Framerate

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kraizer793
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Framerate

Post by kraizer793 » Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:49 am

Hi, before I continue, my system specs are...

Intel Pentium 4 2.4ghz processor
1.5 gb ram
ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro 512mb

I am having HORRENDOUS framerates. its not my system, because I can run games such as counter strike: Source, half life 2, and other FPS games on my computer that take up around 300MB ram. However in AO, it only uses about 70-115MB ram. Yet my framerates in AO are lower than in all my other games.

Its odd, it "sees" my graphics card, yet, I cant use Direct3d or directdraw, only RGB emulation. and when ever I select RGB-E, it gives me an error message. saying its going to use the default. yet my ATI IS my default. and my only card.

Here's the odd part. I run DXdiag, and enable D3D, DirectDraw, and Texture enhancements, and run AO, it runs AMAZING for about 5 minutes. and then just goes back to around 3-7 FPS in Old Athens. whereas I would get about 30-40 previously.

When I exit AO, open DXdiag, it didnt save my settings, DDraw is still, oddly enough, disabled, and the process goes on an don. it has no save button, other than saving a .txt file of the configuration.

Anyone have some good tips on getting a better framerate? shall we dedicate this topic to framerate optimisation? for anyone else like me who has horrendous framerates in open areas?

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Fourthaid
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Post by Fourthaid » Sat Feb 07, 2009 3:37 am

I am by no means a genius at technical stuff.. However from what I hear this is the big issue:

It's an old game, and it relies heavily on the CPU and the small bits that are supported by the GFX card is "outdated" and many cards (dx10 and ATi in particular) have no longer major support for this resulting in horrendous framerate.

If there is a fix for this, I would not know since I have not upgraded my GFX in a few years and it still works well with as old a game as AO.

Hopefully someone else can give you a potential solutions for the issue, the only thing I can think of is perhaps tweaking the settings for the Client.exe in the GFX card's settings and see if anything helps.

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Snakebite
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Post by Snakebite » Sat Feb 07, 2009 3:58 am

My current system...

Windows XP (fully upgraded)

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.00GHz
Clock speed 2000Mhz

P5N32-E SLI Plus (motherboard)

4Gig of good ram on 2 matched sticks

XFX NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS
256MB



Most of the time my AO runs at the max of 100fps with all setting maxed, I've had no problems to be honest...

Are you running Vista?

AO does rely heavily on the processor, so if you have other things running this may be part of the problem...

Also, do a damn good defrag, problem with AO is that you pick up & drop a hell of a lot of items (all of which are stored client side, so it fragments your drive a supprising amount...

I'm sure some of our more technical guys can add more...
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kraizer793
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2009 9:40 pm
Location: Mississippi, US

Post by kraizer793 » Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:17 am

Ok...

I run XP

The only programs I have are anti-virus and a game client (steam). So, I'll try Exiting out of it.

I know about the CPU, I figured as much, I'm a weee bit broke at a new rig is up near the top of my priorities.

Could lowering the screen resolution work out a wee bit? I tried it, and no go honestly.

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Snakebite
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Post by Snakebite » Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:35 am

Remember, everything that loads from your startup has an effect on your computer, even if you then shut it down again...

I have like 3 personal things that run from startup, avast antivirus, spybot S&D resident & zone alarm...
I have something in the region of 26 items in my startup that I've STOPPED from running at startup...! & it's not like I have much on my computer actualy lol.

But seriously, do a disk cleanup & then defrag the hell out of it... Do it 2 or 3 times with a reboot inbetween, see what happens after that...
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kraizer793
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2009 9:40 pm
Location: Mississippi, US

Post by kraizer793 » Sat Feb 07, 2009 3:26 pm

Okay, will try the defrag later this evening. I disable all o fmy startup items in msconfig, only the ones essential to my computer running, and its safety are in use. and thats not much.

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Cephus
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Post by Cephus » Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:32 am

I don't know, I'm running AO on Vista x64 at 1440x900 and I'm not seeing any framerate problems at all. I've got everything maxed too, zero problems.

Korruptor
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Post by Korruptor » Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:31 am

Kraizer, you mentioned that you can only select RGB emulation but you get an error, so is the game defaulting to D3D T&L HAL?

In my experience with AO I found that the default (at least for me) happened to be the D3D T&L HAL and it preformed poorly. I've been using just the D3D HAL option instead and, even running multiple AO clients on my PC's, I still get good frame rates.

But, I have noticed a heating issue. If you game works well for even a few minutes and the drops down I would suspect a heat buildup some where. I have to run my fans in turbo mode (aka loud) to keep the heat out and keep the game(s) running smooth.

Internal layout of the wiring, other cards and dust build up all factor in. I've moved my PC's to on top of my desk to reduce the dust build up and how often I have to clean them.

When it comes to anti-virus scanning I add exceptions for the the client.exe (and an exception for the AO folder itself) to keep it from real-time scanning the games memory and adding heavy overhead to the game. In place of that I'd schedule a scan for the whole disk. I am pretty fond of COMODO anti-virus and firewall combo if anyone's interested. It's free.

The thread was a bit old but I hope this info helps somone.

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