Good rig = horrible performance [Archive]

Platinumoxicity

03-15-2010, 10:06 AM

I've been playing the STALKER games since SoC first came out. I know they demand a lot from your PC and I have no problem with the occasional 2s pauses that happen when the game loads something.

But after my hardware upgrade last spring I've noticed a substantial decline in performance in both SoC and CS. But by far the worst is the new one, CoP. And it's weeiiird...

The problem: CoP runs somewhere between 10-20 fps in wide open areas with no characters, which by my standards is still playable. But when you have people or enemies around, like when you go to Skadovsk, it drops to 1-9 fps. And even I can't stand playing with 1 fps. It's terrible. I first tried on medium settings and low resolution. I noticed that the performance was horrendous so I lowered it all the way to extreme-low. To my big surprise, it didn't improve the performance at all. Not even the slightest change to either direction. Then I did something wild and actually changed all the settings to as high as dx9 allowed, and to even greater surprise, even that didn't do anything. The performance wasn't at all any worse than on the lowest possible settings, nor was it any better. What's going on here? :confused:

SoC and CS aren't that bad but I still need to play them on lower settings than what I got used to with my old rig.

Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone else use a GTS250 1024Mb?

My former rig (which ran SoC and CS fine to me)
OS: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp.080413-2111)
Motherboard: ASUS A8R-MVP
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 4000+
Memory: 1024MB RAM DDR1? I dunno how slow it was... Slooo.
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GT 512Mb

Present rig (horrible performance in all STALKER games)
OS: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp.080413-2111)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor, MMX, 3DNow (4 CPUs), ~1.6GHz
Memory: 3070MB RAM DDR3
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1024Mb
NVIDIA driver version: 196.21
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Chevyboy88

03-15-2010, 11:41 AM

Your new video card isn't very good sorry to tell you. It's significantly slower than the 260 which is the minimum you would realistically want to play CS / CoP with medium- high settings. Anything less and you would be looking into the low-medium settings.

All your other spec's look decent enough.

Also I assume you cleaned up the old drivers very thoroughly from your computer before upgrading if you didn't formate and do a fresh OS install (highly suggested when upgrading that many components). Left over video drivers for example could cause any number of issues such as poor performance.

masta121

03-15-2010, 12:14 PM

Your new video card isn't very good sorry to tell you. It's significantly slower than the 260 which is the minimum you would realistically want to play CS / CoP with medium- high settings. Anything less and you would be looking into the low-medium settings.

All your other spec's look decent enough.

Also I assume you cleaned up the old drivers very thoroughly from your computer before upgrading if you didn't formate and do a fresh OS install (highly suggested when upgrading that many components). Left over video drivers for example could cause any number of issues such as poor performance.

Nope, that's a complete lie. A 250 has plenty of horsepower for the Stalker series. It will only be too slow if you're trying to enable loads of AA, or SSAO.

Platinumoxicity

03-15-2010, 12:20 PM

Your new video card isn't very good sorry to tell you. It's significantly slower than the 260 which is the minimum you would realistically want to play CS / CoP with medium- high settings. Anything less and you would be looking into the low-medium settings.

GTS250 is faster and it's got more memory than the 7950GT that i used to have. So it can't explain the performance decrease in other X-Ray engine games.

And remember what I said. In CoP the exact same performance on maximum (dx9) settings as in minimum settings. How is that possible? I'd know for certain that my card sucks if it was super low settings=10fps and ultra-high settings=1fps... but it's the same on all settings.

Also I assume you cleaned up the old drivers very thoroughly from your computer before upgrading if you didn't formate and do a fresh OS install (highly suggested when upgrading that many components). Left over video drivers for example could cause any number of issues such as poor performance.

I bought a brand-new faster system HDD for my new rig and naturally did a new OS install on it. Last week I cleaned and reainstalled the drivers. I even tried the new beta drivers afterwards and cleaned and installed the new official drivers afterwards when it didn't do jack s*it.

Maybe the X-Ray engine has some strange compatibility issues with the GTS250?

Chevyboy88

03-15-2010, 12:23 PM

Nope, that's a complete lie. A 250 has plenty of horsepower for the Stalker series. It will only be too slow if you're trying to enable loads of AA, or SSAO.

