How to setup SOMA for 144Hz monitors [NVIDIA Only + Experimental G-Sync Settings]

Overview

This guide will help you to setup SOMA for 144Hz gaming monitors in combination with NVIDIA graphic cards. Enjoy

Introduction

Hello everyone!

This is my first guide on Steam and in this one i want to show you how you can setup SOMA for monitors with more than 60Hz refresh rate.

I created this guide because i recently re-downloaded the game and noticed the fact, that i only get 60fps with a 144Hz gaming monitor. There is an option in the display settings of the game, but it does nothing for me. When i change the option to 144, the game’s fps stay at 60 with horrible screen tearing. But i found a way to achieve 144Hz and get rid of the 60fps cap.

External software

Before you can start to setup your game for 144Hz, you have to download a small third party application called “Nvidia Inspector”. This program is very useful for gpu overclocking and gives you all important information about your Nvidia graphics card. And some extra features that we need for SOMA.

Down below you can find the download link to the latest version of the program. It’s a german page, but that doesn’t matter. You have to wait 10 seconds and the download starts automatically.

Download Nvidia Inspector [download.pcgameshardware.de]
Download the latest Nvidia Profile Inspector executable [github.com]

For the Nvidia Profile Inspector update, just download the .zip file, extract it and copy the content of the folder to your Nvidia Inspector directory.

The program itself doesn’t need any installation or setup. You can start it after the extraction with WinRAR or some other packing software.

The second program you need is the Nvidia Control Panel. You should find it by right-clicking on your desktop.

Now we are prepared for work. Let’s move to the next chapter: Preparing the game

Step 1: Preparing SOMA

After you’ve got the Nvidia Inspector, the next step is the preparation of the game settings. That means that you have to start SOMA and setting up all your game settings like graphics, sound or key bindings.

You do this, because in the next step you have to change some game files and set them to “Read Only”. After you setting all options to your personal preferences, exit SOMA and copy the profile data of the game to a new folder. So you have a backup if the changes gone wrong or the game doesn’t work right anymore.

You can find the profile data (and also the savegames) at this location:
C:UsersYour usernameDocumentsMy GamesSoma

Step 2: Editing game files

In the second step you have to change some values in the game files to unlock the refresh rate to 144Hz. Navigate to your profile data in the documents folder and follow the path, until you see two files that should be named like this:

Steam username_long number_user_keys
Steam username_long number_user_settings

These are .cfg files that you should know when you’re playing Source engine games like CS:GO or Half-Life 2 and have a custom config file with your preferred settings in it.

The file that you need to unlock the higher display refresh rate in SOMA is the settings one. Open this file with the normal Windows text editor and you should see some command lines.

Now press Ctrl+F, type “refresh” in the search bar and click Ok. You should now see a command line that says “RefreshRate=”60”. Change the value in the quotation marks to 144.

There are more command lines that you can find in the settings file. Change them to this:
Vsync=”false”
LimitFPS=”true”
SleepWhenOutOfFocus=”false”

After you did the changes, save the settings file and set it to “Read Only” in the file properties of Windows. Save this changes, close all Explorer windows and start SOMA. You should now have 144fps in the game. But you’re not finished yet.

Step 3: Setup Nvidia Control Panel

You should now have 144fps in the game. But now the game looks very ugly and you maybe experience some screen tearing when you look around.

To fix/reduce the screen tearing, we need the Nvidia Control Panel. Open it and look on the left side for an option that says “Manage 3D settings”. Click on it.

On the right side of the window, you should now see two tabs. One that says Global Settings and another one that says Program Settings. Click on Program Settings.

You will see this window (In this case, my language is german. You can use the picture for help, if you don’t find a specific setting).

Now you have to find the application list in this section (In the picture it’s the long bar where you can read soma.exe). Click on it and look for Soma (soma.exe).

When you don’t find the game there, you can add it with the button next to the application box. Locate the .exe file of the game and you’re ready for the next step.

After this, you can see a lot of options like Antialiasing – FXAA and so on. Now you have to set the following options for soma.exe:

Triple Buffering: Off
Power Management Mode: Prefer maximum performance
Maximum pre-rendered Frames: 1
Shadercache: Off
Threaded Optimization: Off
Vertical Syncronization: Adaptive

After you change the settings to this, click Apply in the bottom right corner of the window and you’re done with the first of two tweaking steps.

Step 4: Setup Nvidia Inspector

Now we’re at the fourth and last step of tweaking the game. In this step you have to use the Nvidia Inspector. You have to go to the folder that you’ve extracted earlier and find the nvidiaProfileInspector.exe. Launch it and you will see this window:

Update 07/2019: I’ve updated the picture for the Profile Inspector because the latest version comes with some new options. The selected profile shown is a custom profile for House Party that i created. My SOMA profile is gone since i uninstalled the game after completion.

In this window, you have to locate the big long search bar in the top left corner that says Global Driver Base Profile or something like that. Click on it and you can search for SOMA. When you find it, you have another set of options.

To change the settings, click on the value on the right side and you will see a dropdown menu. For the Frame Rate Limiter under “2. Sync and Refresh” you have to activate the dropdown menu and set the option to “On”. When the background color changed to blue, you can use the number keys or the keypad and type in the preferred value of your choice. In this case it’s 144.

Another option in the latest version of the Nvidia Profile Inspector is the Frame Rate Limiter Mode. Set it to the following: Limiter V2 – Force Off [Enables Limiter V1 (Less Input Lag)]

The other options in the Nvidia Inspector should be set to this:
Triple buffering: Off
Vertical Sync Tear Control: Adaptive
Vertical Sync Smooth AFR behavior: On

When all settings are set to their correct values, click on “Apply changes” in the top right corner of the window. But don’t close the program yet.

The last step of this section is to save a copy of your profile that you can use to restore the custom settings for the game after a driver update. Everytime you updating your Nvidia drivers, all these changes are reset to their default ones.

To create a profile, find the icon with a white box and an arrow that points upwards. Click on it and select the option “Export current profile only”. Now you can name and save the settings in a file. To import a profile, check out the green arrow that points downwards.

Step 5: Settings for G-Sync (Experimental)

Back again with an update to this guide. This section is about possible helping settings for everyone out there who owns a G-Sync compatible gaming monitor.

For G-Sync you need other driver settings. Change the following options to this values.

Triple Buffering: Off
Vertical Syncronization: Off

Vertical Sync Smooth AFR behavior: Off

Another thing you can try is to completely disable the framerate limiter in the Profile Inspector. You limited your fps by editing the .cfg config file. The game should set your fps to the preferred refresh rate after this change. Give it a try.

Additional Notes

You are now ready to enter the world of SOMA. But before you go, i wanted to say some things at the end:

– Some people told me that they have screen tearing even with 144Hz refresh rate set (and G-Sync enabled). This might be a problem of the engine that SOMA uses. It’s also a problem in Amnesia. If you want to unlock your fps above 60, see this as a small improvement. You obviosly can’t play the game with “real” 144fps.

Thanks to Globster.CZ for letting me know this. When i played the game i also noticed some tearing with a non G-Sync monitor and locked 144fps.

– The settings in the third step (Shadercache, Threaded Optimization) are set to Off by default for me. I don’t know the reason for this, but the game runs fine with them disabled.

– This guide works with any refresh rate above 60 (75,100,120,144,165 and 240Hz)

– If you have any questions or problems, just drop a comment below and i’ll try to help you as best as i can.