In my quest to make a free 1999 game run better I thought I would share my findings over the last 10 years!
1. Bumped my internet to 1gb down and 50 up. I was 250 down and 20 up. Result...no difference. I think if you have at least 50 down and 10 up and everyone isn't watching Netflix, then that's plenty for UT.
2.Swapped my standard hard-drive with an SSD drive. Computer is much quicker, but UT plays the same. My computer will load in about 35 seconds now, instead of 2 minutes, so that's kinda cool.
3.Once again bought a 144hz monitor. BenQ (XL2411Z) 24" 3D Ready LCD Monitor. I know I posted a review of an Asus 144hz monitor a year ago. I have to reconfirm that this makes a big difference. No jittery game play or blur. I can comfortably play UT in full HD at 144 fps and my aiming is improved. Don't get me wrong, there is still lag but a gaming monitor definitely helps.
4.Gaming keyboard. The keyboard=no difference. The only thing I like about keyboards is that you can create macros for dodging. So u push any direction button and it dodges. But I also found I would dodge into areas I didn't want to. So now I just double tap. Any $10 keyboard is fine.
5. Gaming mouse-Yes! This makes aiming so much better. I have had the same Razor DeathAdder for 5 years and I love it. My sensitivity setting is 0.65 which maY seem slow for some players but really helps with rifles and shock.
6.Gaming pad for mouse-Yes! They're like $10-20 and the mouse really seems to work better on one. My pad is about 14" x 16". I usually only use about 1/4 of it, but I still like the larger size.
7.VideoCard-Yes and No! I have a cheaper card gtx650 (around$150). But last year I tried an almost $300 card (I think it a Nvidia GTX960). No difference in game play or effects in comparison with my cheaper card. But compared to the onboard graphics of intel or amd, there is no comparison. So if you only plan to play UT a card somewhere between $125-150 should be sufficient. My card plays Crysis 3 no problem!
8.Renderers- Use d3d renderers for more color, use opengl for better functionality. I use openglr36 from this site...
http://www.cwdohnal.com/utglr/ I have tried all the d3d renderers from 8-13 and I prefer opengl. It just looks and runs cleaner to me.
9.Netspeed- Generally anything between 5000-10000 should be plenty. I find when I use 20000 the game runs slower. A lot of players recommend 20000 but unless you are on a Newnet server that reduces lag, then I would stay under 10000. Try different settings and see what works best for you.
10. Mapvote Keybinding-Many new players can't pull up the mapvote on servers. The best way I have found is to assign it to a button on the keyboard. To to this....Go to C:/Unreal Tournament/System/User ini/ once you are there scroll down to M and write:
M=mutate bdbmapvote votemenu
Then close and save it. I also right click on user.ini and send to desktop. This saves a little time for other things to add down the road. Now when you go to a mapvote server you can just push M and get the mapmenu!
11. CPU-yes. I have used many cpu's from an pentium4's to an i5-4590. Definitely a difference. The newer cpu's don't bottleneck your videocards, so your frame rates will stay higher. I would recommend at least a 3rd generation Intel i3 or AMD A10-7800 cpu.
12. Tweaking UT...legally----there are a few manuals online but I think the game looks like crap after I make the changes. It usually looks all washed out. If you want the game to move faster, just make your resolution lower (say 800x600 or 1024x768), turn the World Texture Detail to the minimum setting and type this in the console...fov 110 (you can try 100 too if its too narrow). The game will play faster for sure.
13. Update your hardware drivers and add the 436 patch and bonus packs 1 and 4.
http://ut-files.com/index.php?dir=Patches/&file=utpatch436.exehttp://unrealtournament.99.free.fr/utfiles/index.php?dir=Patches/&file=UTBonusPa...Okay, that's all I can think of for now and I hope that helps! Please feel free to add things that I have forgotten.