I was among those who had a:
CPU: Quad Core; Intel i5-760, 3.5ghz
MEMORY: 4gb; 1333mhz; DDR3
GRAPHICS: AMD Radeon HD 6970 (sold as 6950, I unlocked its restrictions); 2gb
OS: Windows 7; 64bit
The game ran only on the verge of acceptable with most settings either off, low and medium. I tried a bunch of little things but nothing changed.
The following happened (all at once almost) which brought about my performance issue being resolved. I don't know which exactly.
1. The Beta update had arrived that included the grain elevator map. My graphics settings were reset.
2. A topic here had suggestions for alternate graphics .ini files, and many custom ones were offered for download with various performance tweaks. Ultimately I followed one of the instructions which said to manually yank ALL the graphical settings forwards and backwards on their sliders and restarting the game.
3. I increased SHADOW quality from LOW to Medium (or even high). I also put DETAIL to high. CHARACTER detail set to HIGH.
The FPS was much higher when I had done all these things. I mean, the graphical quality itself was already enormously better, but that the FPS were also better at the same time.
The presently latest beta update, which included the Rail Yard, Pavlov's House etc, I FURTHER upped the settings. Light shafts on, SSAO (a traditionally huge performance hit), Character detail to ultra, culling to high, post processing to high and.. well, everything is turned up on max except motion blur and smoothen framerate.
It now performs to my original expectations. I.e. everything on the highest or nearly, but some maps and situations requiring turning things down a bit (such as not running maximum AA + bloom in those situations). I have left SHADOWS at MEDIUM however but I will try to raise it.
Since it was not possible for me to see any of the goodies before on the low/medium settings, I had no idea. It looks absolutely fantastic. Wooooow! So many things. I can't write it all here nor does it belong. I'll post it in another topic soon. Especially player characters, animations and little details/effects (like bullet holes on the walls, casings flying out of people's firearms and landing in front of me on the ground). So freaking awesome.
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I have tried changing some settings on the fly (while waiting dead looking at the match from some angle) to compare performance. I have the IMPRESSION that lower certain settings from ultra/high to medium, makes the game perform worse instead of better. Especially with the lighting quality. I have yet to try higher shadows than medium since it requires restarts.
I wish there was something more substantial and helpful I could tell other AMD sufferers here on what might have fixed it. So many things could have been the reasons. Oh well. But at least it resolved mine.
