Killing Floor 2 on an Old PC: FPS Optimization Guide

Killing Floor 2 does not need a top-end PC, but owners of weak machines will struggle to play comfortably. This guide, originally in Russian and reposted from a Russian gaming site, shows how to speed it up on old hardware. It uses an Nvidia card as the example, though the advice largely applies to AMD too. See also graphics settings optimization and KF2 large server FPS ini tweaks.

Driver settings

In the Nvidia Control Panel go to "Program settings" and pick Killing Floor 2 from the list; if it is missing, click Add and give the full path to the game executable (games are in steam\steamapps\common\). Use:

• Preferred graphics processor (laptops): Nvidia processor
• Pre-rendered frames: 4
• Power management mode (laptops): maximum performance
• Texture filtering quality: high performance

DirectX 10 and FPS counter

Switching to DirectX 10 also raises FPS. In your Steam library open Killing Floor 2 Properties, click "Set launch options" and type -dx10. To display FPS in game, use the console command stat fps.

Config files

They live in Documents\My Games\KillingFloor2\KFGame\Config. Back them up before editing.

KFEngine.ini

[Engine.Engine]
bSmoothFrameRate=true
MinSmoothedFrameRate=22
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=62

[XAudio2.XAudio2Device]
MaxChannels=12

The smoothing option makes the game hold the FPS within the stated range for smooth play. To get more, raise the maximum or disable it by setting it to false. MaxChannels is the number of sounds played at once, especially relevant for integrated sound cards.

KFGame.ini

[KFGame.KFGoreManager]
MaxBloodSplatterDecals=3
MaxBloodPoolDecals=3
BloodSplatSize=100.000000
BloodPoolSize=125.000000
MaxDeadBodies=3
MaxBloodEffects=6
MaxGoreEffects=6

These control the number of blood splatters, blood pools, their size, bodies on the map at once, blood effects (relevant in Zed-Time) and limbs or chunks on the map. Lowering them gives a moderate FPS gain, since blood pools and many corpses use resources, though by the end of a match the map will still be a mess.

KFSystemSettings.ini

Most of these can also be changed in the in-game menu.

• DynamicLights=False - a large FPS gain. It completely disables dynamic lighting. As most lighting in the game is dynamic, the graphics become much simpler and lose some depth, and you must raise brightness to the maximum or the image is too dark.
• SHSecondaryLighting=True - lights up overly dark areas a little; no FPS effect. On KF-BurningParis there is no such effect inside buildings, so interiors are pitch black when dynamic lighting is off.
• bForceCPUAccessToGPUSkinVerts=true - moves part of the load from the GPU to the CPU. Useful with a weak graphics card and a good processor; an average FPS gain.

Other tips

Clean the system of junk and errors (the guide names CCleaner and Advanced SystemCare), defragment the hard drive, and use the Windows ReadyBoost function, which greatly shortens game start and map loading. If things are really bad, game boosters such as Razer Game Booster can be tried. The tweaks reliably raise FPS at the cost of graphics quality. Overclocking can raise it further but risks overheating, instability and hardware damage, and is outside the scope of the guide.