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Originally posted by JackCorben
This is with regards to the slow downs, stuttering. etc. I initally had when I first installed the game.

These are the "main" things I did to significanlty improve performance.

1) add "-heapsize 512000" to shortcut.
2) Set pagefile size to 1.5 times my ram, in this case 1.5 GB, STATIC and CONTIGUOUS on a separate physical drive from windows and the game.

These are the things I did which may or may not have contributed to any perfomance, but it seemed to smooth out graphics and sound stutter(I'm playing Malk now so it could all be in my head).

1) 16XAF. I know it doesn't make sense as AF usually incurrs a performance penalty. I tried 4X, 8X and 16X and "seemed" smoother with as opposed to without. Try different settings as your mileage will undoubtedly vary. As an aside, Half Life 2 always ran with higher fps without AF.
2) Force DX9 with -dxlevel 90. Obviously you should force the right directx level appropriate for you hardware(substitute 70, 80 or 81 instead of 90). In Half Life 2 you know what dxlevel you're running in the advanced option screen. In VTM:B I wasn't sure so I just used the above switch in the shortcut.

There are the things which had no apparent affect on performance on my rig. BUT JUST BECAUSE it didn't work for me doesn't mean it will not work for you. Again mileage will vary.

1) With or without 4XAA. Again I can't explain this because in HL2 I always get higher fps with AA turned off.
2) Setting the desktop resolution to 800X600. My only guess as to why this may work for some is that the lower res desktop uses less memory. So for memory starved systems this may have helped. It doesn't on mine.
3) Turning EAX off. This had zero effect on the sound stuttering. In fact I did what gregmc3 suggested on page 2 of this thread to turn on surround sound (snd_surround "0" change 0 to 1) in the cfg file with no hit in performance. I played for about 4 hours with setting with no ctds. The occlussion and localization effects are much better now. although dialogue getting "drowned out" can be more apparent.

Some stuttering is still present but minimized from before I made the first two fixes above. And my load times are down to about <20 secs for between hubs, and <10 secs within a hub.

I now get get about 60 fps most places, 30-40 within the hubs, and about 20-30 in the hub while raining. It can still on occasion drop to about 15 when raining in the santa monica beach area near the water, but I'll take it.

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