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Total War: ATTILA > Guides > Aaron's Guides
32 ratings
Improve Performance - Only .txt changes needed
By Aaron
I saw this advice on reddit and felt obliged to make this guide as my performance went from stutters every few seconds to silky smooth framerates akin to Warhammer 3 and so wanted other people who like this game to get more enjoyment out of it. I didn't understand why only one guide was top rated which involved copying files from Thrones of Britannia which some people may not have or the fix didn't work as one hoped.
   
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Created by
Aaron
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Category: Modding or Configuration, Walkthroughs
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
14 Jan @ 6:29am
14 Jan @ 6:36am
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73 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Installing Attila and locating your .txt file 
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Installing Attila and locating your .txt file
After installing Attila, the .txt we need (preferences.script) should be located as follows;
C:\Users\*Yourname*\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Attila\scripts

Once this has been done, open the file and locate two parts of this;
"number_of_threads" and "gfx_video_memory"

Threads needs to be set to how many threads your processor has (typically 8 should be enough however I personally set it to 15 (as I have a powerful processor) you can check by going into the details tab of task manager, right clicking an app (such as Attila) and set affinity (make sure you count CPU 0 as well unlike me).

Gfx video memory needs to be set to -4000. It's assumed that Attila wrongly calculates how much vram or rather caps the amount your card has which results in poor performance (alongside the other thread change). Changing this to -4000 causes it to detect more vram. Do not be alarmed if you load in and it says you have 512mb (that happened to me and I have 24gb), run the game and see the performance increase.

32 Comments
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Lithium 2 hours ago 
what if none of the scripts are appearing? i have reinstalled the game and everytime i cannot find scripts of any kind.
Aaron  [author] 18 Nov @ 1:34am 
@RoniiNN I think it's AMD and Nvidia but I would guess it might have to do with another component such as CPU. I have AMD GPU and CPU.
RoniiNN 14 Nov @ 8:20am 
People that have these problem have Nvida cards it seems?
Aaron  [author] 12 Nov @ 3:03am 
@Phuch Dat Bich I can only suggest that it might have something to do with the profile but from the sounds of it, you've tested it enough. You could perhaps try using a different number in the txt like -1 or 4096 to see but that might not work.

@Illegal Marble Do you have vsync on or a frame limiter at all on your graphics console? Maybe some graphics setting that only affects the campaign?

@Ambiguous_Oat Thanks
illegal Marble 5 Nov @ 3:20pm 
Hey thanks for the tip. Battles are buttery smooth now. Campaign map has turned into a 30fps (or lower affair now though) and the main menu with the huns trampling past is stuttering pretty badly. Honestly I am just so happy my battles are now 60 or above but any pointers to what is going wrong with the menu and campaign map with these changes? (I did your suggestions 24 cores and -4000 on the GFX on the text file.)
Phuch Dat Bich 30 Oct @ 5:05am 
@Aaron i have a custom profile set for my graphic card, set to consume less power and stay cooler at almost no frame loss in games. But i tried with all the preset profiles including the default one, does not make any difference.
I have enabled frame generation through the AMD software, makes the frames go all over the place but atleast i get more that 100 FPS like this, i know most of these frames are "fake" but its honestly better than nothing at this point. Il give the lossless scaling software a try later, looks very promising and the only "fix" worth doing for trying to optimize this CA ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a game.
Aaron  [author] 29 Oct @ 4:06pm 
@Emir Ismael If it improves things for you then it's all good. I think everyone would benefit if Attila was better optimised though

@Ed Kaufman Happy to help
Ed Kaufman 27 Oct @ 9:33am 
Thank you sir!!
Emir Ismael 26 Oct @ 3:44pm 
@Aaron from my actual experience

frame dropping in very large battles or in campaign map is not acceptable at all with my current hardware and i have not had enough of this game yet so i would really recommend it as it makes it buttery smooth in Attila very large battles of at any point at the campaign map is what i have been dreaming of since release
so , no its not a bad or normal experience
its a glorious experience in my opinion of course :D
Aaron  [author] 25 Oct @ 1:02pm 
@Phuch Dat Bich Obviously I can't see everything with your machine to see what the cause is, do you have any settings enabled via the graphics card on the AMD app?

@Emir Ismael The only issue with lossless scaling (and it is a great workaround for games that you can't do it otherwise like command and conquer) is that it will double, triple fps etc however not the frame timings so the experience will always be inferior to actually rendering more frames.