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Morfiend
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on: September 12, 2008, 10:35:48 AM

So, I noticed that the last few patches my FPS seemed to be going down a bit. Last night I decided to try and figure out what was going on. First I did all the usual things, I updated my sound and video drives. I made sure to go through my startup file and kill all non-essential programs, I ran CCleaner and Ad-Aware, I uninstalled a bunch of stuff to free up space, and I defragged my hard drive. I now have about 60gb free on a 150gb drive.

My system specs:

E6600
2gb RAM
Intel Badaxe2 Mobo
Nvidia 8800gtx (The first edition)
150gb Raptor Drive
XP Pro SP3
Crwative X-Fi Sound Card.
30 Inch Dell Monitor (Native Res 2500x1600)
Logitech Keyboard and Mouse

I installed fraps to get an in game FPS meter.

At boot I am running at about 35% RAM used, when playing the game I am at about 85-90% used, so I am not capping out.

I usually run games in 1900x1200 res, so I used that as my starting point. With "balanced" settings at that res, I was getting between 13 and 22 fps running around the first empire warcamp, and dropping as low as 5 or 6 fps in heavy fighting in the BGs. While not unplayable, I feel with my system I should be getting much better results than this. So, in an attempt to see how good I could get, I put every graphic setting on the lowest it could go. It made maybe a 1 to 2 FPS increase, so next I dropped my resoultion all the down to 1150x750 (something like this) so now I have every setting the possible lowest it could be, and I was getting 18 to 20 FPS. Really no increase.
So, just to see how bad it would get, I put every setting to maximum, and cranked my res up to 2500x1600. Imagine my surprise to see that I was now getting 15 to 30 FPS. While it was spiking a little lower than the low setting, it was holding on average at a higher FPS.

This just seems odd to me. Even playing AoC I could turn down the Pixel Shader to 1.0 and get upwards of 95 FPS.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can increae my FPS? Just seems odd that the graphic settings nothing I do can bring my FPS over 30. While my friend who has close to an identical system gets around 35-40 fps in town, and 80 when in first person mode looking at the ground (I get a max of 30 while in fps mode looking at the ground). The only difference is that he has a 8800GT second gen card, which makes a decent difference but it shouldnt account for that much FPS difference.

Please help.
Mrbloodworth
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Reply #1 on: September 12, 2008, 10:46:38 AM

There is something wrong with their engine. In my experience playing, performance hits that were happening, should not have been. Texture loading is worse than AOC's , at least AOC was compiling shaders. I had been collecting screen shots of all the oddity's that i encounted in this game (graphics issues, stalls, texture and LOD issues), but i figured no one would care.(Its so polished!)

I am truly surprised that with the age of the techniques (the ones i could see, i do not know all) that i was not getting upwords of 100+ FPS. Compound that with the incredibly short draw distance, low poly count, reasonable texture resolution....something is wrong.

Just for comparsion
Code:
OS  Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.070227-2300)
System MFG System manufacturer
System Model System manufacturer
System Bios BIOS Date
System Proc Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs)
System Memory 3328MB RAM
System Page File 344MB used, 4866MB available
System DX Version DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Display Card NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Display Chip Type GeForce 8800 GT
Display Memory 512.0 MB
Display Driver Name nv4_disp.dll
Display Driver Version 6.14.0011.6921 (English)
Sound Description SoundMAX HD Audio
Sound Driver Name ADIHdAud.sys
Sound Driver Version 5.10.0001.6110 (English)

EDIT: I'm not saying it runs badly, i'm saying it should be running flawlessly.
« Last Edit: September 12, 2008, 10:52:43 AM by Mrbloodworth »

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Reply #2 on: September 12, 2008, 12:05:48 PM

I'd suggest to run some hard benchmarks to check if the system works as it should. If it does the problems are likely in the software.

I've also read other players reporting that FPS go up if you increase the resolution. It doesn't make sense but it's not the first time I hear it.

Remember that Mythic isn't writing the engine, they licensed it. They still use the same stuff behind DAoC and it ALWAYS ran like shit, with plenty of quirks and odd performance problems. They added all the nice effects in games like Oblivion, but the basic render just doesn't perform well and has issues with the memory fragmentation (basically, performance get worse over time).