Genius! Really brilliant!

SSAO, AA, Sunshafts enabled would qualify as "high" settings which if you had read what I said would bring the 250 to it's knees :rolleyes:

If you are going to troll at least read what you are quoting before you post. High settings generally requires most if not all settings be enabled and set to high.

Platinumoxicity

03-15-2010, 12:27 PM

I really don't need the SSAO, AA or sunshafts. I just want to play the game on any settings no matter how low they are. :(

Chevyboy88

03-15-2010, 12:34 PM

GTS250 is faster and it's got more memory than the 7950GT that i used to have. So it can't explain the performance decrease in other X-Ray engine games.

And remember what I said. In CoP the exact same performance on maximum (dx9) settings as in minimum settings. How is that possible? I'd know for certain that my card sucks if it was super low settings=10fps and ultra-high settings=1fps... but it's the same on all settings.

I bought a brand-new faster system HDD for my new rig and naturally did a new OS install on it. Last week I cleaned and reainstalled the drivers. I even tried the new beta drivers afterwards and cleaned and installed the new official drivers afterwards when it didn't do jack s*it.

Maybe the X-Ray engine has some strange compatibility issues with the GTS250?

Won't touch on your second paragraph as you did the proper procedure, nothing to improve on there.

However just because a card is faster is no reason to assume you will have vastly improved performance. Anyways tho it is possible your CPU could be the issue with the problems you are experiencing. Let me explain.

I'm sure you've heard the word bottleneck before, while yes this word is tossed around far too often it does have some truth to it. Now normally in a game an easy way to test this is to adjust video settings. Video settings are almost entirely GPU exclusive options so when raised or lowered with no FPS chance it indicates that the game is being CPU limited.

----

Now with the above said it would point to your CPU being the culprit. Now your CPU is pretty good and should be more than enough for the Stalker games so I suspect something may be wrong on your end, perhaps a power setting or bios setting. It could be any number of issues but without knowing more about your specifics it would be hard for me to say exactly what.

Some of the more likely problems could be power saving issues. Check your windows power settings and make sure "high performance" is selected or that the CPU is not set to scale down. Alternatively you posted that your CPU was reporting 1.6Ghz, this is exactly half of what it should be at 3.2Ghz so I would suggest checking your Bios settings as well as a program like CPU-ID to make sure it is scaling out of power saving mode when required. If not that could explain your low FPS problem.

Anyways start with the above if you haven't yet but as said earlier your GPU will limit your FPS when all is said and done. Running a 4870 which is vastly more powerful than the 250 I still run into significant bottlenecks in Stalker CS and CoP with settings at or near max (this is with medium SSAO, no AA and low sunshafts). Something to keep in mind.

masta121

03-15-2010, 12:35 PM

Genius! Really brilliant!

SSAO, AA, Sunshafts enabled would qualify as "high" settings which if you had read what I said would bring the 250 to it's knees :rolleyes:

If you are going to troll at least read what you are quoting before you post. High settings generally requires most if not all settings be enabled and set to high.

Really, so having the other 20 settings maxed out qualifies as only "medium" then? Please, use some logic. SSAO and sunshafts aren't even noticeable for most people, and AA isn't even necessary if you're running 1920X1200.

Chevyboy88

03-15-2010, 12:47 PM

Really, so having the other 20 settings maxed out qualifies as only "medium" then? Please, use some logic. SSAO and sunshafts aren't even noticeable for most people, and AA isn't even necessary if you're running 1920X1200.

Wrong on the AA, wrong on the SSAO and Sunshafts (heck lets toss in sun quality for good measure) and wrong on the "don't need AA when running at "blah blah".

Please dig up some 1920X1200 screenshots with and without AA before making such sensationalist claims because most people know damn well that despite the jaggies being less noticeable they certainly are still present.

