10 fps and hiccups that shouldn't be happening! Help please?

[Eucharistadorer]

I'm new to the forums, and Medieval 2, so hi.

I just downloaded the demo, and with everything maxed, I'm getting 10 fps and things are stuttering in the Battle of Pavia. What would be causing this, my gfx card? This shouldn't be happening-to my knowledge-on a system such as mine: GIGABYTE GA-P35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Motherboard/Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4 ghz/ ATI Radeon x1900XT 512mb/ 3 GB DDR2 400mhz/SATA 250 GB 7200 RPM Western Digital Caviar SE.

I take it 10 fps aren't normal, what is? Also, I was thinking that maybe my ram speed is too slow, so the cpu can't work as fast because the memory can't keep up. I'm not sure though. Would an upgrade to pc2 6400 memory make things run smoother maybe? Just throwing this out there. I have the most up to date drivers for my gpu, and I'm pretty sure there aren't any viruses or spyware in my system. So that's not it either. Please, if anyone thinks they know what's causing this, it would be awesome if you could shed some light on the problem.

Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated, I just really want to figure this out. Thanks in advance.

[skullman86]

Is vsync enabled?

If so, turn it off.I would also recommend overclocking your CPU.I was getting barely acceptable FPS with a similar computer (I dont know how a 1900xt compares to a 7800gt since I don't use ATI).Overclocking my CPU and getting an 8800 greatly increased my performance.One other reason may just be that since M2 doesn't take advantage of dual cores so you aren't able to process stuff at a fast enough rate (that is just my assumption, I don't know for sure).

Maybe lower your settings a little (especially unit size if you have it maxed or something)

[zowrath]

First thing that comes to mind is to update all your relevant drivers if you haven't already done so. Chipset INF driver, graphics drivers, sound drivers and so on. I don't know if this things are even an issue anymore, but just check that your HD is not in PIO mode (Device Settings in System properties). A couple of years back I had a HD that went into PIO mode. And that really slowed the computer down.

Tomorrow MS is going to release some updates for Vista through Windows Update, that should give better speed for some games and also for copying files. So check WU tomorrow. If you run Vista.

I got a P930D 3ghz, 2 gig ram, ABIT AW8D-MAX mobo and a ASUS ATi X1900XT card. Max settings, no overclocking what so ever, 1280x1024 and no problems what so ever. So you shouldn't need to overclock anything. And be careful if you do.

[ioneye]

M2 doesn't take advantage of dual cores? That's news to me. Anyone knows it it will be supported in the exp pack?

[kelvintyk]

M2 doesn't take advantage of dual cores? That's news to me. Anyone knows it it will be supported in the exp pack?

Yes, kingdoms supports dual-core.

[sapi]

Yes, kingdoms supports dual-core.

All games support dual core; but I sincerely doubt that kingdoms will take any more advantage of it than M2TW does.

[GrnEyedDvl]

All games support dual core; but I sincerely doubt that kingdoms will take any more advantage of it than M2TW does.

Actually thats not quite correct. Some games have issues because a thread finishes before its supposed to and its waiting for the results from another thread, but if there is no wait time built into the code it will crash because of a missing variable. AMD and Intel both have multi core management software and theres a Windows patch that has to be manually installed for some software including games to run properly in a multi core situation.

For Windows XP
Windows articles
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909944
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256

These patches are NOT automatically installed through Windows Update. You either have to select them in the Other Updates section or do a direct install from Windows update. You can go to Add/Remove programs, check the Show Updates option and look for KB896256 to see if you already have it.


AMD Patch
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...mdcpusetup.exe

AMD Dual Core Optimizer
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...ties/Setup.exe

Windows patch with Intel support
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...v4-x86-ENU.exe

There are also some registry entries you can make to force optomization of dual core processing but use those files first.

Try those then reboot your machine and see if its any better, if its not then we need to take a look at your dxdiag file.

[Eucharistadorer]

No vsync isn't enabled, my hdd is running in dma mode, and to my knowledge all my drivers are up to date-but I'll double check. Should I download the latest omega driver for my ATI card, are they really better than standard drivers? Could running the game in widescreen mode on my widescreen monitor be making the gfx card chug? Just a thought.

The dual core should be able to handle it, because even one core is better than most single core processors because of the better micro architecture than previous intel cpus.

Like I said, could my ram be causing a slow down, like lagging the cpu because it's slower than the fsb?

This is really pathetic if you think about it, because zowrath is the third person with a system similar to mine to tell me that they can run the game at max without any drop in performance. Somethings gotta give! I'm so pissed. I'll be getting 3 gigs of 800mhz crucial ballistix from newegg tomorrow, so I'll see if that changes anything.

Thanks for all the replies so far, keep em comin'. I really want to figure this out. What should I do?

[zowrath]

What kind of resolution do you run it in? Even though we got good gfx card, even by today's standard, it can't handle everything

Try with the new RAM. If that doesn't solve it, my next guess would be the gfx card itself. Unless it runs fine on any other game that requires a good card to run. Like the game Oblivion for example. Or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

You could try the old switch the ram around trick. Are you using 3x1024 sticks, or 2x1024 + 2x512? Some times you gotta be careful with what you put in which memory bank. Some times some ram doesn't like to be placed with another brand/type and so on ram. Some times if you use 2x1024 you need to use bank 1+3 or 2+4 and not 1+2 or 3+4. And some times the other way around. It's confusing, I know.

