Increasing performance

Tankerace · Post by **Tankerace** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 3:31 am

Im still having some problems, basically, I can't watch naval battles. When there are lots of splashes, the animation plays slowly, and if there are lots of ships around, it slows to a crawl. I don't think it is a sound issue, as I have tried it without sound, and on 2 sound cards.

I have an Athlon XP2600, and a Geforce 5200. I have only the minimal stuff running in the background, and yet it still plays slow. The turns and combat results and such play quickly, it is only the animations that are fouled up. Any help would be appreciated.

Luskan · Post by **Luskan** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 9:23 am

Go into your bios and see if you have the Pentium 4 hyperthreading enabled. If so, disable it (is a stupid, stupid feature anyway and all the programs on your pc will thank you).

If this fixes things up, please post. If not, re-enable and post that too!

Mr.Frag · Post by **Mr.Frag** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 11:56 am

Try renaming the sound dir ... it seems to be the majority of all evils at the moment.

vonmoltke · Post by **vonmoltke** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:12 pm

You running Win2000 Tankerace?

Spooky · Post by **Spooky** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:46 pm

ORIGINAL: Luskan

Go into your bios and see if you have the Pentium 4 hyperthreading enabled. If so, disable it (is a stupid, stupid feature anyway and all the programs on your pc will thank you).

If this fixes things up, please post. If not, re-enable and post that too!

Hum, Intel Pentium 4 hyperthreading with an AMD Athlon [&:] - Good luck to find this option in your BIOS [;)]

joliverlay · Post by **joliverlay** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 3:08 pm

I have a similar problem. It is definately not a sound issue. I've also had difficlulty with things being to slow.

I had an AMD 1700 XP system with 512 MB DDR Ram. Everything worked but was just not fast. For example the training ships took about a min instead of 10 sec. as others have reported. Animations also seemed slow. Here is what I did. I bought a new MB and case. Dragon Plus 600. I installed an AMD 2400 XP and 512 MB DDR Ram (both 266 Mz). I added the same vidio card you have since it was much better than my old one. ...and was available. I upgraded all drivers, etc. under Windows 2000. Guess what. It ran almost exactly the same. Reading a note in another thread saying Windows 2000 was not fast enought (it was great for UV) I tried XP Professional. Guess what still no change.

So I've spent a fair amount of money to increas the speed of my computer perhaps by 30-50% and see no change in the speed with which the program runs. For example the ship training still takes about 1 min to run (not near 10 sec.).

I can easily play the game by turning off all animations, setting message delay to 0.1 sec and looking only at the combat reports. I make coffee while the computer does its turn. After turn 1 my turns take about 2-10 min. and the computers take about 10 min. or so. (I play allies in the 42a campaign.) I had expected the computer to do its turn in about 5-6 min. with all the hardware and OS upgrades but no luck.

Since my new MB will support 333 and 400 MHz I may change over to an XP 3000 and 333 DDR, but I don't want to spend more money until I'm reasonably sure it would actually effect the game speed.

Any comments or advice please?

vonmoltke · Post by **vonmoltke** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 3:21 pm

Which thread has the comments about Win2000 performance?

joliverlay · Post by **joliverlay** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 3:30 pm

RE: More Bugs! Auto Convey, etc. (in reply to joliverlay)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The training ship crews is the longest 'stage' on my system as well (Athlon xp3200), about 10 secs. But I dont find it so slow, maybe its win2k? After all, its not intended as a gaming system.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was the comment I was referring to I think, it has been a while.

vonmoltke · Post by **vonmoltke** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 3:47 pm

Thanks. [:)]

Well, it certainly wasn't. I have pretty much concluded that my problems are all Win2000's fault. I was just looking for independent confirmation.

UV does run crappy for me in Win2000 also. WitP is a strange one, though. I used my main box (Athlon XP2000, 1.25GB DDR running at 266MHz) and my laptop (900MHz Mobile P3 , 384MB PC133 SDRAM with optimum performance settings) for a side by side comparison. UV runs slightly better on the laptop; WitP runs almost perfectly on the laptop, better than UV does. UV runs better than WitP on the desktop.