Secondly high settings implies high settings. Yes having lets say 10 out of 14 or so settings maxed with the others disabled hardly qualifies as "high" settings. Lets pretend that all of the GPU intense options are left at medium or low... Sunshafts, SSAO, AA, Sun quality, AF, Grass density to name a few. Most people don't enable these or max the ones enabled as the IQ difference is minimal however the FPS difference can be quite large. I guess these people should claim they run on "high" settings despite the fact that 1/3 or more of the settings are not maxed.

Logic? Ya ok :rolleyes:

masta121

03-15-2010, 12:59 PM

Wrong on the AA, wrong on the SSAO and Sunshafts (heck lets toss in sun quality for good measure) and wrong on the "don't need AA when running at "blah blah".

Please dig up some 1920X1200 screenshots with and without AA before making such sensationalist claims because most people know damn well that despite the jaggies being less noticeable they certainly are still present.

Secondly high settings implies high settings. Yes having lets say 10 out of 14 or so settings maxed with the others disabled hardly qualifies as "high" settings. Lets pretend that all of the GPU intense options are left at medium or low... Sunshafts, SSAO, AA, Sun quality, AF, Grass density to name a few. Most people don't enable these or max the ones enabled as the IQ difference is minimal however the FPS difference can be quite large. I guess these people should claim they run on "high" settings despite the fact that 1/3 or more of the settings are not maxed.

Logic? Ya ok :rolleyes:

Really, you think you can just say I'm "wrong" when we're talking about graphics options? And since when is not needing AA at high res a "sensationalist" claim? Sounds to me like you have some sort of bizarre need to be "right" in situations where it's impossible. Also, you're defeating your own argument on the whole high settings business. You said it yourself, those three settings have an extremely minor impact on image quality (AA depending on personal preference of course). Just because a setting has a huge performance cost doesn't mean you need to enable it to be running on high.

Anyway, this argument over graphics settings is simply idiotic, and is not helping the OP whatsoever. I simply stated a fact, and that is that a GTS 250 can easily handle any Stalker game with good FPS, provided you don't get crazy with the filters. Your statement that it is a terrible card that has no chance of running Stalker above 10fps is simply ridiculous.

Btw OP, are you sure that Windows XP is completely updated? You did a fresh install upon completing your new build right?

Chevyboy88

03-15-2010, 01:10 PM

Really, you think you can just say I'm "wrong" when we're talking about graphics options? And since when is not needing AA at high res a "sensationalist" claim? Sounds to me like you have some sort of bizarre need to be "right" in situations where it's impossible. Also, you're defeating your own argument on the whole high settings business. You said it yourself, those three settings have an extremely minor impact on image quality (AA depending on personal preference of course). Just because a setting has a huge performance cost doesn't mean you need to enable it to be running on high.

Anyway, this argument over graphics settings is simply idiotic, and is not helping the OP whatsoever. I simply stated a fact, and that is that a GTS 250 can easily handle any Stalker game with good FPS, provided you don't get crazy with the filters. Your statement that it is a terrible card that has no chance of running Stalker above 10fps is simply ridiculous.

Your right, it is silly and this will be my last post to you.

Sensationalist is correct, and I can't help but notice you didn't provide screenshots to your claim that AA isn't required at higher resolutions. Now if you had said that "jaggies" are less noticeable at higher resolutions then you would have been correct but alas you didn't.

The "minor difference to IQ" were towards the sun quality and grass density. There are actually significant differences with no SSAO and high SSAO, same way with fully tweaked sunshafts, AA and AF. I disproved nothing of my own argument, you made a silly claim that one could turn down 1/3 of the video settings to low or even disabled and still claim to run the game on "high" settings.

Lastly on the resolution you previously claimed (lets use that since it was the grounds for your "AA isn't required" claim) at 250 with medium - high settings would crawl to single digit FPS in Stalker. 260's / 4870's dip well below 25-30 FPS with high - mostly max settings and both are considerably more powerful than the 250 in question.

Anyways silly discussion which you antagonized, I won't be responding to your post anymore so I suggest you do the same.

Btw OP, are you sure that Windows XP is completely updated? You did a fresh install upon completing your new build right?

Once again try reading the post. "OS: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp.080413-2111)" as I'm sure you are aware is the newest service pack. The security updates since SP3 was released would have no impact on his games performance.

------

OP, any word on checking your CPU related settings from above?

