Titanfall config guide: the best settings to maximize your effectiveness

PC Gamer

Article by Jonny "Waffles" Fuller

Titanfall is out and thus begins the pursuit of finding best possible experience it can offer. This configuration and tweak guide will help you optimize the game for a better overall experience and to improve your competitive advantage. Bear in mind, users currently have no access to the developer console as Respawn likely intends to limit tweaking to create a similar experience for all users, so our ability to customize and optimize is more limited than with other Source games. Even so, there are lots of useful in-game and system tweaks that beat the default settings.

First things first: Remember to update your video drivers to the latest builds . Developers often partner with AMD/Nvidia to release updated optimized game specific drivers on launch day.

Unparking your cores to boost performance

As we discussed in our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tweak guide , Source is a CPU dependent engine. The general PC gaming tweaks like overclocking and unparking your cores will boost performance. The former requires a bit of research for your specific build and a warning label—you could screw something up. The latter is much more user friendly and safe. Windows tries to help regulate power consumption and save you energy by parking CPU cores no longer in use. But as power hungry PC gamers, we want more juice, right? By taking parking away from Windows with this handy utility , some users may gain extra frames at the cost of added power consumption. Lay your cooling fears to rest, as your CPU will continue to operate under the same thermal restrictions.

Optimizing for older machines

If your machine is struggling to cope with bigger battles (three or more titans on screen can really slow things down), be sure to either turn off anti-aliasing or use the more efficient MSAA .

Another of the most important settings is the texture quality. Titanfall's “insane” texture mode performs strangely and decreasing the quality to high, especially if your graphics card lacks the recommended three gigs of memory, dramatically improves the frame rate. Lowering shadow quality and disabling rag dolls will also grant you large FPS boosts with minimal reduction in image quality.

Fixing v-sync problems

Let's address the most important Titanfall-specific user complaint: bizarre v-sync and mouse errors. Some users experience mouse problems such as lag and acceleration with v-sync enabled in game, but disabling v-sync results in a locked 60 FPS and frustrating screen tears. We know the developers are aware of the situation.

The best solution is disabling v-sync in-game and manually forcing v-sync using the Nvidia control panel . It's also possible to force v-sync in the AMD Catalyst Advanced View, though we haven't tested the result yet.

By forcing v-sync off in-game we solve our mouse lag issue, but by forcing it on through the Nvidia or AMD drivers we solve our screen tearing issue.

Forcing v-sync in the Nvidia control panel.
Forcing v-sync in the AMD Catalyst Control Center.

On the next page, disable the intro videos and optimize your mouse to improve your odds...

Disabling the intro videos

I try to get a match in when my wife brushes her teeth, so I've got no time for intro videos. In Origin, right click on your Titanfall icon and select "Game Properties." From there we can add -novid to Titanfall's launch parameters to rush straight through to the loading screen and let our glorious solid state hard drives instantly drop us onto the battlefield.

Additionally, you can add +cl_showfps 1 to view your framerate and add -high to force Titanfall to load as high CPU priority.

Enabling borderless window mode for fast tabbing

Already finished your loadout and sighing with uncontrollable boredom as the countdown timer slowly descends from 90 seconds? For fast task tabbing, set your game to borderless window mode. At the cost of only a few fps, you can check your email or read this post while you load—here's how:

1) Make sure game has been started at least once and set to fullscreen and native resolution

2) Close the game and find C:\Users\UserName\Documents\Respawn\TitanfallBeta\local

3) Open videoconfig.txt with Notepad or Notepad++

4) Find lines; "setting.fullscreen" & "setting.nowindowborder"

5) Change fullscreen to 0 and nowindowborder to 1, save and close.

Optimizing your mouse

All the mouse tweaks and advice from our Counter-Strike:Global Offensive tweak guide will be advantageous. Titanfall is more of a twitch shooter than CS:GO, but that doesn't preclude players from benefiting from a medium true sensitivity, native DPI (dots per inch), and zero acceleration.

The optimal mouse settings.

Think of DPI like the scanning resolution for your mouse's sensor. The higher the number, the more data points. However, a lot of advertised mice use extrapolated data points to artificially inflate DPI. Using a non-native DPI results in rounding errors and will not be as precise as a lower, native DPI. It takes a little bit of research to determine your mouse's specific native DPI. You can change the DPI setting in your mouse manufacturer's provided firmware, such as Logitech's Setpoint. Many gaming mice come stock with adjustable DPI buttons as well.

Mouse acceleration is the bane of precision because it changes the in-game rotation speed based on how quickly you swipe your mouse. Consistent distance, regardless of speed, helps build accurate muscle memory. To remove mouse acceleration, uncheck “enhanced pointer precision” in the Windows Control Panel (Mouse Properties > Pointer Options) and be sure to disable acceleration in any proprietary drivers you may be using. I also recommend setting your mouse sensitivity to the sixth notch.

By using a native DPI, avoiding mouse acceleration, and setting Windows' sensitivity to six we can achieve greater 1:1 precision. Since Titanfall requires constant situational awareness and attacks from behind, players constantly whipping their mice around will probably be burning tracks into their mouse pads, so max control speeds and max perfect speeds will be even more important. If CS:GO didn't convince you to upgrade your mouse, perhaps giant robot insanity will.

FOV and in-game options

Finally, you'll also want to immediately raise your field-of-view all the way up to 90 in the in-game settings. A high field-of-view increases your situational awareness, with the added benefit of reducing sickness for motion-sensitive gamers.

As for bindings, make sure you bind melee to your mouse. The foot is the best weapon in the game, as our friends at GamesRadar demonstrated during the beta.

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