature with almost no loss in fps (only 3-4% reduction in fps like 39 to 38, 30 to 29).

After this process, remember to cap fps at 30 or 60 using riva tuner, as uncapped fps naturally generates more heat.

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The benefits I got:

My CPU's core 1 and core 2 were running much hotter (10°C or more) in every game, compared to core 3 and core 4.

Now on core 1 and core 2, it's max 90°C in unoptimized games like assassin's creed 2. And 80-85°C or even lower than 80°C in well optimized games like mirrors edge 2009 and silksong. Before this, it was 90°C even in well optimized games, and 95°C in unoptimized games.

Now, the laptop is much cooler to touch from the back, near the vents.

All of this, with no noticeable loss in actual fps in any game. Also when fps is capped to 30 or 60, there's no new stuttering in games after applying this method.

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Why this method works:

It happens because the top few MHz in every CPU are power inefficient. To get those few extra MHz, the CPU generates exponentially more heat. By shaving those extra MHz, you get an efficient CPU clock speed, with almost no loss in performance. And second reason is that budget CPUs like these, throttle down to around 3.0 GHz anyways after some minutes in demanding games, when they cross 93°C.

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Same CPU can have slightly different sweet spot for clock speed:

Remember that even if you have exactly same CPU and same laptop as mine, your sweet spot can slightly change from 3000, because every CPU built in the factory naturally has some micro differences in the silicon wafer.

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This method is NOT guaranteed to work for all the laptop models:

Note that it's not guaranteed to work. Some laptop manufacturers strictly don't allow Windows to interfere with the power states of the locked CPU. In that case, when you will try to change values, the CPU will simply ignore it.

My specs: i3 1005g1, intel uhd G1, 8 gb single channel ram. (Included because of sub's rules).

I am considering 8600 gt and i3 1005g1's intel uhd G1 graphics.

8600 gt at stock condition had only 76 gflops of FP32 power, vs 460 on intel uhd G1. It means intel uhd G1 is 500% faster than 8600 gt in raw math power.

Yet, it only outperforms 8600 gt by 15-20% in 2007-2008 AAA games, even with fast ddr4-2666 dual channel ram. And I am not talking about crysis. I am talking about well optimised games like mirror's edge 2008.

Various things check out: 8600 gt has exactly same 8 ROPs and 16 TMUs as intel uhd G1. Bandwidth math - 8600 gt had 22 Gbps of dedicated vram, whereas 42 Gbps shared between cpu and gpu in i3 1005g1 still gives 21 Gbps to the igpu. Clock speed also wins for uhd G1 - G1 runs at 900 MHz, whereas 8600 gt ran at just 540 MHz. Pixel fill rate also wins for G1 - 7.2 GPixels/s vs only 4.32 on 8600 gt. Texture fill rate also wins for G1 - 14.4 GTexel/s vs only 8.64 on 8600 gt. So in some things like ROPs, TMUs and memory bandwidth, G1 and 8600 gt are exactly same; whereas in others like clock speed, pixel fill rate and texture fill rate, G1 is much better.

If you want to say thermal throttling: Then, I measured the fps just after launching the games, when G1 was still running at 900 MHz. The G1's clock speed was shown by hwinfo + riva tuner overlay.

If you want to say an iGPU will never perform at its max ceiling even with dual channel ram/ an iGPU is fundamentally different in architecture than a dedicated GPU - Man, based on raw GFLOPS and various things that check out above like ROPs, clock speed, fill rate, G1 should be 500% faster. Yet only, 15-20% faster in real life testing. It doesn't make any logical sense. If it was maybe 200% faster, I could say: Oh, it's an iGPU, that's why.

People say with dual channel ram, you get most of the iGPU max performance.

If you want to say your dual core CPU is bottlenecking the iGPU in these games: CPU is just hitting 60-70% (mirror's edge) or 30-40% (bioshock 2007), depending on the game, when fps is uncapped. In all the games, it's the iGPU hitting 90-100% utilisation. All of this with just 15-20% higher fps than 8600 gt system could provide.

I am considering 8600 gt and i3 1005g1's intel uhd G1 graphics.

8600 gt at stock condition had only 76 gflops of FP32 power, vs 460 on intel uhd G1. It means intel uhd G1 is 500% faster than 8600 gt in raw math power.

Yet, it only outperforms 8600 gt by 15-20% in 2007-2008 AAA games, even with fast ddr4-2666 dual channel ram. And I am not talking about crysis. I am talking about well optimised games like mirror's edge 2008.

