pazerr_occlusion 0 // disables ambient occlusion. 2% FPS boost
No.
r_occlusion 0 disables the occlusion system, which allows mappers to manually optimize their maps via the visibility system. If you were testing the effect of this cvar on a smaller, older, or simpler map, that's probably why you were losing fps. On any moderately complex map, you will gain fps by having this enabled.
sys_minidumpspewlines 500 // Basically the number of lines saved to a log file from console. No FPS boost but 15% lower FPS variance
Again, way off. This controls how many lines of the console are saved to the minidump created when your game crashes. This has no effect on the fps you get, and the only effect of increasing or decreasing it would be changing the amount of time it takes for your game to crash by a few microseconds.
mat_antialias 0
mat_forceaniso 0
Don't set these to 0. The minimum value of these cvars is 1, and setting them to 0 will just cause a material system reload = breaking mumble overlay/increasing game startup time. Think about it: mat_antialias controls the number of samples taken per pixel on your screen. If you took 0 samples per pixel, your screen would be entirely black :P
Reading directly from the game's code, the same hardcoded minimum exists for mat_forceaniso:pConfig->m_nForceAnisotropicLevel = max( mat_forceaniso.GetInt(), 1 );
mat_max_worldmesh_vertices 512
Minimum value for this in code is 1024. Additionally, lowering this value increases how many chunks world geometry is broken up into, leading to more draw calls = more cpu usage. No reason to lower this from its initial 65535.
That's all I have for now.
Interesting
r_occlusion I must admit the only way I ever noticed a difference was the output into consol from doing timedemos, and the timedemo I use is on dustbowl, on the last point and the camera remains pretty much static the entire time.
sys_minidumpspewlines 500 Alright I was wrong on what it does, but the FPS variance DOES go down by setting the 500 to 50 or lower. and 500 is the default value.
mat_antialias 0
mat_forceaniso 0
You're right.
mat_max_worldmesh_vertices 512
I've always been unaware of exactly what this did, and every config I looked at had this significantly below default and usually was set to 512. In the time demo tests I did though I never did see a difference (visual or fps) between 512, 2048, 4096, or even the default 65535 so I assumed setting it to 512 didn't hurt anything.