demo performance

[dakuth]

Hi Guys,

Kursk is my first foray into the series, and based off it I would consider also buying TOW2:Africa... a couple friends and I anyway.

Problem is, for me, I get FPS consistantly lower than 15fps, and in more intense battles such as towards the end of the German demo mission the fps drops down to around 5fps.

Having read these forums a bit I noticed some people having problems that appear not to be related to graphics. I think I have that, because there doesn't seem to be much difference even if I go on low settings, run it in a window, turn off my second monitor, have a static page file (4GB)... etc.

So... it seems to be CPU throttling due to the intensive calculations, yes? I'm surprised... I would have thought I had enough grunt for that, but if I don't find a way to run the demo smoothly, there's not much point in buying the full game.

Does anyone have a solution?

My specs: (can grab a dxdiag if that helps, it's just I'm on my work computer atm.)

Intel S775 Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz CPU

Gigabyte S775 GA-965P-DS3 Core 2 Motherboard

DDR2 2GB G.Skill 800MHz PC6400 RAM Kit NR

Albatron 8800GTX 768M PCIe Video Card

Windows Vista 64-bit

[fcc56]

Your installed RAM capacity is a likely culprit. For Vista 64, you should give serious consideration to doubling your current RAM to 4 GB. Vista's basic overhead is considerably greater than that for XP, and the 64-bit OS can use a lot more RAM than 32-bit versions (128 GB vs. 4 GB).

With more RAM, I would then look to reducing the size of the paging file. The old rules of thumb, are just that—old, and outdated. The 2x RAM for the paging file is a relic of the days when 512MB RAM was a lot. These days,with 2–4 GB RAM being common, having a large paging file will actually reduce performance, because data is unnecessarily being swapped out to the (slow) hard disk.

The optimal size of the paging file is a matter of much disagreement. The best course is to do some experimenting to find what is best for your PC and the way you use it. To start figuring this out, a simple memory monitoring application is helpful, something like Cacheman, that allows you to monitor RAM and paging file use in real time.

If you find that the OS rarely uses most of the available RAM, reduce the paging file. Although not directly applicable to your case with Vista, as an example I have WinXP Pro (32-bit) set for a paging file of 400 MB minimum and 1000 MB maximum with 4 GB RAM (plus a small paging file on the boot drive because XP likes to have this). With these settings my available RAM rarely drops below1.5 GB and there is very little swapping out to the hard drive, which makes all my applications faster and more responsive.

I can't tell you the exact settings that will work best for you. My settings were arrived at over time, beginning with a fixed paging file size (the same value for min and max) and adjusting as necessary to eliminate warning messages about low virtual memory. But if you allow Windows to select a paging-file size for you or follow the 2x or 1.5x RAM "rule," Windows will not use even half your available RAM, but will instead swap data out to the paging file (and then cache some of that data for faster access, and then send it to the paging file again, etc.).

Note that in 32-bit Windows, with 4GB of RAM installed, the OS will show less than 4 GB of available RAM, because some of what is installed is used by the OS. This obviously is not an issue with Vista 64.

Beyond that the E6400 CPU is not the speediest processor out there, although it was popular with overclockers. If you can afford to swap it for something like an E6600 (US$100) or E7500 (US$116) you would probably see a difference in 3D games like this one.

The 8800 GTX is also rather old at this point (by graphics card standards), so an upgrade there would also be helpful. I would probably place this above the CPU upgrade in importance:

1. Double your RAM

2. New graphics card

3. New CPU

For an overview of the best values in graphics cards, try here. Note that when you change your graphics card, you should delete all the drivers for your current card, especially if changing manufacturer (nVidia to ATi and vice versa). If staying with the same manufacturer, you can probably get away with just changing the card and then updating the drivers, since both companies issue their drivers in unified packages (one package for all recent boards). Nonetheless, it is still a good idea to uninstall the current drivers before installing the new board.

[dakuth]

Awesome reply fcc!

Now you mention it, I think I might have doubled my RAM -- those specs were from my original purchase of this box. I probably doubled my page file to go with it, so you general rules still apply. I'm certain I did now, because the main reason I went to 64-bit was for the 4-GIG-RAM issue of 32-bit OSes.

