Hiya all, as some of you may know already I have some FPS issues.
(especially if there is more than one enemy about)
FPS varies between really high values when in base (60 with vsync on, 104 with vsync of)
and quite low values when nanning a bomber run who is about to attack a base and the defenders are firing at us (6 FPS)
The common Dogfighting/flying through space FPS with a singular enemy is between 18 and 24.
Most likely my CPU is not fast enough to enable Alleg to run fast.
Changing the MoBo is unfortunately no option.
I wanted to ask if someone would know if a change in the GPU would enable Alleg to do more calculations using the GPU and thus free precious cpu cycles. (and thus my fps should soar)
The possible new GPU would be a 64Bit Ati 9250.
Below a small summary of what I have tried until now:
System:
WinXP-SP2
Celeron Coppermine-128@800MHz (akin to P3@550MHz regarding DX performance)
4xAGP Radeon VE@143MHz (DX6, budget version of RV100 chip series)
Soundblaster Live!
512mb RAM
- disabled: posters, environments, stars, debris, particles.
- using software HUD normal style to prevent slowdown due to alpha blending in HUD and additional drawing of targeted ship in the target view.
- resolution is at 800x600
Of course people cried "Its the sound..." anytime when I began to ask about the fps. And allthough I did an educated guess and concluded that it most certainly is not the sound (Sound independent FPS in-game behavior) I began to try to debug my soundsystem. (After all I need to be sure its not the sound aye?)
Ok thats what I still remember doing:
-reduced volumes to -60db (off)
-turned sound accel. on/off
-played with sound qualities
-installed different driver types
-checked that acpi does not share its IRQ
-Assigned my soundcard IRQ 5 (later 10 as higher priority) and removed anything that would share the IRQ.
-swapped soundcards with SB 512, and repeated procedures
-ran Alleg without soundcard ---> no conflict, no slowdown, no sound
The conclusion was: "It is not the sound"
(So if you yell: 'Its the sound' please make sure that the one yelled at uses a modern PC who has no other excuse for slow FPS than the Sound Issue /mrgreen.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="mrgreen.gif" />)
Ok I then began to underclock my GPU. (First thought of overclocking, but after all I wanted to find the culprit)
My hypothesis was: If the GPU is limiting factor then fps will drop sharply as soon as I reduce the clock speed.
After having reduced the Clock to 50% (several steps) I had about 2 FPS fewer than before.
----->Ok... GPU clock influences the fps but to a negligible degree.
At this point I checked if I had Hardware acceleration enabled in-game.. after all this result was strange.
I had 3D accelaration enabled...(and yes its even slower if I switch it off)
Part2 of the second phase included reducing the CPU clock speed. (SDram and FSB clock not changed)
(I thought if its not the GPU, its likely the CPU)
Well after reducing it to 66% the framerate dropped to about 15 fps... (which is roughly 66% of my framerate before)
Thus I guess its likely that the CPU is the limiting factor.
YAFT - Yet another FPS thread
-
Grimmwolf_GB
- Posts: 3711
- Joined: Wed Jul 02, 2003 7:00 am
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Which is pretty weird.
I played Allegiance, when it first came out, on a P2 400 with a TNT1. There was no stuttering, it was playable.
When I launched Allegiance on my old computer, an 800 MHz AMD, TNT2, I was getting about 1 FPS on a bomb run, I was able to kill the base, but it was hard and plenty of my TF shots missed. My gunners were unable to shoot anything, because I lagged them.
I was kinda suprised to notice, that my sound card did not seem to affect the FPS. I switched the settings in game and did did not make a difference.
I would love to get to the bottom of this.
Is it WinXP that slows everything down for Allegiance?
Is there anyone out there, that tried playing Alleg on an older machine with Win98 AND WinXP?
I played Allegiance, when it first came out, on a P2 400 with a TNT1. There was no stuttering, it was playable.
When I launched Allegiance on my old computer, an 800 MHz AMD, TNT2, I was getting about 1 FPS on a bomb run, I was able to kill the base, but it was hard and plenty of my TF shots missed. My gunners were unable to shoot anything, because I lagged them.
I was kinda suprised to notice, that my sound card did not seem to affect the FPS. I switched the settings in game and did did not make a difference.
I would love to get to the bottom of this.
Is it WinXP that slows everything down for Allegiance?
Is there anyone out there, that tried playing Alleg on an older machine with Win98 AND WinXP?
Hmmm.
I, too, cannot think of any other explanation than WinXP taking its toll.
I hate it to just throw more processing power at a problem, but as it seems this will be the only solution. So, how about a better CPU?
The current price for PIIIs just under 1GHz is 5-15EUR, depending on socket, core and so on.
However, I have no clue what your board will accept. It also comes at the risk that the old board will no longer run stable with the most demanding processor available for it.
I, too, cannot think of any other explanation than WinXP taking its toll.
I hate it to just throw more processing power at a problem, but as it seems this will be the only solution. So, how about a better CPU?
The current price for PIIIs just under 1GHz is 5-15EUR, depending on socket, core and so on.
However, I have no clue what your board will accept. It also comes at the risk that the old board will no longer run stable with the most demanding processor available for it.