Platinumoxicity

03-15-2010, 03:17 PM

Won't touch on your second paragraph as you did the proper procedure, nothing to improve on there.

However just because a card is faster is no reason to assume you will have vastly improved performance. Anyways tho it is possible your CPU could be the issue with the problems you are experiencing. Let me explain.

I'm sure you've heard the word bottleneck before, while yes this word is tossed around far too often it does have some truth to it. Now normally in a game an easy way to test this is to adjust video settings. Video settings are almost entirely GPU exclusive options so when raised or lowered with no FPS chance it indicates that the game is being CPU limited.

----

Now with the above said it would point to your CPU being the culprit. Now your CPU is pretty good and should be more than enough for the Stalker games so I suspect something may be wrong on your end, perhaps a power setting or bios setting. It could be any number of issues but without knowing more about your specifics it would be hard for me to say exactly what.

Some of the more likely problems could be power saving issues. Check your windows power settings and make sure "high performance" is selected or that the CPU is not set to scale down. Alternatively you posted that your CPU was reporting 1.6Ghz, this is exactly half of what it should be at 3.2Ghz so I would suggest checking your Bios settings as well as a program like CPU-ID to make sure it is scaling out of power saving mode when required. If not that could explain your low FPS problem.

Anyways start with the above if you haven't yet but as said earlier your GPU will limit your FPS when all is said and done. Running a 4870 which is vastly more powerful than the 250 I still run into significant bottlenecks in Stalker CS and CoP with settings at or near max (this is with medium SSAO, no AA and low sunshafts). Something to keep in mind.

There arent't the "Normal, performance and power conservation" options on my PC. That's a laptop thing.

About the clock frequency, I took that from dxdiag. Are you saying that a processor can be shipped with half the frequency it's meant to use? I have never touched any system clocks in the BIOS because I'm paranoid and don't want to burn my hw. Why would it be like that? And BTW I checked with nVidia system monitor, and X-Ray engine actually utilizes all 4 cores. And I didn't see any of them go near 100% use. There was lots of performance to spare.

Ok I checked with CPU-Z and the core clock is for each one of the cores 801MHz. Exactly how it should be. 800x4=3200. And I never suspected it to be a CPU issue anyway because my last CPU which was what... 2400MHz? ...was able to play SoC and CS fine. With 1 core. Now is there any specific info you'd like to analyze about what the CPU-Z shows. I checked it pretty good with official info and everything seems to be in order.

And judging by what GPU-Z said about my graphics card, I'd say that at least that doesn't clock down. Because it's fixed to full clockspeed at all times for some reason. Not very power conservative but at least it should give the best performance. (On a default-clocked card that is.) It's not heating up or anything. The max temperature i managed to get with FurMark stability test was... 71C?

...statement that it is a terrible card that has no chance of running Stalker above 10fps is simply ridiculous.
And I really would settle for constant 10fps unlike most people. :P I've heard people saying "I get terrible performance, sometimes as low as 20fps in blablabla..." and I laught out loud at their supercomputers.

masta121

03-15-2010, 03:47 PM

Your CPU is reading 800mhz because of AMD's Cool and Quiet power conservation feature. As soon as it detects some load it will go to the usual 3.2ghz however, so that's unlikely to be the problem. Do you have any other games to test with? Graphics card or motherboard may be bad. Also, what Power Supply do you have?

Chevyboy88

03-15-2010, 04:20 PM

There arent't the "Normal, performance and power conservation" options on my PC. That's a laptop thing.

Odd, my copy of Vista64 (desktop PC) has the options, ok tho that's out of the way.

About the clock frequency, I took that from dxdiag. Are you saying that a processor can be shipped with half the frequency it's meant to use? I have never touched any system clocks in the BIOS because I'm paranoid and don't want to burn my hw. Why would it be like that? And BTW I checked with nVidia system monitor, and X-Ray engine actually utilizes all 4 cores. And I didn't see any of them go near 100% use. There was lots of performance to spare.

