Talk to me about performance

[NrthnStar5]

<p>First my specs:</p><p>Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 OC'd to 3.3 GHZ</p><p>ATI 4970</p><p>4 GB DDR2 800mhz</p><p>Dedicated 250 GB HD 16mb cache 7500rpm</p><p>Soundblaster xTreme Music w/EAX through Alchemy</p><p>Windows 7 x64</p><p>I am using the newest drivers and most up to date DirectX</p><p>What is most irritating is the fluctuating performance I get. I am using modified High Quality settings. I have my shader complex shader distance set at 75, my view distance at 800. I keep Environment and character textures on Max and the 3rd texture setting on medium. Ocean quality on medium. Using GPU shadows as well. I have grass displacement disabled. I use 4x AA and 16x AF.</p><p>In newer zones such as Greater Faydark, Kylong Plains, Fens of Nathsar... I have trouble keeping above 30fps. I would say average FPS is mid 20's. Other zones perform significantly better where I can stay in the 30-40fps. City zones like Kelethin and Timorous Deep are poor performers usually 20-30 fps. Then There are some specific zones where I get terrible performance. There are two that come to mind specifically: Nektulos Forest and Kunzars jungle. I have trouble even staying in the 20's for FPS in these zones and I don't understand why.</p><p>Anyone have any tips, suggestions, help on this? I get so frusterated that after 5 years, I still get performance issues with this game. Would really like some help on tuning this to get more consistent performance while maintaining nice visuals. I have gone over the old performance guide many times to no avail.</p><p>Please feel free to ask for any other information needed to help. I appreciate anyone's time and suggestions.</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p>I would think that your computer should be getting better performance than that.  I see that you have overclocked.  Do you have some kind of divider between the CPU and RAM?  If so, then that may be part of the problem.</p><p>Also, do you have a lot of programs running in the background?  If so,  you might want to try disabling them at startup.  You can use the following steps to prevent programs from loading when windows starts if you have several applications that do so:</p><p>1. Select the START button.2. Select RUN, then type in "msconfig" (for Vista, type msconfig in the search bar at the bottom of the Start Menu)3. Press OK4. Select the STARTUP tab.5. In the list, uncheck all boxes EXCEPT for SCANREGISTRY and SYSTEM TRAY. If you use Windows XP, please note that SCANREGISTRY and SYSTEM TRAY will not be listed - just uncheck the entire list.6. Hit apply and then OK. Restart the computer and try the game again.</p>

[NrthnStar5]

<p>I don't have a divider between the CPU and Ram and with my overclock the ram is still operating at full speed. </p><p>In regards to programs, no I don't feel that I have a lot of them running. There isn't anything performance hindering and my resources are all well within reason before launching the game. CPU activity is minimal and ram usage is between 28-30%</p>

[Khurghan]

<p>I've had a lot of problems with the same sound card you are using under win 7 64 (more specifically a process called audiodg.exe - should show if you do show processes from all uses under task manager).</p><p>Recommendation from my guildies (which seems to have worked) was remove my creative card and all its drivers and use my mobo's on-board sound.</p>

[vochore]

<p><cite>NrthnStar5 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>First my specs:</p><p>Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 OC'd to 3.3 GHZ</p><p>ATI 4970</p><p>4 GB DDR2 800mhz</p><p>Dedicated 250 GB HD 16mb cache 7500rpm</p><p>Soundblaster xTreme Music w/EAX through Alchemy</p><p>Windows 7 x64</p><p>I am using the newest drivers and most up to date DirectX</p><p>What is most irritating is the fluctuating performance I get. I am using modified High Quality settings. I have my shader complex shader distance set at 75, my view distance at 800. I keep Environment and character textures on Max and the 3rd texture setting on medium. Ocean quality on medium. Using GPU shadows as well. I have grass displacement disabled. I use 4x AA and 16x AF.</p><p>In newer zones such as Greater Faydark, Kylong Plains, Fens of Nathsar... I have trouble keeping above 30fps. I would say average FPS is mid 20's. Other zones perform significantly better where I can stay in the 30-40fps. City zones like Kelethin and Timorous Deep are poor performers usually 20-30 fps. Then There are some specific zones where I get terrible performance. There are two that come to mind specifically: Nektulos Forest and Kunzars jungle. I have trouble even staying in the 20's for FPS in these zones and I don't understand why.</p><p>Anyone have any tips, suggestions, help on this? I get so frusterated that after 5 years, I still get performance issues with this game. Would really like some help on tuning this to get more consistent performance while maintaining nice visuals. I have gone over the old performance guide many times to no avail.</p><p>Please feel free to ask for any other information needed to help. I appreciate anyone's time and suggestions.</p></blockquote><p>im getting pretty much the same performance out of my system and about the only way to increase my fps is to put the shader slider all the way to -1 then my fps jump up a full 20 fps or more....move the slider to 1 and loose 20 fps.</p><p>im hoping some of this will be fixed when shader 3.0 goes live.</p><p>also...as far as removing my x-fi soundcard and going with onboard sound...well that just isnt an option since the sound in the game is 1 of the biggest draws for me......3d sound in this game is just awsome with 5.1 speaker setup.</p>

[Wingrider01]

<p><cite>Khurghan wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I've had a lot of problems with the same sound card you are using under win 7 64 (more specifically a process called audiodg.exe - should show if you do show processes from all uses under task manager).</p><p>Recommendation from my guildies (which seems to have worked) was remove my creative card and all its drivers and use my mobo's on-board sound.</p></blockquote><p>Creative makes decent sound hardware but there drivers are probably the worst on the market for stability, resource usage and performance, this would be a very good test of the performace.</p>

[NrthnStar5]

<p>I've tested performance with the sound card and without. I get a decent performance boost from using the sound card with EAX settings in the game. </p><p>My biggest frustration with this game right now is the very inconsistent performance. Up and down constantly, and really hurts the fun of playing. I am also hopeful shader 3.0 will help with this matter.</p>

[NrthnStar5]

<p>There is definitly a problem with certain zones that is hitting me performance wise. Last night, I was playing in Kunzar jungle. When I first zoned in I was getting 20-25 fps. As I was running around the zone, I would go down below 10 FPS! It was absolutely horrible. This zone is far worse then most other zones. The only other zone I get this same problem with is Nek Forest.</p><p>What is going on!?</p>

[Theramor-GoV]

<p>I have a possible help for the sound issue.</p><p>Have you heard of ALchemy from Creative Labs?  What it does is take the 3d sound files and by using a software wrapper convert the calls to OpenAL which is hardware accellerated on most cards Audigy and newer.</p><p>Google "Creative Labs ALchemy".</p><p>I've got an X-fi card and using ALchemy I get better sound quality and some increased performance since all the software based sound calls are now hardware based.</p><p>Its not perfect, but it does make the sound card work better.</p><p>T</p>