Try to see if resizing the screen seems to reset or improve the performance. If it's like DAoC, the engine is MUCH more dependent on CPU than it is on the videocard.

-HRose / Abalieno
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Morfiend
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Reply #3 on: September 12, 2008, 12:30:55 PM

I did a bunch of benches. It looked fine. I did find this though.
Link
Link
Link

It seems that for some people the game is only recognizing 256mb of Video RAM, and for every person that has listed as such, they are having the same problems that I am seeing. I wont know for sure if it is the problem until I get home, but I am willing to bet it is, due to the listed symptoms.

Mrbloodworth
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Reply #4 on: September 12, 2008, 12:40:52 PM

And you only had to go to 4 places to find it!

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Soln
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Reply #5 on: September 12, 2008, 01:21:38 PM

Could some of you link some benchmarks and advice you can recommend on tuning up older (<1.5yrs, one with AGP) PC's?  My wife and i are keen to play WAR, but are put off by the probable lack of performance.  Could use some realistic facts before dropping >$100 on an experiment.  Thanks!
Mrbloodworth
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Reply #6 on: September 12, 2008, 02:09:50 PM

Post your specs.

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Fraeg
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Reply #7 on: September 12, 2008, 08:27:01 PM

I did a bunch of benches. It looked fine. I did find this though.
Link
Link
Link

It seems that for some people the game is only recognizing 256mb of Video RAM, and for every person that has listed as such, they are having the same problems that I am seeing. I wont know for sure if it is the problem until I get home, but I am willing to bet it is, due to the listed symptoms.



thanks for posting that,  yeah it is only recognizing 256 of my v-card   Tantrum

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Reply #8 on: September 13, 2008, 07:30:23 PM

Folks,

   Unfortunately we discovered this error late in the process.  We were hoping to get it totally squashed by launch but who knows.  One of the programmers said "Now that we found the problem I can finally rewrite the texture system we are using!"  After the daggers grew from our eyes like in a cartoon, the guy realized that 3 days before Head Start is not a good time to rewrite an entire graphical sub-system.   In the meantime, the draw distance increase helps some people a lot and we'll get the fix in after launch.  Fortunately, it doesn't affect stability in any way or I'd probably have to go through another case of Excedrin Migraine Strength pills like Dr. House goes through Vicodin.

Mark
Hawkbit
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Reply #9 on: September 13, 2008, 07:51:02 PM

I'm having this issue as well, but while trying to find the root of the problem last night it finally made me sit down and configure WAR using my Nvidia Control Panel... holy cow now that I've got the game setup decently it runs smooooth on my 8800gtx.  It was fun and passable before, but now 8x AA and 4x aniso, with Vsync and triple buffer on it looks amazing. 
Mrbloodworth
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Reply #10 on: September 15, 2008, 07:26:09 AM

Folks,

   Unfortunately we discovered this error late in the process.  We were hoping to get it totally squashed by launch but who knows.  One of the programmers said "Now that we found the problem I can finally rewrite the texture system we are using!"  After the daggers grew from our eyes like in a cartoon, the guy realized that 3 days before Head Start is not a good time to rewrite an entire graphical sub-system.   In the meantime, the draw distance increase helps some people a lot and we'll get the fix in after launch.  Fortunately, it doesn't affect stability in any way or I'd probably have to go through another case of Excedrin Migraine Strength pills like Dr. House goes through Vicodin.

Mark

Good to hear.

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Morfiend
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Reply #11 on: September 15, 2008, 10:32:43 AM

I'm having this issue as well, but while trying to find the root of the problem last night it finally made me sit down and configure WAR using my Nvidia Control Panel... holy cow now that I've got the game setup decently it runs smooooth on my 8800gtx.  It was fun and passable before, but now 8x AA and 4x aniso, with Vsync and triple buffer on it looks amazing. 


