Possible solutions for Saint’s Row 2 performance and graphics problems

Earlier we reported about the release of Saint’s Row 2 for the PC. I’ve just played the PC version for a few minutes and quite frankly, it’s not as good as I expected it to be. For one thing SR2 is not the best optimized game for the PC (big letdown for those who were waiting for a better optimized GTA 4) and users have reported several issues with the game already. This article discusses problems and errors encountered with Saint’s Row 2 and any possible solutions that may help you get around them.

Note that this article will be updated when/if more problems are discovered.

Cannot change Saint’s Row 2 screen resolution, resolution options missing or the game does not correctly detect resolution

Judging by comments on various gaming forums, this seems to be quite a common problem. It seems that some resolutions (including some 16:9 widescreen resolutions) are not available in the game settings. Luckily there is already a user made utility that will help you easily change the game resolution to whatever you prefer. You can download the Saint’s Row 2 Resolution Editor from this page. Note that you need to have .NET Framework 2.0 installed to run this utility.

Vehicles move too fast and vehicle control issues

Currently I'm trying to determine if the fast moving vehicles in this game are actually a gameplay feature or a bug/glitch. They move a little too fast for my liking and if I come across a setting that’ll help them slow down a bit, I’ll update the article.

Slow performance, sluggish framerates and other issues

Unfortunately, most of the poor performance issues seem to be due to the badly optimized PC port. In this case, there is only very little you can do to increase the performance. Try the following and see if they make any difference.

Turn down display settings - Use the custom graphics setting and play around with the settings until you get an acceptable framerate. Turn off ambient occlusion and dynamic lights. This will make the game look like garbage but will hopefully give you a playable framerate. If you have forced AA (Anti Aliasing) from video card control panel, disable that too.

Single core processor? – Note the game’s minimum system requirements mention a ‘2.0 GHz Dual-Core Processor’. If you have a single core processor, performance will suffer even with a high end video card. A single core processor will run the game but be aware that this game is very CPU dependant and FPS will go down the drain.

Drivers – If you own an nVIDIA videocard and suffer from bad framerates on SR2, try upgrading to the ForceWare 185.20 drivers. There is no guarantee of increased performance but it’s worth giving a try since some people have noticed FPS increases with this driver. Note that v185.20 drivers are still in beta.

If you use an ATI videocard, try downloading the latest Catalyst drivers.

Also, if you are wondering why you can’t get the framerate above 30FPS, that’s because the PC version is has a framerate cap at 30 FPS (some sort of frame limiter which IMHO is gay).

This article will be updated when/if more problems are discovered with Saint’s Row 2. If you run into any, please feel free to drop a comment to this article.

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