Why would this run so slow w/ these specs...

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 9:52 pm

Hey guys, just thought I'd ask if anyone knew of any reason the game would run so slow on a pretty darn fast computer:

2.3ghz core 2 duo,
4gb ddr2 ram,
1gb geforce 9600gs (latest driver as of yesterday)
1280x800
Vista 32bit SP2
Realtek HD audio (latest driver as of yesterday)

No real-time antivirus is running.

High or medium detail, doesnt matter:
Menu gets 32fps. After loading a game I get about 20-22 fps. Certain times like flying into a nebula or near a base or mining it'll drop to 10-12fps. This system is no slouch and I play tons of high-intensity games such as fallout 3 / ArmA just fine.

Does anyone know anything that can be checked, any driver conflicts with certain versions or anything?

verbosity · Post by **verbosity** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:09 pm

mm good question, that seems to be a pretty heavy hit for your machine. guessing from your gfx card its not a laptop. are you running any other programs in the background ( some AV's have been known to cause issues)? Check your bios and make sure that your memory is working "dual inline" ( I think thats what it is anyway

), also do you have any software to check the heat your machine is running at ( this is unlikely, but I've seen it before)? I'm sure someone who knows more than me will be on shortly with some better questions/ suggestions.

Welcome to the forum and the game

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:21 pm

Actually it is a laptop. ASUS =)

Like I said I have no real-time AV going in the background. Very little is running at all in fact. All vista-ish features have been disabled so it is essentially windows XP in classic mode, or as close as possible. I'm just wondering if anyone has a similar problem with this card/setup.

49rTbird · Post by **49rTbird** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:47 pm

My laptop spec's are not as good as your's and I get down to 10 fps at times on a planet also. The game play is still good with no seen hesitation. I run XP tho. I hope I'm not being a drag on other MP players.

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:48 pm

Yea but its not even a planet where I get down to 10fps. It can just be as simple as mining an asteroid in the middle of nowhere.

verbosity · Post by **verbosity** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 11:03 pm

Originally posted by dracflamloc
Actually it is a laptop. ASUS =)

Like I said I have no real-time AV going in the background. Very little is running at all in fact. All vista-ish features have been disabled so it is essentially windows XP in classic mode, or as close as possible. I'm just wondering if anyone has a similar problem with this card/setup.

there is an issue with one chipset that's known, though again you'd have to wait for someone else to give a bit more info on that. One thing to check is power management settings as that can throttle your gpu, also check whether you get the same performance when its plugged in as opposed to when its not.

tha_rami · Post by **tha_rami** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 12:35 am

As far as I know, any DarkBASIC game should run perfectly well on those specifications, including the ones that push it beyond its capabilities, like this one. I can't see why this should happen - that loadout should give you 20+ FPS on all occasions.

Vice will probably be along within an hour or 12, as he's usually taking some time off on Sundays. Maybe he knows better.

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 12:50 am

I know that Windows XP 32bit version does not support 4GB of Memory, Max is 2 GB for Windows XP 32bit. I do not know If this is the same for Vista 32bit version!

I have an Asus P5W2-E Premium Motherboard and 3.0 Ghz Core Duo overclocked at 3.6Ghz
2GB DDR-2 6400 at 800Mhz And a Saphire ATI Radeon X1300 Enhanced edition 512MB running at 700Mhz and Windows XP Professional 32bit version!

And I get frame rates in Single player of 32 and in Multiplayer it varies depending on my wireless network connection and how busy the Server is! On good days in MP I get around 32 frame rate on bad days with lot of trafic and bad connection I get 6 to 12 frame rate. But in my case it does not depend on what I'm doing in the game!

I suspect it is your memmory support of Windows XP 32bit mode not using 2GB of the 4GB efficiently!

When you boot up your computer and you hit the tab key does your computer recognize 4GB installed?
Also does your system information on your computer display 4GB of memmory installed?
You can also check how much of the memmory Vista 32bit is using!

Hope this helps!;)

[Edited on 7-27-2009 by Maarschalk]

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 12:58 am

DarkBASIC... yikes that sent a shiver down my spine. I have even more respect for Vice managing to create a game of this caliber using that programming environment...

Anyway I doubt its RAM. 2GB per-program is a limit of XP and 32-bit (not sure if its in vista, i assume it is), but i do not think thats the main issue here (see the part where i play way more intense games just fine (45-60fps on high detail for fallout 3 for example).

A few more details: It seems the cockpit is a major culprit here. I seem to lose about 10 fps just by being in the cockpit. An outside view is much smoother. Since the cockpit isn't all that complex from what I can tell, I don't know why that would happen.

