Upgrade Performance Increase?

[Guest]

You have relatively recent drivers? And are you comparing the same scenarios at the same times, with the same options? Just want to make sure we've got a good baseline to work from.

You should not be seeing consistent FPS drops in 2.0, at least not caused by CM. We're making more use of newer GPU features, so if there's a bug in your drivers with one of those features it would cause problems, of course. Unfortunately bugs like that aren't uncommon.

[Ithikial_AU]

You have relatively recent drivers? And are you comparing the same scenarios at the same times, with the same options? Just want to make sure we've got a good baseline to work from.

You should not be seeing consistent FPS drops in 2.0, at least not caused by CM. We're making more use of newer GPU features, so if there's a bug in your drivers with one of those features it would cause problems, of course. Unfortunately bugs like that aren't uncommon.

I keep my drivers up to date. Tested on the same 60 secs of action in a WeGo game I'm currently playing - bonus mission at the end of the Scottish Corridor campaign. If you want me to send you any details or saved games etc so you can see what's going on please let me know.

[Macisle]

My comment was based on initial impressions playing a few QBs with V2.0 before going out of town for the holidays. I'm away from my main rig until after the 10th. I think Steve said that you can run multiple installations, so I could install 1.11 again separately and do some testing.

I know all my hardware has up to date drivers, W7 is fully updated, and I defrag my HD once a week.

One variable that I can think of is that I was using translucent trees in 1.11. Perhaps the lack of them in 2.0 makes a difference.

[Ithikial_AU]

I keep my drivers up to date. Tested on the same 60 secs of action in a WeGo game I'm currently playing - bonus mission at the end of the Scottish Corridor campaign. If you want me to send you any details or saved games etc so you can see what's going on please let me know.

Just double checked with CMFI, getting between 20-24 FPS on a slightly larger scenario from Conrath's Attack. No drops in FPS.

[MikeyD]

A question: Bocage? lines of bocage are resource hogs from my experience. Plus the average Normandy map appears to average 1/3rd more trees. I'm finding an overstuffed CMBN map will run slower than a typically leaner CMFI map, but CMBN v2.0 is definitely running better than CMBN v1.0 did.

[Michael Emrys]

I find that what slows my iMac down is not trees or other terrain so much as units. I can put the camera in the middle of the map and set it to rotate and it only slows down and gets jerky when it scans over an area where units are concentrated. All those pretty vehicles and uniforms are the resource hogs for me.

Michael

[kensal]

Could any mac users share their experience of 2.0 - I have only 2 gb RAM and am finding that anything other than the smallest scenario on 2.0 is freezing my machine from lack of RAM, despite using memoryfreer to squeeze every last available drop possible

[Guest]

What video card do you have? 2GB of RAM should be fine for pretty much all scenarios on the Mac version... how do you know you're running out of memory?

Have you played with a version prior to 2.0?

[kensal]

What video card do you have? 2GB of RAM should be fine for pretty much all scenarios on the Mac version... how do you know you're running out of memory?

Have you played with a version prior to 2.0?

Hi Phil

Thanks for the quick response ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB video card.

I can check the memory usage on the mac using Activity Monitor - I can get about 1.6GB of free RAM on starting 2.0 and once it freezes I switch to a new desktop without closing the frozen game and at that stage Activity Monitor is showing virtually no memory available.

I have played version 1.10 without any problem at all save for some slowing of performance on the biggest scenarios at critical points. When I added version 1.11 recently I experienced the problem experienced by others of CMSF force references replacing CMBN forces (on QB screen). Ver. 2.0 resolved that but I still have the game freezing on clicking the red button.

So currently I am still using 1.10 which is fine for the moment but if there is a way to get 2.0 working that would be great.

I did find that upgrading to Mountain Lion has helped improve performance generally.

[Guest]

Thanks for the answers, kensal.

Thanks for the quick response ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB video card.

Ahhh... not exactly an Nvidia 9600 card, that. Yours is not a very beefy card - for starters it has the minimum (for CM) amount of VRAM. This may explain some of your performance issues, but we should be able to find a solution for you. Check my answer to your next question for some tips.

For your unresponsive mouse, check the Options menu at Combat Mission starting screen. You should see an option for ATI cards relating to mouse pointers. It's a driver / hardware issue. Activate the option and see if that helps.

I can check the memory usage on the mac using Activity Monitor - I can get about 1.6GB of free RAM on starting 2.0 and once it freezes I switch to a new desktop without closing the frozen game and at that stage Activity Monitor is showing virtually no memory available.

Hmm. What Texture Quality settings are you using? With your card and available RAM you may want to consider some of the lower settings (not Better or Best). The game still looks great on Balanced and Improved, you might try those first. Texture Quality will effect RAM usage.

