Dead Rising 3 has finally been released on the PC, and the great news is – the game rocks, despite a few technical issues. With that said, as Capcom told us before release, the game is indeed capped at 30 FPS, which isn’t ideal. Fortunately there is a way to modify the title to run at 60 FPS (or even higher) and it’s not too difficult.
Be warned however, you’ll likely need a pretty beefy rig to run it at 60FPS constant – or be willing to drop the internal resolution Dead Rising 3 renders in to either 720P or 900P. The first step is to navigate over to your Dead Rising 3 installation folder. You’ll need to create an .ini file and in this ini add a single line to tell the title “hey, no 30 FPS limit for me please!”. “gmpcr_unlock_frame_rate =True” – add line (without the quotes) in to a notepad file. Next head to file, save and be sure to switch it the file type to “all files” and then save the text document as User.ini. We’ve also made the user file if you just want to download (right click the link, save as) it for easy drag and drop goodness.
Assuming you’ve done all of this correctly, when you next load up the game you’ll notice that it’s no longer capped to 30 FPS. But there are a few issues you’ll have to content with. The main issue regards frame pacing and sometimes we’ve noticed animations can look a little odd. Fortunately physics operate normally. There are a few half solutions – but none that are completely obvious. Forcing VSync in the game is one way to at least minimize the frame rate fluctuations. If you’re using an Nvidia card, you can also enable “Half Refresh”.
To do this, right click on your desktop, click on Nvidia control panel and then navigate to “Manage 3D settings”. From there you’ll need to scroll to the bottom and you’ll spot an option labeled ‘Vertical Sync’. Select “Adaptive (half refresh rate)” and then click okay. You could also use the “program settings” tab to force this option only on Dead Rising 3. Personally, this is the option I’d go with – unless you want it affecting all your other games, or you’re willing to constantly swap it back and forth.
This is what the notepad file should look like – though we’ve highlighted ours as we’re cool.
It’s also vital to realize that this isn’t a game like Devil May Cry, where its PC port ran at hundreds of FPS (okay, perhaps I slightly exaggerate by still). Dead Rising 3 requires some serious muscle, and evil with a GTX 780 Ti we noticed frame rate drops. There are a few ways around this – the easiest is to drop the internal rendered resolution that the game runs in. 
Dead Rising 3 actually has two resolution options, the first is available is the displayed resolution – in other words, what’s being sent to the screen. This has little impact on the performance of the title, although this basics option menu does also contain the important V-Sync option.
The next page contains the advanced options, allowing you to set Anti-Aliasing, Ambient Occlusion, shadow, texture quality and filtering and even sky and subsurface scattering. At the very top you’ll spot “Game Quality” which gives you the option to adjust the internal rendered resolution of the various game assets. Clearly higher provides better visual clarity, but at a rather hefty cost. The game starts out at 720P, but allows you to crank them up as you desire. Just be warned that it’s extremely costly on your GPU – so if you’ve a mid range card, you’ll likely be forced to leave this at either 720P or 900P.
advanced graphics options in Dead Rising 3 – change that internal resolution for a serious quality or performance boost!
From our super early testing, if you’re targeting a resolution of 1080P at 30 FPS, a mid range card such as the GTX 760 or Radeon R9 285 (see our reviews) will likely provide the grunt you need. However, if you’re wanting to experience Dead Rising 3 at full 1080P (or higher) at 60 FPS then you’d better have a lot of GPU power. We’re testing on the latest GPU drivers so far, Nvidia’s R340’s for instance. There are some who’re reporting on their system rolling back to older drivers (the 335’s as an example) is serving them better without crashes. So far we’ve experienced no crashing – but the title does occasionally crash when we’re quitting the game. Then again, everything else has been solid as a rock.
