MAJOR performance problem

excelsior · Post by **excelsior** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 6:28 am

Help! I have a pentium III 700 mhz with 128 MB ram. Windows ME edition. It takes 3 hours for the computer to run during the first and second turns of the big scenario. ( the last scenario, war in the pacific) I haven't played past the first 2 turns yet.
What is going on here???? Do I need to upgrade my system or what?? [&:]

Caltone · Post by **Caltone** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 6:36 am

Grab some ram. Get it to 512mb and you'll think you have a new system.

Best places to buy are local Best Buy, Comp USA, Circuit City, or Office Depot type stores. Watch the ads, each weekend one of these will have a good special with rebate.

If you want to buy online, you can't do better than:

NewEgg
Crucial

SunDevil_MatrixForum · Thu Jul 29, 2004 6:49 am

Is your sound turned on. Turn it off and see what happens. A patch is on the way, but other people have run into performance issue because of some sound bugs. Also if you go into your game folder and change the sound folder to the name nosound, and then play your game you might also get an improvement. If neither of those work, make sure you do not have a lot of background programs running. If that does not work, time to upgrade, at least the ram as mentioned above. If you use the search button at the bottom of each page and search on the word performance, there are a bunch of other threads about this issue. Good luck.

2ndACR · Post by **2ndACR** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 11:10 am

ORIGINAL: excelsior

Help! I have a pentium III 700 mhz with 128 MB ram. Windows ME edition. It takes 3 hours for the computer to run during the first and second turns of the big scenario. ( the last scenario, war in the pacific) I haven't played past the first 2 turns yet.
What is going on here???? Do I need to upgrade my system or what?? [&:]

My system is just about the same as yours. 800mhz with 196 Ram, WinME. Rename sound directory to NOSOUND and you will get the turns down to about 12 min. It is the sound leak killing you. I had the same problem as you until I renamed my sound directory.

2Stepper · Post by **2Stepper** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 1:38 pm

Fixing the sound bug with the NOSOUND quickfix would help in the short term, but as the guys are also saying, getcha some more RAM. I had WinME for a while before going to XP, and while I wouldn't go back, ME ran well with 512MB. Nowadays, Ram for the P3's isn't that spendy either... So it should do well for you. [8D]

Black Cat · Post by **Black Cat** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 2:25 pm

I`m no tech guy but I think if your adding RAM you should buy the same type RAM that is already in the Computer.

Viking makes good stuff and if you do a Google search for their site they have an excellent search feature that will match your current system RAM to their products.

Caltone · Post by **Caltone** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 3:13 pm

ORIGINAL: Black Cat

I`m no tech guy but I think if your adding RAM you should buy the same type RAM that is already in the Computer.

Viking makes good stuff and if you do a Google search for their site they have an excellent search feature that will match your current system RAM to their products.

Most RAM is backwards compatible. While there may be some debate about mixing different speeds of RAM, in my experience, there has never been a problem.

His system is running on a 100Mhz bus. Instead of buying the slower RAM, I would buy a faster stick or two and that way you could take it to a new system down the road.

Go to the link for Crucial I posted above. They have a good site that will help you find the proper memory for your system.

geozero · Post by **geozero** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 4:28 pm

For optimum performance try to get RAM that has same speed as your other ram. Windows ME is IMHO a very obsolete OS. Try getting Windows XP.

As already stated more RAM is better.

My system is a P4 2.6, running XP Professional with 1 GB RAM, the RAdeon XT w/256 video card, and M-Audio sound card (a music recording sound card that's a few bucks).

Are you viewing everything and reports etc. or just trying to get to the next turn?

Mr.Frag · Post by **Mr.Frag** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 4:57 pm

WitP eats approx 256 megs of ram by itself.

You are going to be spending a lot of time swapping in and out to disk on a machine that has less then 512 megs.

A 256 meg machine will run and swap, but you can make sure it runs at it's best by clearing out everything running that is not required to play.

A 128 meg machine is pretty much under the usable level as the game is pretty much running directly off your hard disk.

Swapping during turn execution is going to drag the performance down into the dumps and result in extremely long cycles.

2Stepper · Post by **2Stepper** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 5:00 pm

Ya, windows ME is the failed marriage attempt of 98 and XP. It's a memory hog that will gobble up excess RAM till it can't take it anymore...

If you have the means I DEFINITELY suggest XP. It's MUCH more stable then anything I've seen of late and frankly is everything that ME and Win2K was supposed to be.

And ON topic, WiTP runs like a champ on XP also. [8D]

2Stepper · Post by **2Stepper** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 5:03 pm

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

WitP eats approx 256 megs of ram by itself.

This must vary by system because it only takes about 160MB of RAM when I run it here... Better memory utilization maybe? Who knows... Still takes a lot though and lower end memory systems will really suffer.

Mr.Frag · Post by **Mr.Frag** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 5:03 pm

He's actually probably better off going back to Windows 98 (smallest footprint of them all)

2Stepper · Post by **2Stepper** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 5:05 pm

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

He's actually probably better off going back to Windows 98 (smallest footprint of them all)

True. Not as costly a change either. Good as it is, even XP home edition is a bit spendy.

EDIT: Wheeee! LOL! Need to pay attention to my post totals... 501! Methinks an extra grog is required. heh!

excelsior · Post by **excelsior** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 6:44 pm

I lowered the volume levels to zero in the game. The run time for an entire turn went down to 35 minutes (used to be 2 and a half hours). I think I will add more ram, though. (currently i have 128 megs.) Thanks for your info!![:)]

2Stepper · Post by **2Stepper** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 6:54 pm

ORIGINAL: excelsior

I lowered the volume levels to zero in the game. The run time for an entire turn went down to 35 minutes (used to be 2 and a half hours). I think I will add more ram, though. (currently i have 128 megs.) Thanks for your info!![:)]

Actually the term NO SOUND isn't relating to volume levels as it goes in and makes it so your computer doesn't even access the sound files. Just go into the WiTP folder and find the directory called SOUND. Right click on it and RENAME it to NOSOUND.

Files all stay put and you won't get any sound effects. It should improve performance a good bit until you get that RAM you mentioned. [8D]

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