Effects to Turn off on Low-end system

[Yellig]

Heya.

I'm running Portal 2 on a laptop with minimum specs. I've turned all the audio and video settings down to the lowest the in-game options offer. However, I noticed that some of the settings I had control over in Portal 1 aren't listed, and I can tell in-game that they are rendering higher than on the original game.

I have already turned Water reflections and refractions off in the Source Console, matching my settings in the original Portal.

Any suggestions on other effects that I can turn down that the game normally won't lower? I basically want to run it with the same settings I used on Portal 1, which ran great.

PS
I've tried turning HDR off, but it makes everything look awful. Is is possible that Portal 2 wasn't designed to have maps viewed without it?

[curryking3]

I'm still trying to figure out how to turn off HDR (I don't like the effect in Source games), but since Portal 2 has an awful Advanced Video options menu I have no idea how to do it.

[Yellig]

Originally Posted by curryking3

I'm still trying to figure out how to turn off HDR (I don't like the effect in Source games), but since Portal 2 has an awful Advanced Video options menu I have no idea how to do it.

From what I've been able to tell, the command is

mat_hdr_level x

where x is 0 for off, 1 for bloom, and 2 for full

Whenever I try 0 or 1, the game looks absolutely terrible. I do not believe Portal 2 has any non-HDR information stored in its maps, unlike previous Source games.