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me what you did. I have a 8800gtx, and I am pretty much unable to get more than 15 FPS, no matter what settings I put my system at. My friend who has pretty much an identical system (He used my wishlist on newegg to build his comp) is getting constantly 40 on higher settings than me.
Fraeg
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Reply #12 on: September 15, 2008, 11:17:17 AM

I'm having this issue as well, but while trying to find the root of the problem last night it finally made me sit down and configure WAR using my Nvidia Control Panel... holy cow now that I've got the game setup decently it runs smooooth on my 8800gtx.  It was fun and passable before, but now 8x AA and 4x aniso, with Vsync and triple buffer on it looks amazing. 


mind posting the exact settings you tweeked?  or is it just the 4 you listed?


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Hawkbit
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Reply #13 on: September 15, 2008, 11:53:34 AM

I'm no super computer whiz.  I don't do this for a living and may be doing it wrong.  When the game first loads each time, I need to swivel my toon around and let all the immediate textures load properly, after which I get pretty minimal graphic issues.  Here goes:

I keep a clean PC.  Only a few games at a time, no real hardcore apps.  I've got 50 gigs used on a 250 gig drive.  I defrag all the time and keep up on registry cleaners and av/spam.  I don't have 103 things running in the background on my system. 

175.19 drivers for the 8800gtx, using XPPro. 

Ingame settings are set to max on everything which is how the game loaded default.  The only change I made was in 'custom' the GPU texture memory cache I set to "largest".  I'm playing full screen 1680x1050. Everything is else set to high quality and all the lighting/water/shadows boxes are checked.

In Nvidia Control panel I made a game profile for war.exe and set it to this:





EDIT:  I was getting some hitching at 8x AA, so I backed it off to 2x for the time being.  Post-launch a month or two Mythic will tweak things on their side and I will push it back up then, maybe.  Depends on how the system does in rvr.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2008, 11:58:28 AM by Hawkbit »
Fraeg
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Reply #14 on: September 15, 2008, 11:56:40 AM

thanks for the response, appreciate it.

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Hawkbit
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Reply #15 on: September 15, 2008, 11:59:25 AM

Good luck!  Also, I did a quick edit at the bottom of my post about AA.  Hope it helps.
Morfiend
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Reply #16 on: September 15, 2008, 12:52:47 PM

Do you know if your 8800gtx is the newer chipset or the older one?

Mine is the first generation of 8800gtx. And the game still runs like ass. At the same resolution as you, with basically the same in game settings, I get about 12 fps running around in the wilderness and between 6 to 8 in PVP. It is very annoying.
Abelian75
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Reply #17 on: September 15, 2008, 01:04:05 PM

I have the first generation 8800gtx, and it runs fine.  Wonderfully, even.  Odd.
Hawkbit
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Reply #18 on: September 15, 2008, 03:24:00 PM

I honestly have no idea what gen it is.  It's about a year old, I think I built this system in late September of last year.  Bought parts off Newegg. 
Morfiend
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Reply #19 on: September 15, 2008, 10:05:50 PM

So, I tried messing with my nvidia settings like you said, and it didnt help. Still getting horrible FPS.
Hawkbit
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Reply #20 on: September 15, 2008, 11:30:15 PM

Hardware wise, I'm running 4gig (3.25 recognized by XP) memory and a 21" monitor that could be helping my situation in comparison to yours.  Otherwise we've got identical systems. 

Wish I could be more help, but I really don't know where to go from here. 
Morfiend
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Reply #21 on: September 15, 2008, 11:54:27 PM

A few other things I did, was add 4gb more of ram for 6gb total, but like you XP is onyl seeing 3.3. I will be moving to Vista in the next week. I also disabled custom skins, as some people said that might work.

Right now there seems to be 2 possible solutions. Its a bug to do with some sort of obscure software thing, or my card is dying. From the amount of people reporting the same problem, I am leaning towards the first.

Here is hoping Mark can get it worked out, as its very frustrating.
fuser
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Reply #22 on: September 16, 2008, 12:00:43 AM

XP is onyl seeing 3.3. I will be moving to Vista in the next week.

Just as an FYI your going to only see 3.5ish GB in Vista also running a 32bit version, make sure you run 64bit version to allocate all of your RAM.
Morfiend
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Reply #23 on: September 16, 2008, 09:38:58 AM

XP is onyl seeing 3.3. I will be moving to Vista in the next week.