As a matter of fact, I have real-time memory reporting that I run in my vista side-bar on my second monitor. I don't stare at it, so this is from (fuzzy) memory -- please correct me if it sounds off.

So, assume I have 4GB ram, and 8GB page file. I think this is true.

What I find is that firstly they don't jump around like my CPUs do and that on boot, both are about 30% utilised. When I go into games, they generally both jump up to about half. The page file might fill up some more. Some games (I can't remember my specific example) seemed to use up more and more page file over time. I remember this created really long load times. My physical RAM, however, never really fills up.

Should I be reducing my page file so more physical RAM is used? Should I try and reduce the page file so that when I'm doing intensive things my physical RAM is filling up and only spilling into page file a bit? It's entirely possible that what I use to track RAM usage isn't that granular as well -- it's not it's primary purpose. I think it just pulls the info from Vista's performance monitoring, or something.

[Mastiff]

Awesome reply fcc!

As a matter of fact, I have real-time memory reporting that I run in my vista side-bar on my second monitor. I don't stare at it, so this is from (fuzzy) memory -- please correct me if it sounds off.

That windows side bar eats huge amount of ram you turn that off, for gaming and you will see a big diffrence..

Turn this off and your problems will go away...

[dakuth]

That windows side bar eats huge amount of ram you turn that off, for gaming and you will see a big diffrence..

Turn this off and your problems will go away...

heh. I will just make a prediction here, before I do it, and go ahead and say it won't make a difference. I'll turn it off and let you know.

[fcc56]

Should I be reducing my page file so more physical RAM is used? Should I try and reduce the page file so that when I'm doing intensive things my physical RAM is filling up and only spilling into page file a bit?

That's the idea. You want to have the least amount of page-file access you can get away with without getting warning messages or problems with apps running smoothly. Another way to look at it, is, what's the point of 4 GB of RAM if the OS never uses more than 2 GB? If you can get your maximum RAM usage up to between 3 GB and 3.5 GB without the OS complaining, that should improve performance for all your apps, even the OS itself, and certainly with 3D games (that is, 3 to 3.5 GB in your most RAM-intensive situations, not when you're browsing the Web).

I would try setting the paging file to 1.5 GB min and max, and if you don't have any problems with your most RAM-intensive applications, then you might be able to back it down even more, to something like 1024 MB; or, if you are like me and 90% of your computer work is in "2D" then a range might be more suitable—500 MB min and 1024 MB max, for example. As I mentioned before, everyone's situation is different, so there isn't one "right" setting for every machine. But you can fiddle around with the settings until you find something that works and that you're comfortable with. Some folks like more headroom than others.

Anything you can do to minimize hard-drive access will speed up your apps. Closing unnecessary applications can help too. Depending on what AV software you use, turning that off might make a difference, although you would probably also want to disable your Internet connection also, unless you're behind a hardware firewall (if you use a router, for example).

If you want to get really geeky, you can go after the unnecessary services that Windows runs by default. For Vista recommendations, try here and here. For XP 32-bit, try here and here.

[dakuth]

Just thought I'd necro this thread for two reasons:

1. As I predicted it made no difference. Well, no difference is harsh. With fcc's suggestions and turning off my sidebar... in fact turning off basically everything... I was able to squeeze and extra couple of frames out. But nothing that would make it playable.

2. Do any of the patches improve performance? I'm not seeing it. I'm still not convinced that the performance problems are due to lack of power. I think there may be a shortcoming of some sort, but I don't think anyone has identified it yet. My friends who had similar rigs ran the game smoothly. I am, at worst, slightly behind them - but my performance is not slightly behind - it is unplayable.

I'd like to buy this game, but I can't justify it off the demo performance.

[phil stanbridge]

I would suggest that it's actually more a cpu bottleneck causing the problems than a VGA or ram issue you are experiencing. Your ram should suffice, and your VGA should too, even with its age. Obviously you should only run the game on the recommended graphical settings and keep all the ambience off etc to help speed things up. Is the cpu overclocked? That might help it somewhat.

I believe the latest patch does help performance, it certainly appears to have resolved the problems I was having, but at the end of the day unless you can increase the performance from your cpu, there isn't much you can do.

[sand digger]

I too think that the latest patch has helped overall game performance, it plays fine on my all purpose XP PC.