[Edited on 7-27-2009 by dracflamloc]

verbosity · Post by **verbosity** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:11 am

Originally posted by dracflamloc
A few more details: It seems the cockpit is a major culprit here. I seem to lose about 10 fps just by being in the cockpit. An outside view is much smoother. Since the cockpit isn't all that complex from what I can tell, I don't know why that would happen.

yah thats fairly standard, the cockpit is actually pretty advanced, it beats most space sims hands down, and to my ( rather slim) knowledge ) also trumps most flight sims. it's fully 3d, this is most noticable if you use something like TrackIR, but can still be seen by using the lock view.

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:15 am

Take a look at LockOn Modern Combat's cockpits if you want to see an impressive example. Yet another game that runs butter-smooth on my laptop. I'm hoping that theres something that can be done to fix this. I can still play on my desktop but I have the most gaming-time when I'm travelling on business and such (hotel room w/o my fiance), so playing on my laptop is important.

Post by **Vice** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:28 am

The mobile chipset it has is likely the biggest bottleneck for this game. Because it has a somewhat 'restrained' design with a limited 128-bit memory interface, 430 MHz clock, etc, it just has trouble keeping up with what this game needs at higher detail settings (particularly with the 3D cockpit active). That's not to say you won't find good performance in other games, this game just needs a lot in terms of memory performance (both system and video), not merely capacities or chipsets.

Couple of things to try/check:

- Make sure you are not using any system memory for video memory. With certain chipsets, you can combine the two, or they just use system memory as video memory, which can result in horrible performance and reliability problems. Make sure you are using dedicated video memory only, nothing 'shared' or 'integrated' (not 512 dedicated with another 512 consumed from system memory and not 1 GB with anything shared with system memory above it).

- Turn off the 3D cockpit in the Options menu. This will significantly lower the polygon count and memory load, allowing the 9600 to likely run faster.

- Switch graphics detail to 'Medium' in conjunction with turning off the 3D cockpit (not just this setting by itself), further lowering the scene's polygon detail and memory load.

- As a test, switch to a 'Locked (FS)' screen mode, then test to measure any performance differences. On some occasions in the past, the Locked mode has provided improved performance.

- The 9600M and 9650M seem to be pretty weak with this game. However, that might change in the future as Nvidia improves the drivers for them. I would recommend staying on top of those updates and watch for performance improvements with each release.

- Make sure you're not applying any rendering settings in the Nvidia display menu that could impact performance. Check the Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering values to make sure they are set to 'Application-controlled' or 'Off'.

- Verify your system has dual channel enabled for its system memory.

Accountant · Post by **Accountant** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 3:50 am

- Make sure you're not applying any rendering settings in the Nvidia display menu that could impact performance. Check the Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering values to make sure they are set to 'Application-controlled' or 'Off'.

I can personally attest to this. I am using a laptop as well, and I had the NVidia Control Panel setting my antialiasing and anisotropic filtering to specific values. I could never figure out why my comp was so slow with games like Arma (though it always ran EL fine). After turning these to application-controlled I saw considerable improvement with Arma and even EL. EL just ran so much smoother and I could set my graphics settings higher in-game, resulting in an improved gaming experience both performance-wise and graphic-wise.

-Accountant

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:54 pm

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately being a seasoned gamer, I've already tried/verified all that.
Dual channel: yes, AA/AF: no, 1gb vram: dedicated

I will attempt to lower the detail and resolution as low as possible tonight, and see what I get. I understand not all games are equal, and knowing now the platform this game was built on I'm going to lower my performance expectations a little.

Theres no drive thrashing like in typical games where I notice slowdown on laptops, so thats crossed off.

However I still think something is fishy here. I dual-boot XP and Vista on this laptop, so I can try the game in XP tonight and see if it performs better.

I'm also wondering if this game is bottlenecked by a 2.3ghz CPU. If this is the case, some multi-threading would be a major benefit on modern computers. I haven't touched DB in a long time, so I don't remember if it can even handle multiple threads though.

[Edited on 7-27-2009 by dracflamloc]

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:02 pm

Alright, I've just lowered the gfx to low, with all settings set to off, at 800x600 and I'm still not getting above 18-19fps, with dips into the low teens.

Yikes... I'm gonna try XP next

Post by **Vice** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:08 pm

That is pretty strange, especially considering I have a very old 1.6 GHz laptop with a feeble Radeon 9600 Mobility (32 MB! lol) and it can manage around 15 FPS most of the time. Did you check the power settings for the CPU and GPU? Did you measure them both at idle and while the game is running?

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:11 pm

Power settings are on 'high performance', no power saving at all. The temps are typical for this laptop while playing a game. Seems pretty stable under load, just slow in the game. Task manager claims CPU usage of the EXE is around 45-48%, total system CPU usage the same.

[Edited on 7-27-2009 by dracflamloc]

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:58 pm

Here is the model of my laptop:
ASUS X83VM-X1