As for spyware/viruses, try http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner free virus scanner, open in Internet Explorer. Kaspersky is the best antivirus program there is at the moment. And the scan is free, and relatively fast from web too.

Then there's always the clean-install option.... Some times Windows, any version, gets borked and needs a clean install. That's about it for now, I'll follow your thread and try to help if I can come up with more ideas.

Oh, and btw, I've heard about others having problems with the demo. Could be the demo is not optimized at tall. It's a demo after all.

[Eucharistadorer]

What kind of resolution do you run it in? Even though we got good gfx card, even by today's standard, it can't handle everything

Try with the new RAM. If that doesn't solve it, my next guess would be the gfx card itself. Unless it runs fine on any other game that requires a good card to run. Like the game Oblivion for example. Or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

You could try the old switch the ram around trick. Are you using 3x1024 sticks, or 2x1024 + 2x512? Some times you gotta be careful with what you put in which memory bank. Some times some ram doesn't like to be placed with another brand/type and so on ram. Some times if you use 2x1024 you need to use bank 1+3 or 2+4 and not 1+2 or 3+4. And some times the other way around. It's confusing, I know.

As for spyware/viruses, try http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner free virus scanner, open in Internet Explorer. Kaspersky is the best antivirus program there is at the moment. And the scan is free, and relatively fast from web too.

Then there's always the clean-install option.... Some times Windows, any version, gets borked and needs a clean install. That's about it for now, I'll follow your thread and try to help if I can come up with more ideas.

Oh, and btw, I've heard about others having problems with the demo. Could be the demo is not optimized at tall. It's a demo after all.

The card runs Oblivion with everything maxed with nearly no stutters. I run my games at widescreen resolution, 1680x1050. Would that be making the gfx card run slower? Maybe an x1900xt is too dated or something.

Does anyone else know about the demo being not optimized, like lagging where the real game is fine?

I don't think I have any viruses or spyware in my system because I scan every week with nod32 and spysweeper, so shouldn't be a problem there. And I did a clean install of Windows about a month ago, and I defrag weekly. So those aren't it either.

What do you guys think of Omega drivers for radeon cards? Should I get those instead of the standard drivers? For some reason I can't install ccc or the latest driver, because I get this message with a "remote procedure call" failing or something, hmm.....

I don't know what to do. Any other suggestions would be great.

[zowrath]

I use standard drivers. Works fine. Try to install an older package of drivers? What about MTW2 original game, how does that run on your computer? And with that resolution you will of course get some decline in FPS over say 1280x1024.

And I wouldn't put too much stock in a demo's performance really. If you can run MTW2 fine, then the add-on should work nicely too.

[Eucharistadorer]

I don't have the original game, and am leary about buying it if it might turn out the same way as the demo. I don't want to spend 40$ if it won't work.

But with that resolution Oblivion runs fine, M2TW shouldn't be stuttering if Oblivion-one of the most demanding games on the market-isnt.

[Eucharistadorer]

What exact settings do you have it at zowrath?

[sapi]

Actually thats not quite correct. Some games have issues because a thread finishes before its supposed to and its waiting for the results from another thread, but if there is no wait time built into the code it will crash because of a missing variable. AMD and Intel both have multi core management software and theres a Windows patch that has to be manually installed for some software including games to run properly in a multi core situation.

*shrugs - you're right, of course, but I was referring to all games currently in development

[GrnEyedDvl]

Yeah I think M2 is right on the development cusp, Kingdoms will probably be a better dual core platform, and whatever the next TW game is should be fully compatible and probably even DirectX 10 compliant.

[Pnutmaster]

I can't say that my game is running at 10 fps, but then again, I have been running at everything maxed settings save for anti alias (set to 0) and shadows (set to high). It's acceptable, until someone tells me that they do in fact run on max settings with no noticeable FPS loss...

Here's the system I'm running:

Operating System: Windows XP Professional
Motherboard: Gigabyte 965P-DS3 Rev.3.3
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 (overclocked to 2.48 GHz)
RAM: 2 Gigs of Corsair DDR2667
Graphics Card: Evga GTS 8800 640 MB
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB 16MB Cache
PSU: Coolermaster EXtreme Power Duo 650W

I will follow some of the links GrnEyedDvl posted and see if my situation improves.

However, I am sure Eucharistadorer and I both would greatly appreciate it if some players with rigs similar to our own posted benchmarks of their M2TW performance (i.e, the exact settings they used, scenario of the battles, average FPS zoomed in and out).

[GrnEyedDvl]

Theres also a LOT of Windows (both Vista and XP) tweaks that can be made to improve performance, some help a lot, some a little. If there is true interest in that I can put a fairly lengthy post together with all kinds of basic troubleshooting and tweaks stuff as well as some directx/driver management stuff and some hardware compatibility stuff.

[ioneye]

Theres also a LOT of Windows (both Vista and XP) tweaks that can be made to improve performance, some help a lot, some a little. If there is true interest in that I can put a fairly lengthy post together with all kinds of basic troubleshooting and tweaks stuff as well as some directx/driver management stuff and some hardware compatibility stuff.

that would be great if you do

[Pnutmaster]

that would be great if you do

It would be of great assistance to me as well!

[Juggernawt]

Demo runs horribly badly on my Athlon64 4000+ / ATi 1950Pro 512mb / 1.5Gb Ram with WinXP. The full game runs smooth as silk at 1280x1024 with most settings maxed.