Embarassing performance

[pjdegrieck]

Hello,

Just purchased the anniversary edition, and I'm very concerned about performance.

Win 7 64Bit
Intel 4930K @ 4.4Ghz
780 GTX
16GB Ram
SSD Drive
Audigy Titanium Gamer sound card

As you can see, with my case, mobo, accessories, etc, I have near a 3K computer.

Why is my 700 dollar video card, and 550 dollar CPU giving me 15FPS during the first confederate Gettysburg mission? It drops even lower when the Union shows up.

All my drivers are up to date, including BIOS. I can run games like Assassins Creed Black Flag at a constant 60FPS, and I get 130 FPS In Rome Total War benchmark with a mix of ultra and high settings, which is a notorious for bad performance. Yet these 2D Sprites bring my machine to a crawl.

Im running 1:1 unit ratio, 1920x1080 resolution, and uniforms set to "best".

CRTL-T 3 times increases my FPS to 25-30. Draw distance seems to do nothing.

What gives? Is this normal?

[histgamer]

I've forwarded this on to the team's support and should have a response back to you shortly.

[pjdegrieck]

Thanks for the response.

[Werewolf13]

Not normal.

I run at 1920X1080 with an NVidia 560. Men are set to 1:1, AA set to 8 and AF set to 16 (AA and AF forced with NVidia control panel) and consistently run FPS over 30 with occasional dips to 18 or so if I'm moving rapidly around the map.

I have trees set to go invisible at 200 yards, off map trees off and off map terrain off.

[histgamer]

It's more of a CPU thing than it has to do with your GPU. This game is very very CPU intensive and unfortunately given its somewhat older of a game going on 4 years old and didn't include hyper threading. Every unit is thinking and running scripts and checks that your CPU has to process every few seconds, thats a key reason the game's AI is so strong compared to other games. The lack of hyper-threading is also a big area of focus for the next generation game so as to allow multi core processors the ability to really take advantage of their power but 15 FPS on larger battles can occur at times. Did you say it was Gettysburg 1?

What are you're tree settings? Setting them to disappear further off might help, also are you running process' in the background that could be clogging up your CPU, some virus software can really eat into performance. I've seen a virus or spyware software program cause a 15+ FPS drop for other users in this game before.

[histgamer]

Also fwiw it couldn't hurt to post your concerns over here that's the devs support page for the game on their website, you'll probably get a bit more info and a faster response over there and as much assistance as they can give.

[Chijohnaok2]

ORIGINAL: flanyboy


What are you're tree settings? Setting them to disappear further off might help, also are you running process' in the background that could be clogging up your CPU, some virus software can really eat into performance. I've seen a virus or spyware software program cause a 15+ FPS drop for other users in this game before.

When playing in multiplayer mode I usually turn off anti-virus and firewall before starting.

[aaatoysandmore]

ORIGINAL: Fartsicle

Hello,

Just purchased the anniversary edition, and I'm very concerned about performance.

Win 7 64Bit
Intel 4930K @ 4.4Ghz
780 GTX
16GB Ram
SSD Drive
Audigy Titanium Gamer sound card

As you can see, with my case, mobo, accessories, etc, I have near a 3K computer.

Why is my 700 dollar video card, and 550 dollar CPU giving me 15FPS during the first confederate Gettysburg mission? It drops even lower when the Union shows up.

All my drivers are up to date, including BIOS. I can run games like Assassins Creed Black Flag at a constant 60FPS, and I get 130 FPS In Rome Total War benchmark with a mix of ultra and high settings, which is a notorious for bad performance. Yet these 2D Sprites bring my machine to a crawl.

Im running 1:1 unit ratio, 1920x1080 resolution, and uniforms set to "best".

CRTL-T 3 times increases my FPS to 25-30. Draw distance seems to do nothing.

What gives? Is this normal?

I play open sandbox with every unit I can get on the map at 1:1 ratio and game runs flawlessly fine on a i7 920 quad core overclocked to 3ghz and 6gigs ram with a PowerColor video card 5770hd 1gb. I find it hard to believe (though I do) that your setup runs so slow. I mean I got smoke and firing and all sorts of things going on and no lag whatsoever. Only thing I can think of is it's something with Win7 as I run Vista 64 still. Other thing it could be is game wasn't made on your type of system and some games just don't perform well on newer systems as the programmers didn't have those machine specs and operation guides when making the game. They had more of what I am using and games they are making now are more of what they have close to your specs and will be out in 2-5 years.

