Help please!

by **Camel toe joe** » Mon May 24, 2004 12:34 am

Well guys I made some upgrades and I am still having bad FPS in BF I get decent frames in a 30 player server but 64 fps goes to crap my specs are in my sig but i'll list them again

AMD 1900+(1.6ghz)
9800pro 128
SB audigy2 zs
1gig pc 2700
running xp pro

doesn't seem to make a diffrence if in game settings are high or low

by **residue** » Mon May 24, 2004 12:39 am

the processor is on the slow side.

uncheck all of the graphics options. lower your resolution. close all other applications, including tso if you're using it.

by **Heart Collector** » Mon May 24, 2004 12:46 am

Wolf doesn't need that much of a processor. I have a 1.4 GHZ and I get 90fps alot of the time.

Its probably just a driver issue.

by **Agent-Commando** » Mon May 24, 2004 12:50 am

Originally posted by Heart Collector
Wolf doesn't need that much of a processor. I have a 1.4 GHZ and I get 90fps alot of the time.

Its probably just a driver issue.

This is for BF1942....

Joe have you upgraded the motherboard too? I don't want to think it's the CPU right now but it may very well could be, the 9800 Pro does require a 2ghz and up CPU to get the best performance.

by **shockwave203** » Mon May 24, 2004 1:33 am

don't expect to have high FPS when lots of things are happening on screen with an AMD 1900. It's just too old

by **-HaVoC-** » Mon May 24, 2004 6:54 am

I remember I went from a P4 2.0 to a 2.53 and doubled the ram to a gig of Corsair XMS and it made a world of difference.

My recommendation at this point is a reinstall of the system. Once that's done your at a baseline and can decide from there.

by **BladeRunner** » Mon May 24, 2004 7:33 am

Joe, why fight it, it looks like your motherboard can handle
an XP/Thoroughbred 2600.

current price for a 2600 = $71.23
http://www.pricewatch.com

new cpu or not one big thing to look for is that your onboard
sound is disabled. (that means disabled in BIOS and no
drivers running for it at all) (long time ago that ended up
to be Tommy's problem i believe)

read these threads it might help:
http://forums.powervs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6871&highlight=highway
http://forums.powervs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8819&highlight=slog%2Fhighway

by **CrazyBri** » Mon May 24, 2004 8:48 am

You mentioned on TS you were using dual desktop. I recommend disabling that 2nd monitor when playing bf1942 or else it might be eating up a decent amount of your framerate on monitor#1.

Residue is right when he says your cpu is on the slow side. The reason you aren't noticing a difference between high and low detail is because the cpu is the bottleneck. (maybe the frontsidebus too) Lowering resolution, sound detail, and effects should give you the most noticeable increases I'd say. (until you upgrade the cpu)

by **RCglider** » Mon May 24, 2004 8:57 am

Broken record:

You don't need a faster cpu. Sure it helps start the game faster, but it's not the problem. As soon as I read ".....doesn't seem to make a diffrence if in game settings are high or low", the answer is clear.

In each case, the problem is likely one or more of the following, not necessarily in order of importance:

1. too much background activity; antivirus, windoz services, etc. etc. etc. OR there's a nasty sucking up resources.

2. hardware conflicts; sound, video etc. No offense to Creative users, but CL audio cards can cause more problems. Try using a different PCI card if you have one to test it. At least then you'll know. Make sure the onboard sound is disabled in the bios too.

3. driver conflicts from incomplete removal of old drivers or between different hardware. Use driver cleaner if reinstalling drivers.

4. Fast Write is turned on. Turn it off in bios

5. Inadequate power supply-unlikely but is possible. Overheating does strange things too.

6. operating system/bios is not optimized to give full performance- your setup shouldn't need extreme tweaking.

7. Video or sound settings in game are wrong. In BF42, make sure shadows are OFF, and hardware is ON for sound. The rest is simply a matter of adjusting. Also increase the sound buffer in the default settings in sound.con file. I don't have game installed here at work, so can't look it up. It's an easy find in forum posts.

8. In Control Panel, set monitor refresh rate to 75+. In game, make sure refresh rate is unlocked. It's referenced in many messages.

9. When game is running, Alt-tab out, then alt-tab-delete for task manager. Look for BF1942.exe (?), and set priority to High. This can help quite a bit in lower end systems.

10. Check to see how much ram is being used. Free Mem Pro with the correct settings, does help performance, period, but doubtful it's the fix in your case.