Just as an FYI your going to only see 3.5ish GB in Vista also running a 32bit version, make sure you run 64bit version to allocate all of your RAM.

Yeah, I know. Any one have any opinion on if I should get Vista Business or Home Premium?
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Reply #24 on: September 16, 2008, 12:09:03 PM

This explains a lot for me.  I went back and checked my log and sure enough I have the same thing, only 256 megs of video ram detected (8800 gt).  I was wondering why I could get 60 fps in AoC with all settings on high and it seemed crappy in WAR (but I had no way to judge as I couldn't find a way to monitor FPS).

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Morfiend
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Reply #25 on: September 16, 2008, 12:12:38 PM

From doing research around a lot of forums, it seems the majority of people this happens to are 8800 owners.
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Reply #26 on: September 16, 2008, 06:33:00 PM

This explains a lot for me.  I went back and checked my log and sure enough I have the same thing, only 256 megs of video ram detected (8800 gt).  I was wondering why I could get 60 fps in AoC with all settings on high and it seemed crappy in WAR (but I had no way to judge as I couldn't find a way to monitor FPS).

Ditto. 512MB 8800GT showing the same thing.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2008, 06:34:47 PM by squirrel »

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Reply #27 on: September 18, 2008, 10:40:12 AM

I adjusted the GPU slider under performance to not quite max and had a noticable different with the game. YMMV of course.

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Morfiend
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Reply #28 on: September 18, 2008, 10:44:17 AM

I can pretty much put my settings at anything and the FPS difference is a max about 3. I can go from 1080 res to 2500 res, and only have about 2 fps difference. Same with the performance settings.

Its very frustrating.

So far the worse area for me is on top of the "troll pacifier" tower, when we are fighting for it. I get like mini performance hits constantly, like every 2 seconds it freezes for about .5 of a second.
Azaroth
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Reply #29 on: September 18, 2008, 11:09:31 AM

Here's my performance issue:

The game is totally unplayable for me.

Clunky, laggy, slow, disjointed. I don't know if it's my computer or what - but they had better hope that my experience is limited to, well, me.


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Reply #30 on: September 18, 2008, 08:16:21 PM

I wrote a post on my blog about performance issues, since I saw a pattern.

I think it's useful to make a distinction. There a fps problem and a hard disk trashing problem. Imho the latter is more severe.

Basically if I stand still I have smooth fps, as soon I move in a direction the hard disk starts trashing and the client stutters heavily. On the blog more details about this.

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Reply #31 on: September 18, 2008, 09:18:09 PM

CTDs have come back for me with a vengeance.  This is strange, considering it never happened once in Head Start. 

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Reply #32 on: September 18, 2008, 10:28:43 PM

All I can say is that if you're experiencing anywhere near what I am when I attempt to play this game, and if it's anything NEAR a commonplace problem, this game is in serious, serious trouble.


F  is inviting you to start Quarto. Do you want to Accept (Alt+C) or Decline (Alt+D) the invitation?
 
  You have accepted the invitation to start Quarto.
 
F  says:
don't know what this is
Az  says:
I think it's like
Az  says:
where we pour milk on the stomach alien from total recall
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Reply #33 on: September 18, 2008, 10:35:12 PM

I run WoW on the higher options for video. I run 25 man raids and pvp. I run WAR on the absolutely fucking minimum best framerate adjustments, and it still clunks when I walk 15 feet in a minor quest point.

WTF? I went into a major city and I had to take 3 minutes to get to a mailbox.

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Morfiend
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Reply #34 on: September 18, 2008, 10:49:21 PM

I run WoW on the higher options for video. I run 25 man raids and pvp. I run WAR on the absolutely fucking minimum best framerate adjustments, and it still clunks when I walk 15 feet in a minor quest point.

WTF? I went into a major city and I had to take 3 minutes to get to a mailbox.

Try turning UP your settings and see if it gets much worse or if it doesnt change. If you cant make it reallt better or worse, you probably have the same bug I do.
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