Sort of like Rome 2, all the screaming on the forums about optimation and performance issues and I don't have them at all. I could run the game at extreme and get 29-30 fps (all the naked eye can really see anyways) but I have no interest in seeing buildings and grass and sky and trees and shadows at full settings so I lowered them or turned them off and now I'm up in the 70fps range. I always feel it's the system models. If you have brand new when a game comes out don't expect it to run at extreme settings....games that come out 2-5 years from now, yes I would be a little angry if they didn't work well then.

[Micco40]

It would appear that i am in the same boat as the OP. Just bought game, have a fairly new machine with updated drivers, etc.

During movement, I've not noticed any issues.

However, every single time I get within sight of the enemy, the game suddenly and inexplicably slams on the brakes and seems like it has slowed to a crawl, letting me access any menus maybe once every 3-5 seconds.

Here are my system specs:

GeFoce GTX 660 (ver 337.88)
AMD Phenom II X6 1055
16Gb RAM
1360 x 768 Resolution at 60hz/sec
Windows 7 Professional
I use Webroot for my antivirus.

I've reduced just about all the settings to their minimums (the game looks terrible with no trees and a view distance of like 50 feet by the way)

I've seem some posts that you should turn off virus protection, but that to me is defeating the purpose of having anitvirus in the first place.

I can't believe that there isn't another workaround that doesn't involve putting my computer at risk.

Any help would be appreciated.

[RebBugler]

I was under the impression that your computer is only at risk from a virus attack when you're online or transferring in an infected file, but I could be wrong. I would suggest you turn off WebRoot and at least try and see if that is the issue, because WebRoot running in the background is a KNOW problem related to performance drag with the SOW game. Then turn WebRoot back on before going back online or transferring files.

In the meantime, I'll ask around about the offline risk factor of infections, maybe I'll learn something and get back to this thread more informed.

[Micco40]

RebBugler,

OK, I don't pretend to be an expert.

I tried turning off the Webroot and it did very much improve the performance. Thank you very much for that.

I guess my question now is, "what is the actual problem that Webroot is causing?"

Isn't there some kind of workaround other than turning off all my web protection?

Thank you for your help.

[RebBugler]

I regret that I know of no workaround with the issues caused by Webroot although we do have some reports from folks that run Webroot with SOW and have no performance issues, guess it depends on the rig and or system setup. Still, Webroot is the only antivirus app that I know of with SOW performance issues. I use Norton and it runs fine with SOW, but it is a little pricey.

Thanks for reporting back on this, glad you were willing to take a risk and test things out.

[Micco40]

That's really unfortunate and will likely keep me from playing this game, except sparingly.

Having to remember to turn off and on the antivirus just to play one game out of literally dozens of other games that I own, seems wrong to me on several levels. I find it fascinating that Horizon and Civil War II don't have this issue at all, at least as far as I can determine.

This is a great game, and I spent a long time researching everything I could think of prior to dropping a fairly large sum of money on it.

I didn't, however, think that my antivirus would be the cause of me not being able to play it with anything approaching an acceptable frame-rate.

Lesson learned guess, but not a pleasant one at all.

Thank you for your time.

[Micco40]

OK so apparently i'm somewhat OCD about this issue. I've gone through and checked into what might make Webroot behave like it does.

I've done the following steps:

- Loaded the "Boys Got their Dander Up" scenario as a benchmark, since it is a medium size scenario.
- Switched to windowed mode rather than full screen
- Made sure all mods had been turned off.
- Checked Quarantined files under Webroot. no issues.
- Went into "block/ allow files" and added the following files to the "allow" list from the folder for Scourge of War- Anniversary Edition:

- lua51.dll
- lua5.1.dll
- plsdk.dll
- update.exe
- sowgb.exe
- d3dx9_30.dll
- powerrender6.8.dll
- autorun.exe

Basically all executable files that are under the folder for this game.

So far, adding those files to "allow" status seems to have provided a significant boost to performance for the first 15 minutes or so of game time, including during combat. I am able to freely pan, zoom and select and I have no problem issuing orders, etc.

This also allowed me to scale up the video settings significantly to settings that allowed me to see the entire battlefield. Trees are still at around 60%, but everything else is set to medium or high.

