Well, maybe not quite, but I did find it interesting that you can cover ground faster by strafe jumping in Rage. It seems to be very forgiving as well, not requiring the precise timing or angles that Quake 3 does (although you can't achieve near the max speed that you can in that game).

To strafe jump, simply move forward and jump while strafing to the left or right. Time your jumps so that you jump right after hitting the ground. Sprinting will make it faster. I did some timed tests and was able to shave 20% or more off my travel time between two points by strafe jumping...

You can disable the three intro videos in Rage, decreasing the amount of time it takes to get to the menu, by setting the variable com_skipIntroVideo to 1. You can do this in the Steam launch options by adding...

Creating this folder can speed up performance on some systems when playing Rage. At the very least, it won't hurt.

Create the following folder if it doesn't exist...

Since the patch on October 8, 2011, you can edit the field of view setting in Rage directly, instead of just adding to it. This is done by adjusting the g_fov variable in the developer console (temporary) or Steam launch options (permanent).

The default field of view is 80 for Rage. If you want to change it to 100, add this to the Steam launch options...

Enabling the developer console is done by setting the variable com_allowconsole to 1. You can do this in the Steam launch options by adding:


Open Steam, right-click on RAGE and select Properties, then click Set Launch Options. You can add multiple tweaks in there, separated by spaces...

UPDATE: Installing AMD 11.10 Preview 3 drivers improved performance a bit more. The game is now finally running very good, with only minimal texture pop-in.

UPDATE: If you are still having trouble getting Rage to run, I suggest downloading several different versions of your graphics driver and try each one. Create the cache folder as mentioned below. Go into services.msc (in run or search) and disable any unnecessary services related to your GPU (I disabled AMD External Events Utility and AMD FUEL Service). Defrag your hard drive and make sure nothing unnecessary is running in the background (torrent, virus scan, etc). In the Rage menu in-game, disable AA and put texture cache to large (if you have a 1GB video card or greater; if not, you may want to think about upgrading)...

I just installed Rage and everything went smoothly. Fired up the campaign mode, watched the pretty intro movie, and then proceeded to get severe stuttering at the onset of the first level. It was completely unplayable for the few minutes I attempted to play it. Since I have an AMD/ATI video card (HD 6850), I decided to give the patch AMD just released specifically for Rage a try: AMD Catalyst™ - Rage Performance Driver.

After removing my old driver and installing the new one, I fired up Rage and was met with even worse stuttering, at something less than 1 frame per second, including worse audio stuttering than before...