Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

One thing that I have found in the PC version is that I sometimes get terrible framerates in Stranglehold on the PC. Part of it is having a computer that is 17 months old, even though it was top of the line when bought. Now it is more average, and it trying to run the game at 1920×1200. Needless to say that when I did a Fraps test, the game was dropping into single digits sometimes during high crowd shootouts, like the marketplace in the first level.

So I have found a couple of ways to pick up the framerate. One is a simple option, while the other requires a program to be installed. After these two ways, I saw huge improvements in the performance of the game. I went from 8-12 fps in the marketplace to 20-25 fps in the marketplaces, all while keeping the same resolution. If you are interested, read on. But be warned, this will only help if you are using Nvidia SLI. If you have no SLI, you are on your own. I don’t own ATI cards, so I don’t know if there is an alternate way to make this work on those boards.

First off, you need to turn off Dynamic shadows in the options. While it modifies the shadows in the game, it is not very noticable. After I did this, I notice I was getting a few extra frames. This step takes some load off of the GPU in regards to processing the dynamic shadowing based on lighting. This is not a huge step but it is the first in a good one-two combination.

The second step requires installing nHancer. This is a profile program for Nvidia SLI systems. It comes with hundreds of profiles for games, that are already configured for the most optimal SLI performance. While this is a great program, it is missing some of the newer games, Stranglehold included. But as always, there is a work-around.

First you want to go to the profile screen in nHancer, once you have it installed. Next, copy the Gears of War profile (Its been there for some time). Rename the profile, using the name Stranglehold. Next, go to Add and browse to the path where the RetailStranglehold.exe file is located and select it. The reason you use Gears of War is that they use the same engine technology. So all the settings are already optimzed.

After tests, I can say that this added another 3-5 frames per second to the game, making it far more playable. While these are not huge steps, they will gain you huge performance. And the addition of nHancer will boost your graphics in most of your other games as well. No worrying about launching profles, because the nHancer software runs in the background, automatically configuring the cards on the fly based on your profile settings.

Hope this helps and enjoy. Just for reference, my computer specs are as follows
AMD Athlon X2 4800+
2GB Corsair XMS CAS2 DDR memory
(2) eVGA Nvidia 7800 GT SE OC 256MB Video cards
1TB Hard Drive Space (4-250 GB SATA 3GB drives)
Nvidia onboard sound
Wirless Linksys card
24″ Dell LCD monitor

Just to give a point of reference for those interested.