Battlefront.com Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 We still haven't figured out what the problem is with some nVidia cards on some systems (we suspect it is a VERY low level hardware/driver issue), however changes we made to the terrain drawing code should improve framerates for people that were previously having problems with the high end 7xxx and 8xxx cards in particular. We think this will happen because the nVidia problem appears to be related to retrieving data from VRAM. Specifically, that each time something is pulled out it is taking a lot longer than it should. The more things to get from VRAM, the slower the performance. The new terrain drawing code stores a LOT less things in VRAM for distant terrain for other performance reasons. Therefore, by coincidence we appear to have lessened the problem. At least we found our testers who had problems with v1.03 and earlier saw DRAMATIC improvements with v1.04. I'm wondering how the rest of you guys who had problems are doing now. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sekra Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Unfortunately... There is a.... HUGE improvement on my system! I just woke up 20 minutes ago and had the patch download while I was sleeping so I punched it in and HOLY CRAP! Its flying! I'm getting around average 45 fps with best / best on allahs fist right now! Funny that I'm the first one to report on this but it looks like the others are still playing the game after the patch came out.. Good job guys! BTW Steve, shouldnt this thread be in the tech support section? [ October 02, 2007, 12:29 AM: Message edited by: Hotti ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spindry69 Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Looking good here too, running Alla's fist with everything maxed out. Frame rates are between 32-58, low 40's average. With v1.03, running at reduced textures, it varied between a little bit laggy to downright horrible. When it was really bad I rebooted the PC and that always resulted in a smoother game. It really seems much improved now, great job! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hukka Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Yes, much MUCH better performance with 8800 GTS! Windows XP Intel Duo Core E6600 @ 3,4GHz nVIDIA 8800 GTS 2 Gb RAM 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
handihoc Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Much better, smoother performance than 1.03, but the actual framerate is still lower than it should be for a system like mine. eg Allah's Fist 18-25; Strength and Faith (a very graphics rich scenario): 8-20. This is with everything maxed. I would expect higher, given that people here with lower specs are getting better framerates. But the main point is, it's smooth and beautifully playable now, with only very occasional lag, which is much reduced from previously. So overall I'm very happy - SF plays like it should, with no delays. I'm just baffled that on such a high end system I'm getting such low framerates overall. As Steve says, it must be down to Nvidia - just hope they sort it soon. Core 2 Duo E660 2G Ram Nvidia 7950 GT Win XP Media Center. [ October 02, 2007, 03:16 AM: Message edited by: handihoc ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dowarisch Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Awesome patch. This is like it should have been from the start. Allahs Fist is smooth as silk now, with all details on. Core 2 Duo E6600 2Gigs DDR2 Pc800 Ram Nvidia 8800 GTS 320 Win XP Pro 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirtweasle Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Runs like a champ now Steve, a huge improvement, getting the exact sort of performance I expect. Detail looks good, only minor gripe as reported in the tech support section is the fonts in game appear "fuzzy" at a distance. I also noticed the wheels on the Strykers have a certain octagon or decagon -ish quality to them. Did not have enough time last night to fiddle with any adjustments in game or tweak the 3D card settings for CMSF or even play any scenarios more than a few turns to measure FPS and take a little look around. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandur Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 hm, i for one must say that i dont notice any difference. i played thought Al Amahra, wich is my traditional first scenario after a patch. when i looked over the tiny map with my force i had visualy no "fluid" frames. i didnt checked with fraps so far. i will play around further and come back to oyu and report more precise if possible. Offtopic; a little side note on the patch... Al Amahra scenario was never so hard befor. the first time i lost a stryker. i had 11 killed and 4 wounded. i had a blast and a total victory still! its much much better now, units fireing and expanding ammo finaly(the have tousends of shots, so why not ). i had just "once" soldiers taking the direct rout down a roof insead of a stairwell... all in all, good job, singleplayer WEGO playes out dramaticaly improoved. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted October 2, 2007 Author Share Posted October 2, 2007 Excellent. As I said, we still don't know what the problem is so any increase in speed is "accidental". What I mean by that is we implemented the new system to speed up drawing for cards that are behaving themselves, not specifically for the problematic nVidia cards. So far the sample posted here is pretty much what we expected. Some zip to rates that are pretty close to what they should be, which of course is nice Others are still playing at below what their system should be capable of, but for the first time now playing with rates that are "acceptable" from a playability standpoint (unlike before v1.04). We did not expect to see is someone, Pandur in this case, that had no noticable increase. Pandur, any information you can provide will likely be useful. Well, so far I have to say that this confirms, in my mind at least, that the problem is indeed with the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) having difficulty interacting with the VRAM. It appears that there is some very low level interaction with the host computing system that determines how bad this problem is for the individual user. nVidia has admitted that a problem like this exists and was supposed to have fixed with their most recent driver update. To us it doesn't look fixed! We're not sure what more we can do for the affected nVidia users, however we have a couple of leads to check into as we make the v1.05 patch. Hopefully somnething will come of it. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandur Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 thanks for coming back that fast! nVidia has admitted that a problem like this exists and was supposed to have fixed with their most recent driver update. interessting. i still use this beta drivers wich where released for bioshock so to say. to boost compatibily(sp!?). there was a thrad in the tech support wich said to try them out. today evening i will get the latest non beta Nvidia divers and look if there is some difference. for now i post my specs here... 7950GT core duo E6400(i have that M$ multi core patch installed) 2Gb ram Win XPsp2 poffesional if the DX diag could be interessting just say. i can post it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuhrershih Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Much better framerate on my 8800GTS 640MB. So far so good,the game become playable and running smoothly. INTEL CORE DUO E6600 4GB DDR2 667 RAM 8800GTS 640MB Now I need some 1.04 patch test on my second computer with ATI 2900XT [ October 02, 2007, 08:18 AM: Message edited by: fuhrershih ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted October 2, 2007 Author Share Posted October 2, 2007 Pandur, It will be interesting to know if the new drivers do anything for you. From what I remember it didn't help many people here, however I am still hopeful The DX report isn't needed by us, thanks for offering. