Boundel is currently being developed in early access and suffers from its optimization causing bad performances. This guide covers basic tweaks to help you improve the framerates in Boundel, but could help for any game, as long as you own an nVIDIA graphic card for the nVIDIA steps. Be careful as some of them have been tested for Boundel and should not be used as it is for other games ; I specifiy it when it's the case. These instructions should not cause any harm, however it's up to you to decide if you want to follow them. I can't be taken for responsible if anything bad happens.

1. Launch Steam and the game as administrator :

• Go in your Steam installation folder, by default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam or C:\Program Files\Steam for 32bit system
  
  
• Right click on Steam.exe
  
  
• Click "Run as administrator"
  
  
• Go in your Boundel installation folder, by default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Boundel, or C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\Boundel on 32bit system
  
  
• Right click on Boundel.exe
  
  
• Click "Run as administrator"

OR to make it permanent :

• Go in your Steam installation folder, by default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam or C:\Program Files\Steam for 32bit system
  
  
• Right click on Steam.exe, click "Properties"
  
  
• In the Compatibility tab, check "Run this program as an administrator"
  
  
• Click "OK" to save the changes and close the window
  
  
• Go in your Boundel installation folder, by default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Boundel, or C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\Boundel on 32bit system
  
  
• Right click on Boundel.exe, click "Properties"
  
  
• In the Compatibility tab, check "Run this program as an administrator"
  
  
• Click "OK" to save the changes and close the window

2. Increase the process priority :

This will ensure that the Boundel process is given the ressources it needs in time with priority elevation, before any other clutter process that you could be running. Do NOT set it to "Real time" unless you know what you're doing. If you are not confident modifying this setting, simply close other unneeded processes and services while playing Boundel. Ideally you would want to do both.

• Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the task manager
  
  
• In the task manager, in the Details tab, right click Boundel.exe, click Set Priority, then click "High"

The custom priority will be lost and return back to Normal each time you close the game, so you will need to do this every time you run it if you want to keep a superior priority.

By default, Windows will balance the power consumtion to prevent using "too much" power when unneeded and give more when required by the software. However this still often causes lower performances as it's not perfect and the CPU power always has to be throttled up and down. So we will just tell the OS to make the CPU run at 100% of its capacity all the time so it's not losing time with this system and won't be throttled up and down to cause decreased performances.

1. Open the option panels :

• In the Windows search box, type "power options", and open the related menu
  
  
• Now in the Power Options panel, check "High Performance" and click "Change Plan Settings" right next to it
  
  
• Now click on "Change advanced power settings"
  
  
• In the new Power Options pop-up window, open the "Processor power management" sub-menu, make sure "Maximum processor state" is set to 100%, and set "Minimal processor state" to 100%
  
  
• Click "OK" to save the changes and close the window

nVIDIA card required. Have your drivers up to date. Graphics settings through the drivers settings will not be covered, but I would at least recommend against adding Ambient occlusion or Antialisasing settings as the first one would be clunkly or simply non-working and the last taking ressources for unneeded setting.

1. Open the driver panel :

• Open the Windows start search and type in "nvidia", then click the "NVIDIA Control Panel" result

OR

• Right click on your desktop and click "NVIDIA Control panel" (should be there by default)

2. Select the game profile :

• In the 3D Settings category, click "Manage 3D settings"
  
  
• In the Manage 3D Settings window, select the "Program Settings" tab
  
  
• (Optional) Check "Show only programs found on this computer"
  
  
• Click on the box to open the games list and select Boundel.exe

3. Change the settings :

• Set "Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration" to "Single display performance mode"
  
  
• Set "Power Management Mode" to "Prefer Maximum Performance"
  
  
• Set "Maximum pre-rendered frames" to either "Use the 3D application setting" or "3" or "4". Do not set it to "1" or "2" as it would cause a big fps drop. Normally you should not need to modify this value, however it might have different results depending of your hardware. Note that I tested this for Boundel especially, so it's irrelevant for other games
  
  
• Click "Apply" to save the changes

Note : the game forces the use of Vsync, even when disabled through the drivers (at least from the NVIDIA Control Panel). You might want tro try to enable or disable the Triple buffering and set it accordingly to the best results for you. In my case there was no significant change between on or off, so I just let it set to disbled from the default value

• Lower your resolution. The game still looks fine in low resolutions, and takes much less ressources. There is a 10fps difference between 1600x900 and 1366x768 resolutions in Ultra High with shadows enabled for me. The game won't suffer much from the decrease even at the lowest available resolution 1024x768 in fullscreen on a 1650x1080 monitor, so decrease your resolution if your framerates are too bad in your native resolution
  
  
• Try the different presets. This might look obvious, but do it. There is an huge gap between normal and high settings
  
  
• Shadows eat more or less 5 to 10 fps. Depending of your current performances, disabling them may help you play from a slideshow to a game with decent fluidity
  
  
• Play in fullscreen if you desperately need more frames. It may save you 2 or 3 fps regularly

• Disable your antivirus and close everything else while playing Boundel. Antiviruses can decrease performances in games a lot, so if you're confident it would be fine playing with antivirus off you can do it
  
  
• Close and restart the game every once in a while. Boundel gets more and more slow overtime, so refresh it often to keep your framerates as clean as possible

I think that's it. I could notice a neat improvement between my tweaks on and off. I haven't benchmarked it with tools for before I tweak it, but my senses are enough. These are basic instructions from my knowledge but it has been enough to give nice results for me.

Right now I think tweaks from both outside and inside the game are required to have a nice boost. I would have very few fps before tweeking (not even 10 with some views, and had already some tweaks on before tweaking Boundel) and now that's around 30+ in the same areas and settings. I had to play on lowest~normal with no shadows to have a decent framerate.

Resolution is important ; in the area around the Gigants mobs where I don't reach 60fps in Ultra High with shadows enabled, I'm having 35fps on native resolution (1650x1080) and 45 to 57-58 in 1368x738, and was around 20 fps before tweeking.

A lot of things impact your fps. A good example would be the spell providing a movement speed boost with flame trail effect ; this effect alone easily eats 15 fps down. Your framerate may vary a lot depending of the landscape, the monsters you are fighting, the spells they are using, the spells you are using, the objects, players around, server lag (since the netcode makes it so the client is closely running with the server) and even world time.

If I remember or think about more things I might update the guide. If you have anything to say you may leave a comment. Keep in mind that the game should be expected to change often so some parts this guide could become quickly outdated. Remember to check for your drivers updates from time to time, keep your computer clean enough so it's not cluttered with useless things taking ressources you need, and game updates as it's being still actively developed and a lot of things might change rapidly.