What I see after approximately 15 minutes of game time is that stuttering increases quite drastically, setting it back to where I was before going through Webroot to allow access. You can see frame rate stops every 5-7 seconds and they get closer together and are of longer duration as the game goes on.

I did notice that the issue appeared to coincide with the appearance of the Union reinforcements as they approach the battle line, but don't have enough data to verify that their appearance is the cause of the issue yet.

Seeing this, I'm wondering if the issues of stuttering and lag during gameplay may actually be more of a undetected memory leak or some other memory allocation issue, rather than something directly related to the use of Webroot.

What other causes could there be for the start of the issues after 15 minutes of gameplay if it isn't Webroot?

[Micco40]

Just some more testing to try and help others.

I've done the following scenarios with the exact same settings as with the Gettysburg setting. Here are the results:

Antietam (Sharpsburg): The Cornfield - Ran smooth with no issues up until sunrise. Movement forward to the attack seems to slow to a crawl just as i get within range of the Federal infantry in the cornfield and begin exchanging fire. Graphics hang every 10 seconds or so and it seems to last for 1-2 seconds.

Brandy Station: Hurrah We're Going to Have a Fight! - Same issues as Sharpsburg,

Chancellorsville: The Opening Clash- same issue as Sharpsburg, but i was able to advance to the attack up the hill toward the Federal position before the game slowing to a crawl. Prior to that, i had no issues with deployment of forces or panning my view.

Again, i'm no expert but it sure seems like something odd is going on that has nothing to do with Webroot. If it was Webroot, why dont i have problems from the start? Why does it occur when the view distance is greater (daytime)? Why does it not occur at the same amount of time in each scenario?

[RebBugler]

Thanks again for your help, and your desire to help others with similar issues. It's a known fact that as the armies face off and engage one another the performance level will drop FPS wise. Still, lags and pauses should be rare. Since I play large scaled battles for enjoyment I try to minimize performance issues with the Options adjusted as so--see attachment:

[Micco40]

One more round of testing, this time with Webroot completely disabled.

Gettysburg - No noticeable drop off in FPS with settings exactly the same. Able to complete the entire scenario with no lag spikes or stuttering.

Sharpsburg (Antietam)- same result. No drop off in FPS with settings exactly the same. Able to complete the entire scenario with no lag spikes or stuttering.

Chancellorsville - same result.

Amazingly, and for some reason that totally baffles me, Webroot appears to be the "root" of my issues with FPS and lagging.

My best guess now is that Webroot must be doing some kind of file check every time that certain files are accessed, meaning that as soon as files begin to be accessed regularly, the game sputters to a crawl. What those file are, and how to resolve the issue are well beyond my expertise i'm afraid.

My original questions are now answered. Now I just need to figure out if I want to go through the hassle every time I want to play this game.

I would say "yes" so far.

Thank you.

[Micco40]

Reb,

Thank you. I'll redo my settings to what you have and try another round of testing either later tonight or tomorrow.

I appreciate all your help.

[Micco40]

I thought I should do one more check before I went ahead and redid my settings, trying to figure out exactly what part of Webroot is the cause of my issue.

I'm glad I did.

For those not familiar with Webroot, in my case "Secure Anywhere", in the version I am using there are three distinct settings. They are "Realtime Shield", "Web Shield" and "Firewall".

My original intention was to go through each of the settings, turning them off individually to figure out where exactly my problem was.

It would appear, from what I have been able to determine from run throughs of Sharpsburg and Chancellorsville that the "Realtime Shield" was what was apparently causing the sluggish performance and stuttering. With ONLY the "Realtime Shield" turned off, I was able to easily complete both scenarios with no ill effects to the FPS or noticeable stuttering.

So, for those of us that have WebRoot Secure Anywhere, I would suggest only turning off the "Realtime Shield" rather than the entire program, which should hopefully set some minds at ease.

I hope these posts prove useful to anyone else having an issue with Webroot.

Now on to see if i can bring the game into all its glory by upping the graphics options!

[Micco40]

Re-tried first Gettysburg engagement again with graphics turned up to mid range and Webroot "Realtime Shield" turned off.

Game ran flawlessly and looked great. No stuttering, lag spikes or anything other than barely noticeable slow downs with large amounts of troops firing.

Once I figure out how to post screenshots here, I'll provide the settings I used.

Thank you.