No they don't ship processors with lower than listed clock speeds. However most MB's will "downclock" processors usually by lowering the multiplyer when power saving options are enabled (most are by default in the BIOS). Now I personally don't have experience with this issue but I have heard of people experiencing problems with the processor not scaling up to its normal clocks when a load was put on it. Again very rare and unlikely your issue but it is possible.

Ok I checked with CPU-Z and the core clock is for each one of the cores 801MHz. Exactly how it should be. 800x4=3200. And I never suspected it to be a CPU issue anyway because my last CPU which was what... 2400MHz? ...was able to play SoC and CS fine. With 1 core. Now is there any specific info you'd like to analyze about what the CPU-Z shows. I checked it pretty good with official info and everything seems to be in order.

That's not how your processor works, 3.2Ghz quad core isn't 800mhz per core X 4. Each core operates at a frequency of 3.2Ghz. If CPU-Z is reading 800mhz than that is your problem. Here is a link to a SS of how it should look. http://media.bestofmicro.com/6/5/215357/original/cpuz-AMD-Phenom-II-955-cpu-load-@1.32V.png if it doesn't look like that under load then you have an issue.

Anyways start with that, make sure when you check with CPU-Z again that you load it (doesn't have to be much, anything that puts a constant even 5% load on the chip should be fine) so that it reads it's operating clock speeds. If it continues to show 800mhz not 3.2Ghz as listed in the above picture then that's your issue.

Decade7

03-15-2010, 05:52 PM

Something is definately wrong. A phenom 955 & GTS 250 1024 should easily run 'high' (not max) settings.
I wouldn't bother with AA in this game. Because of it's deffered rendering, it doesn't anti-alise much of the image (especially the parts that could really use it, like all the alpha plane foliage) & looks barely better than non-antialised whilst incurring a large frame rate hit. Anisotropic filtering can be left with the slider half way.
Because you are using an NVidia card, make sure your Ambient Occlusion is set to HBAO. Although subtle, I think this effect adds something nice to the look of the gamne but it is quite demanding, so set it to 'low' first & raise to 'medium' if you have everything else tuned in how you like.
V Sync doesn't work on this game but I'm told does produce a frame rate hit. Switch it off.
Sun quality to medium, Sun rays to Low. Light distance, grass density & shadow quality to about 3/4 of the slider.
Evryhting else to on / max.
Let us know how you get on.

Platinumoxicity

03-16-2010, 01:29 AM

Yep. The CPU multiplier is 4x when it should be 16x. I'll try to find the cool 'n' quiet option in the BIOS now.

Edit: Didn't do a damn thing. The multiplier is still 4x. I'll try to set it manually. I hope it doesn't destroy the mobo. With my luck it's highly likely.

Edit2: No. CPU-Z still shows multiplier 4x. Even if i open calculator and enter an operation 999999999! which should put the CPU to the test the multiplier stays the same.

Edit3: I updated my BIOS. It seems that the BIOS my mobo had didn'te even support my CPU. But it looks like the newest version fixed that. Now I was able to change the multiplier to 16x as it should be. It's time to try it out. :| <---Pessimistic smiley just in case, so that I won't be disappointed.

Final cut: Hot damn! I have never even dreamed of 75 fps in a gorgeous game like this. :D It runs perfectly on medium settings now. Now all I have to do is increase the settings so that the fps settles back to a pathetic 25 that I'm more "syncronized with" because I can't stand looking at smooth sailing like this. :)

Thanks guys!

Chevyboy88

03-16-2010, 11:08 AM

You're quite welcome, enjoy ;)

Nerv322

03-17-2010, 04:14 AM

I get a solid 55 to 60 FPS on Clear Sky on High settings and everything else on max AA, AF etc.

CoP gives me a shocking 25 to 30 FPS sometimes it goes up to 55 to 60 but falls and stays at 25 to 30 most often. This is on high with no AA and AF.
Putting everything to medium gives me about 35 to 40 FPS.
Plus there are way too many stutters and pauses that make playing the game annoying.

Specs

Q6600 Quad Core
4GB 800 MHz RAM
2 9800 GTX+ Black editions (SLI)
Win 7 64 bit

I don't think this game is optimised as well as it could be but thats just my opinion. People will tell me something is wrong with system but I don't think that is the case at all.

