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Graphic lag?

spelk

By spelk
in Theatre of War 2

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spelk Junior Member

spelk

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I was thoroughly impressed with the game just running through the tutorial. It is much more realistic in terms of vehicles having to do three point turns to get to places, and the men do follow paths that are combat savvy, trying to keep to in cover and finding suitable shooting positions.

However, when I started the British campaign, and had many units to manage, as well as a whole army of germans rolling through a desert valley, the game became unplayable due to graphics lag (I think). It just got worse and worse, until I had trouble controlling any unit with any level of confidence. My machine is no top of the range, but it can handle most of the crop of current games out at the moment. I was really looking forward to large scale desert tank combat, but from what I've seen, even with the graphics turned down to very low, and it really does look barren and hideous then, it had trouble handling just panning the camera. Perhaps its just a graphics driver problem, or I need to delve into performance to get it to work.. but from an initial rush of enthusiasm for the game, if I can't sort out the performance issue it will be dead in the water for me.. :(

Anyway, I've updated my graphics drivers to no avail, still get the game stuttering and the units seem to move forward in lagged time frames, even at lowest graphical settings..

My system as reported by DxDiag (snipped for brevity) is as follows:


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System Information

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Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.090206-1234)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.                

System Model: Dell DXP051                  

BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A05

Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.40GHz (2 CPUs)

Memory: 3582MB RAM

Page File: 464MB used, 5001MB available

Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS

DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode


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Display Devices

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        Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT/GTO

     Manufacturer: NVIDIA

        Chip type: GeForce 7900 GTO

         DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC

       Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0291&SUBSYS_042B10DE&REV_A1

   Display Memory: 512.0 MB

     Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)

          Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor

  Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200

      Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll

   Driver Version: 6.14.0011.8250 (English)

      DDI Version: 9 (or higher)

Driver Attributes: Final Retail

 Driver Date/Size: 3/27/2009 10:03:00, 6186880 bytes

      WHQL Logo'd: Yes

  WHQL Date Stamp: n/a

              VDD: n/a

         Mini VDD: nv4_mini.sys

    Mini VDD Date: 3/27/2009 10:03:00, 6280416 bytes


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Sound Devices

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Description: Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio

Is there any advice folks can give me to get the game running as was intended (like in the low unit count tutorials)?

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Sneaksie Senior Member

Sneaksie

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Slowdown when there are many units on the battlefield means that the CPU is not sufficient, not the video card. Pentium 4 or D is a minimal requirement and slowdown in larger battles is inevitable; in such situations you should set the game speed to 0.5 using the buttons at the top of the screen. Lowering graphics settings won't help much so set them to middle or high, but for your card setting the shadows to normal, turining off high landscape detail and turning ambient occlusion may help (try it).

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spelk Junior Member

spelk

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Ah it seems I've mis-calculated the ability of my PC to scale up from low unit count tutorials to the main campaign battles. I should have checked the system processor requirements really, but sadly I saw the game perform well in the first few missions I did, and wanted the full product. Ah well, thank you for your help. I guess I'll have to shelve the game until I can afford a new PC sometime in the future.

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GoodGuy Member

GoodGuy

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spelk, try to play larger battles at 0.5 speed first, you may get satisfactory framerate, and return the speed to normal when the most units will be dead.

I installed the official AMD Dual-Core-Optimizer on my system (I've got a AMD X4 940 - a quad-core CPU, though) and found it to boost performance to some extent. With the demo mission being heavily scripted and with quite some new units appearing from "nowhere" (due to the player triggering the AI's reinforcements), the game will put quite some load on slower CPUs when more units enter the fray. After installing the optimizer (and the AMD cool+quiet CPU drivers), the framerates were more stable and switching to FF speed didn't turn the game into a diashow anymore... it rather looks like the units move with quick/smooth choppiness or "jumps" now, which is quite some improvement. Switching to free cam boosted performance a tiny bit, too.

There is a dual-core patch for Intel-based systems, a "KB"-fix from Microsoft.

Sneaksie, can you confirm that from a dev POV?

There are some Dual-core CPUs from Intel that outperform or match the performance of AMD-Quad CPUs (i.e. Intel 8500 and others), so the game should perform pretty good on these systems, in theory. Spelk didn't specify what type of CPU he's got though.

Does the game use/support dual cores AND quad-cores? Usually, only older games or games with rudimentary or non-existend support for multi-core systems would require the use of the patch/optimizer.

Oh one more thing, setting the sound (hardware-)acceleration in DXDIAG to "standard", "basic" or "minimum" (i've got a German OS here, so not sure about the english description) may reduce lag on some systems, especially with soundcards from CREATIVE (SB Live!, Audigy) or onboard Realtek-chipsets.

