Lower Graphics card Hardware
Acceleration Level
By
default in Windows 2000 your graphics card is set to Full Hardware
acceleration level. While this isn’t a bad thing at all, this can mean
your graphics card is performing tasks which could be better used for improving
graphical performance, e.g. mouse acceleration is not entirely necessary. Take
the following steps to Lower
the Graphics card Hardware acceleration level.
-
Right
click on the desktop, select Properties.
Now select the Settings tab, then the Advanced button.
-
Now
select the Troubleshooting button.
-
Move
the slider bar 1 notch to the Left of Full. This will Disable
cursor & bitmap accelerations, which should improve performance in
all games, although may make mouse movement a little less sensitive.
However, this will not disable any Rendering features of your
graphics cards.
Should
you find this causes severe problems with mouse movement in Applications/Games
try resetting this to Full.
Lower
DirectX Debugging levels
For
optimal performance with Application/Games that utilize DirectX API's (Not necessarily Direct3D) you
should ensure that Debugging levels are all at a minimum level.
Debugging can aid in detecting, locating & correcting errors in an
application. This data however is of little use to most users so you should minimize
it as a result for best performance. To check this
you can use the DirectX Control Panel utility. Download
this file & Extract
the directx.cpl
file to your %SystemRoot%\system32
directory, e.g. E:\WINNT\system32.
Now
click on Start,
Settings,
Control Panel
then select the DirectX
applet.
Where
possible (Some tabs will be greyed out) you
should set the Debug Output Level slider to the far Left, which
will minimize the Debug level.
