Curse

Domino · May 15, 2005, 06:56 AM // 06:56

I'm having somewhat of a problem, maybe you guys can help. Here are my system specs:

Intel 2.2 ghz
256 PC2100 DDR memory
GeForce 6800 Ultra (256)
ADSL 1500/400
120 GB 7200 RPM Maxtor Drive

First off, I know what you're thinking. I chose to invest in a high-end graphics card instead of upgrading my processor/motherboard... so I understand I'm bottlenecking my system pretty heavily. Unfortunately, until I upgrade to a bigger and better things, this is what I have to work with.

However, the problem isn't my graphics card... at least I don't think so. I'm getting stuttering in cities and crowded areas. The same thing happened (except much worse) in World of Warcraft.

I can run the game with all the settings... shadows, post-filtering, even with AA and anistrophic filtering, the game runs smooth as glass in ANY area outside of the cities. However, I can barely walk through Ascalon without getting turned around and stuttering all over the place.

So I figured it must be that my settings are too high, so I tweaked them down slightly. Turned off AA and AF... but still got the same lagginess in towns. Eventually, I was running in a 800x600 windowed mode with all the settings as low as they could possibly go. No such luck.

so I turned off my virus software, firewall, and closed down every non-system program running. While I saw minor improvement, the game still stuttered in cities. If I leave the city, the game runs smooth as glass.

In the cities, I get a LOT of drive activity... so I deleted everything I could find. Old games, old files, all deleted. Then I defragmented my drive with Diskeeper 9.0 - no such luck running the game any smoother in cities afterward. I only saw marginal improvement, the hard disk still seems to be working far to much. Perhaps this is an effect of Virtual Memory, since I know it is much slower than real memory.

I think the culprit is my 256 mb of DDR ram. But I want to make sure I've exhausted every solution before shelling anymore money into this obsolete Celeron system. If I buy all this PC2100 memory, what am I supposed to do with it when I upgrade?

So if I were to stick a 1GB stick of DDR memory in my system... would the problem be solved?

BoS · May 15, 2005, 08:28 AM // 08:28

Yes it is your memory. Get more!!!!!! 256mb is not enough to run any newer game adaqeutely.

Svenn · May 15, 2005, 11:59 AM // 11:59

I tend to agree. If the low mem is not the problem (and it very well may not be), you will still have much better performance overall from at least bringing your system up to 512MB RAM, especially if you are running XP. That's definitely the real bottleneck in the specs you cited.

Crimson_Phoenix · May 15, 2005, 04:29 PM // 16:29

I don't agree about the memory being the culprit. I run nearly the same setup with an Athlon and 1 gig of 2700 instead, and have the problem in cities... mostly the later ones, but there is still serious stutter, and lots of hard drive activity. This game thrashes the crap out of our machines, not quite like a d3 though.

Svenn · May 15, 2005, 08:28 PM // 20:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crimson_Phoenix

I don't agree about the memory being the culprit. I run nearly the same setup with an Athlon and 1 gig of 2700 instead, and have the problem in cities

Yes, I think there are a variety of culprits, depending on the system and, of course, the particular segment of code being executed. That's what makes it difficult to help someone.

Nonetheless, assuming you are on XP -- if you were to take your system down to 256mb, boot up, load everything that's currently running in your background and sys tray, and then try to quickly open Outlook and IE out the same time -- I bet we'd hear you cursing from here! I think the original poster would be extremely pleased with the investment of another 256mb, even if the game did keep stuttering (assuming he/she is going to keep the computer at least a couple of months).

Svenn · May 15, 2005, 08:57 PM // 20:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crimson_Phoenix

there is still serious stutter, and lots of hard drive activity. This game thrashes the crap out of our machines, not quite like a d3 though.

I was getting serious freezing and stuttering, but my CPU and mobo temps were rising some but staying in a reasonable range. I have a clean case, 3 case fans, a two-fan PSU and an empty PCI slot below my AGP card. I didn't know how to check my GPU temp on my Leadtek GeForce 4 TI 4600 (the BIOS on this mobo doesn't support NVMonitor), so I discounted the possibility of overheating until the number of posts on the subject just became overwhelming, lol.

So, today I unplugged the rats nest and got the case out where it could be powered up with the side cover off. Since putting a household fan pointing into the case at the video card, gameplay has greatly improved. I just played for about 2 hours with no freezing whatsover. There was some very brief stuttering or clipping through certain scenes or areas where my frame rate dropped below 29-30 fps. The cities, even crowded ones, were fine with fps usually in the 40-45 range. I was finally able to party up with someone and complete a quest without abandoning them in battle.

Why are some people with less robust equipment and one-fan cases playing with no problems? Hell if I know!

termite · May 15, 2005, 09:37 PM // 21:37

a) your ram is low
b) your cpu is (i'm guessing) a celeron 2.2

upgrade ram to atleast 512 (with prices so cheap these days for pc3200 ram, why not just get 1 gig?), and cpu to atleast pentium4 2.4ghz (make sure it's p4 and not celeron).

termite · May 15, 2005, 09:40 PM // 21:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Svenn

I was getting serious freezing and stuttering, but my CPU and mobo temps were rising some but staying in a reasonable range. I have a clean case, 3 case fans, a two-fan PSU and an empty PCI slot below my AGP card. I didn't know how to check my GPU temp on my Leadtek GeForce 4 TI 4600 (the BIOS on this mobo doesn't support NVMonitor), so I discounted the possibility of overheating until the number of posts on the subject just became overwhelming, lol.

So, today I unplugged the rats nest and got the case out where it could be powered up with the side cover off. Since putting a household fan pointing into the case at the video card, gameplay has greatly improved. I just played for about 2 hours with no freezing whatsover. There was some very brief stuttering or clipping through certain scenes or areas where my frame rate dropped below 29-30 fps. The cities, even crowded ones, were fine with fps usually in the 40-45 range. I was finally able to party up with someone and complete a quest without abandoning them in battle.

Why are some people with less robust equipment and one-fan cases playing with no problems? Hell if I know!

How can you tell what type of fps you're getting in GW?

As for the people with one-fan cases - chances are they got something like a Dell with a high-end video card. If you're looking for a cooling solution for your video card, I suggest you look into modding your card with a different fan + heatsink.

mthegreatone · May 15, 2005, 10:00 PM // 22:00

definitely the ram is your bottleneck. the way i see it, if you can afford a good vid card, you can afford more ram.

Svenn · May 15, 2005, 10:54 PM // 22:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by termite

How can you tell what type of fps you're getting in GW?

Change the shortcut target for the Guild Wars game on your computer to end with "-perf". You right click on the icon, click Properties in the menu, and click the Shortcut tab in the window that appears (in XP, at least). Here's an example below:

"D:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -perfs

The data then shows up in a small font in the top right-hand corner of the screen, once you have logged into the game. Of course, when the game totally freezes, so does the counter. There is a program called "fraps" that you can download if you want something that is not integrated with the game.