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Insurgency: Sandstorm – Beta Fix Guide

Here is a brief guide explaining some of the performance fixes and just overal better experience with the game. This guide won’t fix it for everyone, so please keep that in mind.

Other Insurgency: Sandstorm Guides:

Intro

I’ve been collecting information within the forums regarding some possible performance tweaks. This is a not a guaranteed guide to automatically give you better experience in-game. I sincerely hope it does but it may work for some and for others it might not.

External Adjustments

First and for most, you need to make sure your hardware is up to date with today’s gaming standards. Users attempting to run the game with i5s, 2GB of VRAM cards and only 8GB of dedicated memory are more than likely to experience issues. Betas tend to be far more demanding than a game at it’s post-release stage. Therefore, please make sure your computer is well equipped to handle betas.

1. Move to SSD

It’s been said among the community and the devs themselves that the game runs better on solid states than hard drives. If you have a SSD on your PC, transfer the game to that location. If you’d like to know how to transfer the files, read below. Other wise skip to the next point.

Do them in the following order:

  • By default there should be a location on your SSD to install games, but in the event there isn’t. Steam Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders > Select
  • Exit Steam (this has to be done other wise it’ll be iffy)
  • Go to the original location you installed it on and copy Sandstorm to the common folder located on your SSD drive – Steam > steamapps > common > paste it.
  • Go to your steamapps folder (the original location the game was installed on) and copy the appmanifest_581320 file to the new steamapps folder That file essentially tells Steam the game is installed.
  • Run the game and it should be available to launch.

2. Run In Fullscreen

The game tends to run in borderless for users, thus causing major FPS drops. Unfortunately, this is bugged and you’ll need to apply Fullscreen mode everytime you re-open the game.

3. Lost Connection to Servers

Restart Steam, PC, and your modem / router. Please also read here for more information.

4. FPS/Stutter Fix

Here is a fellow community member who claims it helps improve performance. Looks like some users claim it helps as well. Read here

5. Run the Game in Administration Mode

Be sure to run the game in admin mode and also disable Fullscreen optimizations (play around with this one). I read it helps improve performance. Right click on the game from your library > properties > local > browse local files. Then right click on the Insurgency.exe file > Properties > Compatibility.

6. Disable Firewalls / Anti-Virus Software

This could be interfering with the EAC system if you’re a user experiencing that error. Users who use AVG may want to disable their software entirely. AVG is fastly known for causing issues with games.

7. Other Third-party Software

Additional third-party software such as MSI Afterburner, Corsair Link 4, Nvidia ShadowPlay, etc. Anything that typically gives your keyboard / mouse / GPU lighting effects, turn them off. In fact, completely exit any other programs before launching Sandstorm to help give it a boost in performance. The less your machine has to handle, the better it can handle games.

8. Verify the game cache

Through the midst of the storm, sometimes it’s easy to forget the simpliest of methods. Try to validate the game cache.

9. GPU Drivers

Update to the latest driver possible. If that doesn’t make a difference / makes it worse, roll back to an older driver.

Nvidiahttps://www.geforce.com/drivers

AMDhttps://www.amd.com/en/support

Internal Adjustments (in-game)

Here is what my in-game settings are. As of now, I’m getting 90fps-100fps with a low of 70fps. Fairly smooth with some occasional 40fps dips. Some lag here and there but my internet is terrible anyways. For me, it runs (overall) very well. Granted my specs are pretty powerful (listed on profile).

1. Turn Off Motion Blur

It’s a cool effect but not necessary for the performance you lose. Disable it via settings.

2. Turn Shadows to Low / Medium

First of all, they are far more beautiful set on low / med than on high settings.

3. Set FPS Limit

4. V-Sync / G-Sync

I personally keep both of these off (G-sync is an external option). It may however improve performance for some.

Every other option is in the screenshot above. So just follow that. Try copying my settings or edit them how you see fit. Just make minor adjustments to pin-point what works and what doesn’t work.

Written by Captain Price

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