Sepulch

03-17-2010, 05:01 AM

There arent't the "Normal, performance and power conservation" options on my PC. That's a laptop thing.It is not if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7. Power Options are very important on aspects such as gaming performance. This isn't the 90's where desktops only had a power on/off button. Windows 7 will - if not otherwise configured - even alter the power consumption on your PCI slots where you graphics card sits and so on.

Platinumoxicity

03-17-2010, 06:20 AM

It is not if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7. Power Options are very important on aspects such as gaming performance. This isn't the 90's where desktops only had a power on/off button. Windows 7 will - if not otherwise configured - even alter the power consumption on your PCI slots where you graphics card sits and so on.

Well it's a laptop thing for me because I have Vista on my laptop and I think a laptop is the only platform where it's logical to have the option of reducing performance to conserve energy.

Void(null)

03-17-2010, 10:34 AM

Really, so having the other 20 settings maxed out qualifies as only "medium" then? Please, use some logic. SSAO and sunshafts aren't even noticeable for most people, and AA isn't even necessary if you're running 1920X1200.

Oh man, I can so tell when AA isn't turned on, it bugs me to no end. Granted I only have to use 4x AA to get perfectly smooth lines instead of 16QQ. SSAO also makes a world of difference, its what gives all the models shape and definition, turn it off and everything looks a bit flat and plastic.

Anywho, my thoughts on the current situation:

1: Swap out your 250 for the 7950GT. If the game suddenly becomes playable your GTX250 could be damaged and need to be RMA'ed.

2: Make sure your motherboard's BIOS is up to date. Early BIOS versions for Gigabtye MB's often times have problems with the The Phenom II series. F8B should be the latest but F7 is also good. @BIOS (http://www.gigabyte.us/Support/Motherboard/Utility_DownloadFile.aspx?FileType=Utility&FileID=52) should steer you in the right direction.

3: XP does not play nice with AMD Quad's. Actually, XP's quad-core management is pretty crappy in general. Many times I had far better general performance with a dual than I did a quad with XP, shifting to Vista or Win7 gives an amazing performance boost for quad-core users.

Edit: Nevermind, just read you found the solution. This is what I get for only reading half the thread and then posting. Anyway, Gratz and happy gaming. :)

Platinumoxicity

03-17-2010, 11:30 AM

Oh man, I can so tell when AA isn't turned on, it bugs me to no end. Granted I only have to use 4x AA to get perfectly smooth lines instead of 16QQ. SSAO also makes a world of difference, its what gives all the models shape and definition, turn it off and everything looks a bit flat and plastic.

What people mostly fail to realize is that AA isn't only "smoothing out the jagged lines". It isn't called "multisampling" for nothing. AA sort of... draws between the pixels, it renders 1 3d object multiple times so that the 3d object is not only represented by individual pixels on the screen but also the spaces in between. so when a 3d object would really occupy an area of (hypothetical number) 559.847291477372910 pixels², a screen that only has so many pixels will draw it as exactly 559 complete pixels² which results in jagged lines. But with multisampling, it interpolates the empty pixels outside the occupied area with the pixels from the other samples of that 3d object, showing that object in more detail.

If AA was simply "smoothing out the jagged lines" it would look more like "slight blur" than the actual more detailed picture it renders. And the impact on performance would be marginal.

Bad_Motha

03-17-2010, 01:15 PM

Yep. The CPU multiplier is 4x when it should be 16x. I'll try to find the cool 'n' quiet option in the BIOS now.

Why not just reset the BIOS back to defaults, then go from there.

Chevyboy88

03-17-2010, 03:27 PM

Why not just reset the BIOS back to defaults, then go from there.

He solved his issue, BIOS updated as his old version didn't support his CPU. A few post up ;)

Platinumoxicity

03-17-2010, 10:48 PM

Actually it was the same post that he quoted where I declared that the problem has been solved.

masta121

03-18-2010, 05:36 AM

Oh man, I can so tell when AA isn't turned on, it bugs me to no end. Granted I only have to use 4x AA to get perfectly smooth lines instead of 16QQ. SSAO also makes a world of difference, its what gives all the models shape and definition, turn it off and everything looks a bit flat and plastic.