After tweaking backgroud processes and other settings, I came to the conclusion that my performance issues are purely related to Win2000. I really don't want to upgrade to XP Home, but I may have to. [:(]

Erik Rutins · Post by **Erik Rutins** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 4:46 pm

Before you make any more radical system changes, have you tried disabling sound by renaming the "sound" directory to "nosound" to see if that helps? Have you both applied the interim patches? Thanks.

Regards,

- Erik

vonmoltke · Post by **vonmoltke** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 5:50 pm

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Before you make any more radical system changes, have you tried disabling sound by renaming the "sound" directory to "nosound" to see if that helps? Have you both applied the interim patches? Thanks.

Regards,

- Erik

Patches yes, sound directory no.

I had been holding out hope that it is some manifestation of the sound bug, but based on my tweaking I don't think it is. I've killed all killable background process and set the priority to high. These actions did improve performance noticeably, but its still rough during animations.

I'll still try renaming the sound directory, though.

Becket · Post by **Becket** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 6:13 pm

Any ETA on the sound / slowdown problem, Eric?

Tankerace · Post by **Tankerace** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 7:41 pm

I have WinXP. I disabled all sounds, and then tried it with 2 other sound cards, still no joy. I love WiTP, but I just did a massive $500 upgrade 4 months ago, and I am kinda broke now. Plus, I never heard of needing a monster machine to play a strategy game.

THe training ships thing does take about 10-15 secs, and the animations are sluggish as all get out. The rest of the game runs sweet. Also, I applied both patches before I even loaded the game for the first time.

What gets me is the animations for UV run fast, and without problems. I have tried tweaking everything, and still no joy.

Could it possibly be I just got a bad download? I had to do it on a 56k, and it did take a while. Other than that, I am totally at a loss.

joliverlay · Post by **joliverlay** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 7:49 pm

Eric,

Actually I have disabled sound and used two different motherboards with "on board" sound (always with all updates). Also I use the patches. My best benchmark for speed is the time it takes for the "training ship crews". Seems to be just about 50 seconds no matter what I do. Others report from 10 seconds to many minuites for this phase. Id like to get closer to say 20 seconds.

My experimental observation is that the game runs the same on Windows 2000 Professional using either an XP 1700 or XP 2400 (bot at 266 mHz with 0.5 gig DDR 233) or it runs the same using either Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP using the XP 2400 chip and 0.5 gig.

Should I not be able to get the "ship training crews" thing down to 20 seconds. {I assume everything would go faster as well.}

Options I'm considering:

a) adding 0.5 gig additional memory (easiest)

b) changing to windows 98SE (can do if needed)

c) upgrade to XP 3000 and DDR 330 memory (hard to justify after just buying the XP2400 chip)

Any advice would be appreciated.

vonmoltke · Post by **vonmoltke** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 8:05 pm

ORIGINAL: joliverlay

a) adding 0.5 gig additional memory (easiest)

I'll time my training phase and see how long it takes. I think its less than 50s, though.

ORIGINAL: joliverlay

b) changing to windows 98SE (can do if needed)

As I said, this results in a major performance improvement on a lesser box.

Rocco · Post by **Rocco** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 9:38 pm

It sure seems to meet that the common thread in bad performance is AMD Athlon XP processors, and possibly GeForce video cards. I have similar problems and have AMD Athlon XP 2100+ @ 1.7 GHZ and a 128mb GeForce 3 ti200. 1 GIG of system RAM, so that ain't a problem. Anyone with a PENTIUM having similar problems??? Maybe all the testers had PENTIUM's??? Just offering up ideas

Rocco

TWolf · Post by **TWolf** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 10:02 pm

I'm having very good performance on my AMD but I have the 3200+ 64, 1 gig 3200 ram and an ATI 9700 Pro. I would be of the opinion that this game may need 1 gig or more of ram to really show what it can do.

Later,

T

Moquia · Post by **Moquia** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 10:24 pm

You might try decreasing the graphics hardware acceleration a notch or two.

vonmoltke · Post by **vonmoltke** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 1:21 am

Well, my Radeon 9800 Pro came in today. With a few exceptions, the game runs like a hose now. [:D]

Rocco · Post by **Rocco** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 1:30 am

vonmoltke, was your old vid card a GeForce? Anyone having any problems with a vid card other than GeForce?

Rocco

Increasing performance

Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance

RE: Increasing performance