Special K

What is Special K?

"Lovingly referred to as the Swiss Army Knife of PC gaming, Special K does a bit of everything. It is best known for fixing and enhancing graphics, its many detailed performance analysis and correction mods, and a constantly growing palette of tools that solve a wide variety of issues affecting PC games." [1]

Compared to RivaTuner Statistics Server:

• Considered to have the best framerate limiter, ahead of RTSS and behind the top limiter in the NVIDIA driver
  • But, note that the NVIDIA driver framerate limiting does not have the same kind of framepacing logic as either Special K or RTSS.
• RTSS is mainly used for framerate limiting while Special K does much, much more

Resources

• Homepage
• Wiki - "The Complete Guide to Special K"
• Getting Started - Where most new users should start
• Advanced Local Mode - "A local install (also known as a ‘game-specific’ install) refers to an install where the DLL files of Special K are added to the folder of the game executable and renamed to the DLL filename (the <DLL-name> mentioned further down) that Special K should use as an injection method."

Alternatives

• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS) - If you're brand new to framerate limiting then this might be the place to start. It's excellent for most cases but lacks much beyond framerate limiting.

Tips

Special K can force or lock to a certian refresh rate

• tl;dr In the game's SpecialK.ini set [Render.FrameRate].RefreshRate=60.0
  • You can also set this in the in-Game SpecialK overlay
• Some older games may get confused about what refresh rate they should vsync to
  • Eg. Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands on a Windows 10 system using an LG C4 tv as a monitor

Notes:

• There's also [Display.Monitor].RefreshRateForMonitor but I'm not sure how it relates. Mine is set to 0.0 and things seem fine so I guess it's not needed.

Gotchas

Some games will not launch with Special K running

• Lord of the Rings Online
  • Doesn't have anti-cheat so it's not that
  • I assume it's something like RTSS's 'detection level' that can conflict with some games

Workarounds

Disable Special K Per Game

• tl;dr Create a SpecialK.deny.<EXECUTABLE_NAME_WITHOUT_EXTENSION> file in the same directory as the EXE file that runs the game
  • eg. SpecialK.deny.BurnoutPR for BurnoutPR.EXE For Burnout Paradise
• This way other games can still make use of Special K features.

Gotcha:

• Framerate limiting alternatives: Try RTSS or NVIDIA Control Panel framerate limiting if you can no longer use Special K for that purpose

Troubleshooting

Controller stops working for some games when Special K is running

• tl;dr Try disabling Special K for games where your controller doesn't register
• This was the problem for me with Burnout Paradise. I had to #Disable Special K Per Game. This allows you to keep using Special K for other games automatically.

SDR Image Looks Washed Out (Not related to HDR)

• tl;dr Set sRGB Bypass to Strip in the in-game overlay or set sRGBBypassBehavior=0 in the game's SpecialK.ini file
  • Also works: Set sRGB Bypass to Passthrough in the in-game overlay (you need to choose another option first and then select Passthrough) or set sRGBBypassBehavior=-1 in the game's SpecialK.ini file
  • INI default is sRGBBypassBehavior=-2 which shows as Passthrough in the SpecialK in-game overlay but the washed out image occurs in this case