Anywho, my thoughts on the current situation:

1: Swap out your 250 for the 7950GT. If the game suddenly becomes playable your GTX250 could be damaged and need to be RMA'ed.

2: Make sure your motherboard's BIOS is up to date. Early BIOS versions for Gigabtye MB's often times have problems with the The Phenom II series. F8B should be the latest but F7 is also good. @BIOS (http://www.gigabyte.us/Support/Motherboard/Utility_DownloadFile.aspx?FileType=Utility&FileID=52) should steer you in the right direction.

3: XP does not play nice with AMD Quad's. Actually, XP's quad-core management is pretty crappy in general. Many times I had far better general performance with a dual than I did a quad with XP, shifting to Vista or Win7 gives an amazing performance boost for quad-core users.

Edit: Nevermind, just read you found the solution. This is what I get for only reading half the thread and then posting. Anyway, Gratz and happy gaming. :)

I just meant for me, that was the point I was trying to get across. Graphics after all are a matter of opinion. I'll fire up the game later and try harder to distinguish the difference between SSAO on and off, because I just don't see it, lol.

Void(null)

03-18-2010, 08:39 AM

What people mostly fail to realize is that AA isn't only "smoothing out the jagged lines". It isn't called "multisampling" for nothing. AA sort of... draws between the pixels, it renders 1 3d object multiple times so that the 3d object is not only represented by individual pixels on the screen but also the spaces in between. so when a 3d object would really occupy an area of (hypothetical number) 559.847291477372910 pixels², a screen that only has so many pixels will draw it as exactly 559 complete pixels² which results in jagged lines. But with multisampling, it interpolates the empty pixels outside the occupied area with the pixels from the other samples of that 3d object, showing that object in more detail.

There was absolutely no need for that comment other than to polish your ego. I love it when people go out of their way to appear better than others, and then expose their own ignorance in the process.

Video Games use what is known as Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA). FSAA simply samples the image at a higher resolution than you are displaying. 2x is double, 4x quadruple. At 4x AA you are rendering 16 pixels for every 1 you will display. The Image is then down sampled to the correct resolution, and this results in a clearer, more defined picture.

This is also why the larger your resolution the less you will notice the effect AA has on image quality, and the more of a negative effect it has on performance.

There is no guess work, magic, multiple renders or "Sort of..." drawing between the lines. The GPU simply renders the image bigger than it is, then samples down smaller to fit your resolution.

Its also not known as "Multisampling" at all, its known as Supersampling.

You may be confusing FSAA with MSAA, Multisample Anti-Aliasing.

MSAA is designed to be less intensive than FSAA, because it fills in the aliasing artifacts and thus can render the image in its original resolution, so the GPU has to do significantly less work.

Unfortunately the image quality with MSAA is not as good as FSAA, and it can also interfere with other multi-pass effects, which is why we generally use FSAA for gaming.

I just meant for me, that was the point I was trying to get across. Graphics after all are a matter of opinion. I'll fire up the game later and try harder to distinguish the difference between SSAO on and off, because I just don't see it, lol.

Yes they are, much like music fidelity. To some people they really don't care about the loss of fidelity from MP3's, to others it drives them insane.

For SSAO its important to know what your looking for, the effect is visually subtle but can have a dramatic effect on how realistic a scene looks.

Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IyMajvRWss) is a great sample video. Notice how the walls and arches go from looking like plastic, to having proper shading. You may not notice it to that degree in a game with various other filters in place, but it certainly adds to the overall depth.

Platinumoxicity

03-18-2010, 02:56 PM

There was absolutely no need for that comment other than to polish your ego. I love it when people go out of their way to appear better than others, and then expose their own ignorance in the process.

Video Games use what is known as Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA). FSAA simply samples the image at a higher resolution than you are displaying. 2x is double, 4x quadruple. At 4x AA you are rendering 16 pixels for every 1 you will display. The Image is then down sampled to the correct resolution, and this results in a clearer, more defined picture.

This is also why the larger your resolution the less you will notice the effect AA has on image quality, and the more of a negative effect it has on performance.