11. If it's a VIA kt400 chipset mobo......oh boy.

As long as the cpu is beyond what the application requires, the video card will give the bigger boost, and regardless of cpu speed, the game should run fine. Heck, my old system with a GF3 even runs BFV smooth, although at lower vid settings of course. The point is, you shouldn't be having the issues described. The highest performance is not necessary, only what the game needs. The bottleneck theory is phuey.

You didn't mention what motherboard you're using. Edit: oops, I see you're using a Soyo Dragon KT333. Do you have the latest bios and via 4in1 drivers?

Check for IRQ conflicts too?

by **BladeRunner** » Mon May 24, 2004 9:11 am

Glider, his motherboard is in his sig. "Soyo Dragon Ultra"
i agree with you Glider, he can tweak alot out of his system
now but for only 71 dollars he could have a lot more cpu.
i think he would be smart to do both, new cpu and tweaks.
:beer:

by **RCglider** » Mon May 24, 2004 9:46 am

Originally posted by BladeRunner
Glider, his motherboard is in his sig. "Soyo Dragon Ultra"
i agree with you Glider, he can tweak alot out of his system
now but for only 71 dollars he could have a lot more cpu.
i think he would be smart to do both, new cpu and tweaks.

Yeah, but that's not his problem. I've seen this too many times. People keep throwing money at problems and get more frustrated....he's already done both. There's absolutely no reason he shouldn't be able to play 64 players with zero issues.

So he puts in a 2600 and still has problems....next advice some will give is his mobo is too old, FSB is too slow, ram is not fast enough, whatever.

My old system:
Shuttle AK31a
1.4 Athlon tbird
768 ddr2100
Diamond MX400 sound card (extinct dinosaur not hw supported)
Gainward ti450 gf3 oc'd

64 player servers are no problem. Sometimes I still use it to play on #1 when my son hijacks mine. I thought I was going to be forced into buying a 9800 pro for myself and hand down the 9700 pro so he could play BFV, but he's satisfied with it and the game does not lag at all. FPS are 30-40 but it's smooth, no jerking.

By the time Camel is done, he'll have a whole new system. Maybe he should do a clean install and start from scratch. I still don't doubt the CL sound card is part of the problem.

Edit: I will qualify this by saying VIA boards can be a nightmare. The KT266a was a good board, but after that, VIA mobo's have been known to cause much displeasure. I'm not sure about his KT333 though.

by **Buliwyf** » Mon May 24, 2004 10:21 am

camel I told ya:

defrag.

if that don't work, stop using the dual display option

if that don't work, reformat.

also, click on RUN and type MSCONFIG. uncheck any uncessecary startup items.

by **BladeRunner** » Mon May 24, 2004 10:37 am

Camel, see if you can get a picture or list of running
processes, Glider and Bullhead might can tell you what
you can get rid of from the list.
:beer:

by **Buliwyf** » Mon May 24, 2004 10:52 am

this is a good guide as well.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

by **CrazyBri** » Mon May 24, 2004 10:54 am

RC when guadal comes up on ecgn 1 and it's a full server, how about joining on your 1.4 tbird and taking some screenshots during gameplay with fps enabled. If you can hold 30-40 on the ground near the flags I'll do a cartwheel. (w/o looking straight at ground or sky)

BTW I've worked a lot with this game engine and for you to say my "bottleneck" remark as being phuey is pretty bold.

It blows my mind that you think a 1.6ghz isn't a bottleneck to a radeon9800 pro. I don't care how the hell you tweak the system it's still a bottleneck on cpu demanding games. (ie not counter-strike

)

Broken record:

You don't need a faster cpu. Sure it helps start the game faster, but it's not the problem. As soon as I read ".....doesn't seem to make a diffrence if in game settings are high or low", the answer is clear.

The graphics quality slider adjusts the LOD parameters. This affects how many vertices your videocard has to crunch at any given time. THe videocard takes the burden of this.

Effects slider is mostly tied to the fillrate on the videocard. Faster CPU can help though but it's mainly from the vid card.

Now I will agree with you that his system might have motherboard/agp/memory/overall tweaking issues. I remember him saying he was at 5fps on el al. When I played el al on #1 (64 players) with my tbird 1.3 and pc133 RAM + Ti4400 I would drop pretty low at times but not below 15fps. And that was with weaker IRQ management via windows2k (sound card + vidcard + network card sharing the pain)

Camel I've had VIA chipsets and they can lead to a lot of issues like RC mentioned. With windows2000 there used to be some major problems with their drivers and how they dealt with AGP operations. You should checkout their 4 in 1 changelist to see what improvements were made over time and see where your current VIA drivers fit on that list.

Help please!

Help please!

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