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cougar_DK Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Game runs a lot better with 1.04 on my 8800 640. The only strange thing I have left is the toggle with shadows on/off that removes the inf... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted October 2, 2007 Author Share Posted October 2, 2007 Cougar_DK, The only strange thing I have left is the toggle with shadows on/off that removes the inf...Yeah, we have NO IDEA what that is all about. We had one tester that was experiencing this using Vista 64 so we thought it was just some combo of driver and that OS. But we now have a second nVidia guy with the same problem and he is using XP. And it isn't even consistent within a scenario sometimes! It's a complete mystery to us because it is happening for so few people. Have I mentioned how much fun it is to work with video hardware? Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hev Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 For me theres been a marked improvement with the stability of the framerate and the overall level of frames. Faster and smoother.........( sounds like something my missus tells me ) wich is great. My Rig QX6600 XFX 8800gtx 2gig Corsair 8500c Asus p5b Deluxe 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xIGuNDoCIx Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 This is my setup: AMD Turion x2 64 1.8Ghz 2GB of RAM Nvidia 6150 Geforce Go with 768MB Shared Ram Windows Vista Home Premium Even though it is not much it worked well for my first game after installing it (patched up to 1.03 before I played my first game), too my surprise. Gamplay and frames were smooth and acceptable, graphics were very nice as well. After I closed out of the game and later loaded up my saved game thats when all the problems began. Most noticable problem now is that no matter what graphics settings I choose the game always renders eveything in the lowest settings and my FPS are low. My first game I had everything set at the default settings (Texture Detail=improved, Model Detail=improved, AA=off) and it looked ten times better than it does now. I had hoped for a nice performance jump with 1.04 but I am still having problems. My drivers and OS are up to date as well. Should I try re-installing the game? Why would it work great the first game and bomb out now? [ October 02, 2007, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: xIGuNDoCIx ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted October 2, 2007 Author Share Posted October 2, 2007 Interesting. I am not very familiar with the particular card you have. It sounds like the VRAM (or the shared RAM) isn't getting flushed out correctly. Here is a quick test: If you quit Combat Mission completely and start it back up, does the game run well or poorly? If it runs poorly, what happens after you reboot your computer? Please post your answer here so I don't loose track of your question Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandur Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 ok, all is fine. i looked with fraps now and it is indeed much better but its just that i notice verry little impoovment in the al amahra scenario(25fps) but generally it is much improoved, also for my system in other, bigger, maps. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xIGuNDoCIx Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Originally posted by Battlefront.com: Interesting. I am not very familiar with the particular card you have. It sounds like the VRAM (or the shared RAM) isn't getting flushed out correctly. Here is a quick test: If you quit Combat Mission completely and start it back up, does the game run well or poorly? If it runs poorly, what happens after you reboot your computer? Please post your answer here so I don't loose track of your question Steve It has run poorly ever since I quit my first game. Restarting and Rebooting do not help at all. The Nvidia 6150 is a laptop vid card. Here is the link to Nvidias Tech/Specs for it. http://www.nvidia.com/page/nb_6100_tech_specs.html 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Guest Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 deleted per user request 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peleprodigy Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 1.04 is much improved for me. I am not getting anything near 60 fps like someone else stated, but then I am maxing everything out at 1920x1200 resolution with vsync on. The 25+ or so consistent on allah's will have to do (heh, now i can stop loading up that boring scenario ). Frankly i am just eyeballing it, no fraps, so it could be higher. It just feels a touch under 30. Future patches by nvidia can only help I imagine. In any case, it is definitely playable at high settings now, so thank you for the patch. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpl Steiner Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 I am running on Best/Best with 2xAA/4xAF with very good FPS in all but the biggest scenarios now, whereas before I had to use Improved/Improved or even Balanced/Improved. I still notice a FPS increase when I switch to desktop and back again though, so there is still something odd going on with VRAM. Very pleased now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peleprodigy Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 ps- I'm at full AA and AF too, sao that may be why Im not getting 60 fps. One thing I have noticed is that the game now subs in much lower detail textures at a certain distance,and it is clearly visible with the naked eye. This is likely helping the frames, as it seemed like v 1.0 to 1.3 were trying to draw all the detail for the entire scene at best/best. Would it be possible to establish a view distance setting where one could adjust this manually? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkEzra Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 I ran well with v 1.03 but didn't notice any real FPS pick up (or Loss) with 1.04. But just to see I changed my NV 7300GS from "balanced" to "let the game decide"...a real difference. I just thought I'd mention it for what it is worth 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirtweasle Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 Something appears to be hosed up now with fonts and icons which now look fuzzy or out of focus, and in general more jagged looking straight lines. I also notice the ground appears more patchy in a regular rectangle pattern at medium distance. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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