Jerkiness

[PeterX]

I recently upgraded to an Athlon 3000. Ever since camera panning and playback have been markedly jerky. CMAK is still playable, but performance is now less than satisfactory. I've turned off anti-aliasing and vertical sync. Any ideas?

I'm running XP with 768meg ram.

[Schrullenhaft]

So you just upgraded a CPU or a CPU and motherboard (I assume the latter) ?

It sounds like there is some sort of unoptimized communication between your videocard and the northbridge of your motherboard (being one possibility). There can also be CMOS/BIOS setup settings that may not be too optimal.

You may want to install whatever chipset drivers are available for your motherboard. Some video drivers have GART drivers/optimizers as part of their setup, so motherboard chipset drivers may only make so much (if any) difference.

You may want to check out your CMOS/BIOS setup for any AGP/PCI specific settings (including any 'divider' frequencies, etc.). It's possible that some default setting isn't quite beneficial for your card performance-wise.

[Andrew Kulin]

Are you playing a game with massive amounts of damage/craters? This tends to make video cards crawl. Or all scenarios?

You also do not say what video card you are using and your system specs which may help with ideas.

Some thoughts for you in the meantime:

- Did you just drop a more powerful CPU on an existing mobo or were there other hardware changes?

- BIOS set-up correctly for the new CPU after the upgrade?

- All drivers up-to-date?

- What backgrund processes are running?

- Anything else you installed recently that might be causing the problem (hardware or software)

- Any changes to CMAK, eg. did you increase screen resolution? Consider deleting the prefs file in the main CMAK directory and rechoosing whatever screen resolution/refresh rate (I personally aim for a 72 Hz refresh rate - high enough for me to eliminate flicker but not wasting CPU/Video resources redrawing the screen e.g., 100X/second (100 Hz))

[PeterX]

I have aa GeForce 4, 64mb ram.

I tried disabling the anti-virus (AVG) and that seemed to help.

[Hpt. Lisse]

PeterX, we really need to know the motherboard brand AND model to help you with this. What was your previous CPU? Has your BIOS been updated (you are sure this mobo is fully compatible w/XP3000 processor?)

You might want to download SiSoft Sandra 2004 freeware from here - choose the standard (non-professional) version - this is an overall system analysis tool that would give us the answers we'd need to help you further.

[Spindry69]

I have an Athlon 1200, A7A266 Mother Board and a Geeforce 4 MX 440. With CBBO fully modded with hi res graphics it pans smoothly. However CBAK is jerky. Any thoughts?

[Schrullenhaft]

I assume that the only thing you're comparing performance-wise is the scrolling speed on the map at a certain view level.

Are you playing both at the same resolution ? Are both map sizes the same (this will make a huge difference) ? Is the terrain coverage the same (trees & bushes) ? Have you turned off the 'doodads' (bushes), since CMBO doesn't have any ? Are you at the same 'view level' when you make this comparison ? Is the number of units on screen the same ?

I'm not sure how comparable a 'high-res mod' for CMBO is compared to CMAK. Some vehicles have quite a few more polygons and subsequently more complex texture-mapping in CMAK than CMBO.

[werfer]

The GeForce XP driver 56.72 (newest released) caused my CM game to jerk and tear. reverting back to the next to newest 53.03 restored the games graphics to smooth.

Hope this helps.....