Various things check out: 8600 gt has exactly same 8 ROPs and 16 TMUs as intel uhd G1. Bandwidth math - 8600 gt had 22 Gbps of dedicated vram, whereas 42 Gbps shared between cpu and gpu in i3 1005g1 still gives 21 Gbps to the igpu. Clock speed also wins for uhd G1 - G1 runs at 900 MHz, whereas 8600 gt ran at just 540 MHz. Pixel fill rate also wins for G1 - 7.2 GPixels/s vs only 4.32 on 8600 gt. Texture fill rate also wins for G1 - 14.4 GTexel/s vs only 8.64 on 8600 gt. So in some things like ROPs, TMUs and memory bandwidth, G1 and 8600 gt are exactly same; whereas in others like clock speed, pixel fill rate and texture fill rate, G1 is much better.

If you want to say thermal throttling: Then, I measured the fps just after launching the games, when G1 was still running at 900 MHz. The G1's clock speed was shown by hwinfo + riva tuner overlay.

If you want to say an iGPU will never perform at its max ceiling even with dual channel ram/ an iGPU is fundamentally different in architecture than a dedicated GPU - Man, based on raw GFLOPS and various things that check out above like ROPs, clock speed, fill rate, G1 should be 500% faster. Yet only, 15-20% faster in real life testing. It doesn't make any logical sense. If it was maybe 200% faster, I could say: Oh, it's an iGPU, that's why.

People say with dual channel ram, you get most of the iGPU max performance.

If you want to say your dual core CPU is bottlenecking the iGPU in these games: CPU is just hitting 60-70% (mirror's edge) or 30-40% (bioshock 2007), depending on the game, when fps is uncapped. In all the games, it's the iGPU hitting 90-100% utilisation. All of this with just 15-20% higher fps than 8600 gt system could provide.

Hey guys! I got a racing game for low end hardware. It runs on i3 1005g1, intel uhd G1 graphics, 8 gb single channel ram. It's Colin Mcrae Dirt, a AAA racing game from 2007.

Recommended settings and expected fps:

720p, multisampling off, wind effects on, shadows medium, particle effects high, mirrors on, crowd high, foliage medium, driver models medium, trees medium, reflections high, motion blur off, skidmarks on. 30-40 fps.

You will use that apart from the first CPU thread (core 0) running at close to 90%, remaining CPU threads are underutilised, and iGPU is only sitting at 60-70%. It will lead to stutters, and fps drops below 30.

How to resolve iGPU underutilisation in this game:

To resolve iGPU underutilisation, use vulkan (dxvk 1.10.1 or 1.10.3). Even though other games like assassin's creed 2, prince of persia 2008 benefit from dxvk 1.10.1, I found 1.10.3 in this game to give more stable fps. In this game, with vulkan, I didn't see any visual glitches like overly bright areas.

Also the next step to resolve iGPU underutilisation, is: after launching the game, press windows key to get out of the game while the game is still running. Open task manager. Go to details, and right click Dirt.exe to open CPU affinity. Uncheck core 0 and click OK. Then again check all the cores, and click OK. As the game is historically poorly optimised for multi core CPUs (like dual cores), it forces the game engine to properly use the 4 available CPU threads (core 0 to 3). It improves CPU utilisation (when fps is uncapped, now you will see even utilisation across all 4 threads: 85-95%), which in turn, also improves iGPU utilisation to 80-90%.

Now lock the game at 30 fps using riva tuner. It will give much more stable 30 fps.

After 1.5-2 hours, iGPU again gets underutilised to 60-70%, and the game again starts to drop fps below 30. The solution is simple, repeat the CPU affinity method written above.

Different tracks tested and I got stable 30 fps in all of them: In tier 1 and tier 2 of career mode, I completed different tracks, like with lots of grass, lots of trees, slippery roads due to rain. I completed solo campaigns, and campaigns with AI controlled cars. When locked at 30 fps using riva tuner, the fps is stable at 30 when using the vulkan and cpu affinity tweaks discussed above. The fps is stable at 30, even during very fast driving.

Cpu heavy nature of the game: The game is surprisingly demanding even on modern CPUs like i3 1005g1: In practice mode with no AI cars, fps increases from 30-40 to 40-50 in the same tracks. But still it's above 30 fps with 30-40.

Recommended sound settings: The game features a very complex sound engine, which is CPU heavy. It keeps track of sound coming from every AI car on the track. So keep sound mixing set to "software" with DSP off, and sound channels at very low. If you crank sound settings to high, you will lose 2-3 fps, which increases the chances of dropping just below 30 fps to 29 in chaotic sequences. Even at low, you still get sound of different AI cars when they approach you.

Fix for if you are not able to create multiple profiles in the game: It happens because the game is hardcoded to save data in Documents folder, which is usually present under OneDrive folder on modern windows. If your OneDrive is inactive, you will get "data corrupt" error when you try to create a second profile in the game.

Since game is hardcoded to save in Documents folder, you cannot change the save location simply by editing game config files. The straightforward solution is to ensure that OneDrive is running.

If you don't want to activate OneDrive to save system resources, instead create a junction link by using mklink /J command in admin cmd. Use C:\Users\dell\Documents folder instead to direct windows to save game data there. If windows defender interferes with the creation of junction link, temporarily disable "controlled folder access."