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GoodGuy Member

GoodGuy

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*BUMP*

Sneaksie, can you confirm that from a dev POV?

Yes, no, maybe?

Oh I should add that installing AMD cool+quiet and the optimizer improved graphics dramatically. I just replayed the demo, and the gfx-performance when playing on FF is almost totally fluid, it just gets choppy when many enemy/friendly units enter the mission area (note: on FF speed!). So having installed both of these drivers increased the performance big time on my system, with settings on high/max (maybe HDR disabled... , still great performance on a nvidia 7600 GT , ~40 fps on normal speed). Am I just seeing things?

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Sneaksie Senior Member

Sneaksie

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*BUMP*

Yes, no, maybe?

Oh I should add that installing AMD cool+quiet and the optimizer improved graphics dramatically. I just replayed the demo, and the gfx-performance when playing on FF is almost totally fluid, it just gets choppy when many enemy/friendly units enter the mission area (note: on FF speed!). So having installed both of these drivers increased the performance big time on my system, with settings on high/max (maybe HDR disabled... , still great performance on a nvidia 7600 GT , ~40 fps on normal speed). Am I just seeing things?

AFAIK Core Optimizer is a software way to fix hardware bugs (Intel didn't need to release such a tool for it's dual-core processors), most notably timer desynchronization of two cores.

Game uses second core to update pathfinding matrixes, it's great that installation of this tool improves performance further.

BTW, what do you mean by installing AMD cool'n'quiet? It's the name of AMD technology, how it can be installed or not?

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GoodGuy Member

GoodGuy

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AFAIK Core Optimizer is a software way to fix hardware bugs.... [] , most notably timer desynchronization of two cores.

Yes and no. While some people (falsely?) claimed the optimizer tweaked bugs in AMD dual-core CPUs as well, the AMD Dual-Core Optimizer was meant to be a tweak to avoid desynchronization of 2 cores WHEN playing OLD games that do not support multiple CPUs or games which have faulty/rudimentary multi-core support only. Old Games that run on dual-cores (no matter if AMD or INTEL) may feature extremely fast (main symptom) or extremely choppy movement of units ingame. I played the good old Company of Heros game on my AMD quad-core, and the units moved ridiculously fast. It went back to normal speed after installing the tweak.

Intel didn't need to release such a tool for it's dual-core processors.

That's wrong. They just didn't feel they would have to put up the same customer support as AMD, so they did not release such a tweak.

But Microsoft released a tweak with the very same function as a KB patch (Win XP) exclusively for INTEL dual-core CPUs. Look it up on their update site.

BTW, what do you mean by installing AMD cool'n'quiet? It's the name of AMD technology, how it can be installed or not?

My mainboard's (Gigabyte) driver CD contains "AMD CPU drivers", and the bundle is called "AMD Cool & Quiet Drivers", which can be obtained from the AMD website, too. In theory, they control the performance according to the actual type of usage (like just being on the desktop - CPU idle, or playing a game where 100% performance is needed), in order to keep stuff - guess what - "cool and quiet". ;) AMD doesn't provide any infos about what these drivers do in particular, so they might provide other functions/tweaks too, i don't know.

I mentioned these drivers, as I am not sure whether the AMD drivers or the dual-core optimizer enhanced the performance of the TOW2-demo, as I installed both before starting the demo again. It would be logical to gain a performance push by using the optimizer though, even if I'm using a quad-core.

That leads to more questions though:

a)Does TOW2 use quad-cores, yes or no?

b)Why would a core-optimizer enhance performance on TOW2, although the game, as you say, already uses at least 2 cores? Does the game code work properly there?

Quite some people here reported problems with lag/choppy gameplay, although their systems are quite capable.

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Sneaksie Senior Member

Sneaksie

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Well, surely ToW2 doesn't run ultra-fast without the optimizer:) It seems that it improves usage of multiple cores by the game, since natively it uses second core for pathfinding matrix calculation. Usage of 3 or 4 cores was not implemented (and to my knowledge a few, if any, games use them now, this requires almost complete main systems code rewriting), so i think this is the reason for the performance gain you reported. It seems AMD CPU users should install optimizer to at least try it.

Regarding AMD or Intel customer support or supposed errors, i don't want to start a holy war here. I assume you are an AMD processors fan, which is fine :)

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Mongo Member

Mongo

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You can also improve the performance of your computer by cleaning out temp files and tidying up your registry.

And yes, you can clean out your registry without buggering it up.

Two very safe and easy to use free utilities are CCleaner and Glary Utilities. I've been using both for a few years now without any problems.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

http://www.glaryutilities.com/

I also use JV16 Powertools, which can make a mess of your registry. I know from personal experience.

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