For Model Quality you may want to also consider lower settings - Balanced again looks great and reduces the load on your GPU considerably.

You may also want to consider turning shaders off. Apple's ATI drivers are pretty uniformly terrible, and shader support may be problematic on your card. Lowering Texture Quality should help with your RAM issues, and Model Quality with any performance problems, but if you keep having issues despite turning those down, try turning off shaders.

I have played version 1.10 without any problem at all save for some slowing of performance on the biggest scenarios at critical points. When I added version 1.11 recently I experienced the problem experienced by others of CMSF force references replacing CMBN forces (on QB screen). Ver. 2.0 resolved that but I still have the game freezing on clicking the red button.

So currently I am still using 1.10 which is fine for the moment but if there is a way to get 2.0 working that would be great.

Well, let's try the above! Let me know how it goes. I worked hard on getting CM to run nicely on OSX, even for folks with lower end cards, so... well, let me know how it goes.

I did find that upgrading to Mountain Lion has helped improve performance generally.

Interesting. Drivers did improve for 10.8 for some folks - Apple may actually have started to focus on performance.

[kensal]

Phil

Thanks will try those tips, though it may well be the low spec is the issue. I am out of town for a few days so won't be able to report back for a while/

Thank you very much for the help and happy new year!

[kensal]

Hi Phil

I have tried ver 1.11 and ver 2.0 on lowest possible settings but now they hang on opening any scenario. One thing you mentioned was to turn off shaders but I do not have any options relating to shaders or shadows in the option screen...

I have raised a support ticket as that is probably a more appropriate way to take this forward.

Thanks

Julian

[evo6tme]

I have noticed no difference since upgrading to v2 . I have a fast computer but still can boil the kettle and make a coffee at 29% ..

[Ultradave]

If it was me I'd set all the options on their lowest settings and then work up from there, one step at a time, and see if you get to a good quality with acceptable performance. Only change one setting at a time, and only by one step. The graphics are pretty nice quality even at their lowest settings.

Shaders are Alt-R from the game screen and shadows are Alt-W. (hotkeys). They are toggles and you'll get a small message in white at the top of the screen.

Shaders to me a personal preference. I think some scenarios look better and some don't, depending on the terrain, with shaders on, so you won't really be missing much without them, if it helps performance.

Hope that helps. I have a Mac but mine is quite a bit higher spec so my actual experience with the game has been great.

[kensal]

Ultradave - I'm glad that a higher spec mac works with ver 2.0, although it does mean I will have to wait until I buy a new mac. Problem is my current mac is working so well otherwise, so I haven't any excuse to do that!

[marka]

I play CMBN on an HP laptop running Win7-64. I just installed the v2.0 upgrade, and it seems to me that camera panning/control has gotten MUCH slower. It may be related to how closely zoomed in I am when moving, and how many units are in view. I have changed all the settings to "Fastest", which seems to have helped a bit. I did not have this kind of an issue while running 1.10; panning/rotating was quick and smooth regardless of how close I was to any units.

Looking over some other threads, I see others mention that panning may be smoother with mouse versus keyboard; another suggestion was to update drivers, etc. I'll try those things, especially the drivers issue. I think the laptop just uses the built-in Intel graphics hardware, but the drivers probably haven't been upgraded for a while.

Any other ideas on what to look out for? I *may* be in the market for a newer laptop soon. If I do buy a new laptop, superior performance for CMBN will be a priority. What kind of specs would y'all recommend?

[Hpt. Lisse]

Marka,

For the cash-strapped, any laptop running AMD's A10-4600M processor (look for NextGen tag, indicating the 2nd generation Trinity chip) is a winner. The quad-core processor has a HD7660G graphics chip built-in that significantly out-performs Intel's 4000 graphics proc. I assembled one at Toshiba's website for $529.

However -

Combat Mission is currently not a multi-threaded application. Thus, the fastest throughput of a single core of any processor favors this game. Intel's mobile i5 procs win this competition hands down (or i7 if you can afford it.) However, now you need to keep an eye out for a discrete graphics chip (be it Nvidia or AMD) to pair with it. For example, I see a Samsung on sale at a popular on-line retailer that uses a 3210M i5 proc, 6 GB of RAM, and a AMD 7730M GPU w/2MB of video RAM for $649.

With either choice, be advised that trading out the original Hard Drive for a Solid State HD is alot easier on some models (HP, Toshiba, Samsung) than others (Lenovo, Asus, etc). Many notebooks ship with performance-sapping 5400 rpm HD's, so it's becoming fairly commonplace to swap it out for a SSD.

Hope this helps.