There is no guess work, magic, multiple renders or "Sort of..." drawing between the lines. The GPU simply renders the image bigger than it is, then samples down smaller to fit your resolution.

Its also not known as "Multisampling" at all, its known as Supersampling.

You may be confusing FSAA with MSAA, Multisample Anti-Aliasing.

MSAA is designed to be less intensive than FSAA, because it fills in the aliasing artifacts and thus can render the image in its original resolution, so the GPU has to do significantly less work.

There was absolutely no need for that comment other than to polish your ego. I love it when people go out of their way to appear better than those who he thought were going out of their way to appear better than others.

Void(null)

03-18-2010, 04:59 PM

There was absolutely no need for that comment other than to polish your ego. I love it when people go out of their way to appear better than those who he thought were going out of their way to appear better than others.

Well now that we have concluded that I am better than you, I think we are done here. Glad we could both agree on something.

;)

Platinumoxicity

03-18-2010, 11:31 PM

Well now that we have concluded that I am better than you, I think we are done here. Glad we could both agree on something.

;)

You want a medal or something? :D

Void(null)

03-18-2010, 11:41 PM

No, but I will never turn down cookies. They are my weak spot. I could really go for a cookie right now, one with extra chunky chocolate chips. Just the one.

:(

Platinumoxicity

03-19-2010, 01:46 AM

No, but I will never turn down cookies. They are my weak spot. I could really go for a cookie right now, one with extra chunky chocolate chips. Just the one.

:(

How 'bout a cookie medal? The one that says "I'm #1!" in clocolate chip letters?

Void(null)

03-19-2010, 08:40 PM

Mommy?

mnovachis

03-20-2010, 08:07 AM

I do have some problems with CS too, my 5870 and q6600@3.0 on max settings gets around 26 fps in the main city where you start.

Platinumoxicity

03-20-2010, 08:12 AM

I do have some problems with CS too, my 5870 and q6600@3.0 on max settings gets around 26 fps in the main city where you start.

I think you should check your motherboard settings too. Try to find the default specs of your CPU somewhere and check with CPU-Z if your machine is doing what it's supposed to be doing.

Have you tried to increase/decrease the graphics settings to very high and very low? Try it. If the framerate doesn't get any better or worse then you've got the same problem that I had. :)

...probably.

Awakening

03-20-2010, 01:03 PM

Radeon 5870
Core i7-920 @ 3.2 GHz
12gb DDR3 RAM
1TB HDD
850W PSU
Gigabyte Motherboard

No matter what settings, the game (CoP) refuses to run ABOVE 8 FPS. Unless I do something silly like stare at the ground for a while then it jumps to 120 FPS, or look at the stars. Then I can look around and move but usually after a while it will jump down to 8 FPS again. I actually got a game going at 70~80 FPS constantly even running around and doing stuff, but then after I closed out and came back today, the 8 FPS issue is even worse.

Firefox_gb

03-24-2010, 07:27 AM

@ Post starter, maybe try updating directx
Goodluck.

TecnoBacon

03-24-2010, 07:31 AM

Might be that your power supply is underatted, I have a giga and that was my problem, went to a 1000w with dual 12v rails and it runs like a champ and is even overclocked.

Bad_Motha

03-24-2010, 11:28 AM

That doesn't sound right, unless it's a really crap power supply. Even with Awakening's setup, you shouldn't need over 650watts. But some cheaply made PSU's do have high wattage marked on them, but poor amp output on the 12v rails. Perhaps this is the case.

Awakening

03-24-2010, 12:38 PM

I managed to fix my problem simply by changing to dx10 and back and messing with settings and mods.

Last night I reinstalled CoP and maxed everything before even loading a game, restarted the client, and then started a game and bam, it's running completely maxed out with no fps drops that I can notice. I haven't used fraps lately but I haven't had a low drop in fps *noticeable at least* and it's been running smooth since. Either one of the mods or just something funky was messing mine up, but it runs amazing now. 4x AA + tessellation ftw. Haven't really noticed what tessellation changes in CoP, probably something minor, but I notice more distance blur now especially when aiming, and I love it.