Host Connection Lost

[strella]

HTC,

Help, Aces High continues to disco me.  I have been playing for quite a long time.  Ever since the update that stopped the pre-cacheing files my computer gets discoed on large maps.  I have been flying in the blue arena because generally the orange has more players and larger maps which discos me more often.

I am running XP, with nearly everything possible disabled, firewall, antivirus, updates. I run the vid at 600x480 with skins, water, smoke, etc disabled.

Motherboard Asus
CPU Athlon XP 2100 - 1.30Ghz
RAM 2Ghz
vid Ati Radeon X1950 Pro agp8x 512MB
and have a 10MB/s download 2Mb/s upload cable connection
my ping is generally between 250-330 (connecting from Israel)


if I up my vid settings at all I disco.  Also, if I try to load a large map like titanic tuesday, I host connection lost disco after it tries to load for about 5 minutes.   As it is loading the CPU is maxing trying to load all the information and if I hit any button while loading, I disco.

Now if I get on and start flying... no problems, but for some reason I am timing out before I really can get into the arena.... i can get in the intial tower, but not a hangar or another base if I am discoing.

Is there any way to pre-cache load like it used to do?

I have tried almost everything I can think of and i read all the posts for tips before posting, this has been going on for a good 6 months now and it is pretty frustrating.

Is there any other advice you can give me?  Or is there another setting that I can work with?



thanks,
Strella

[Blooz]

Ever since the update the game engine need plenty of CPU and RAM (and a good vid card) to run the graphics. My machine is very old by computer standards and my CPU is 2gig. You're CPU is ancient.

I don't know about your vid card (all of mine have been Nvidia cards) but it might be enough to run the game at it's lowest graphical settings.

Your ping is good for being half way around the world, I think and the RAM is enough to run the game at a higher graphic setting (I only have 1 MB RAM).

So...I think it's the CPU. That's the bottleneck.

[Skuzzy]

If it is taking 5 minutes to load an arena, then your computer is running out of resources and is swapping like crazy trying to make room for the game.

Easy way to test this theory.  In the "Video Settings" for the game;

1) Set the game resolution to 1280x1024
2) Set the "Maximum Texture Size" to 256.
3) In the game, disable "Detailed Terrain" in the "Options->Graphic Detail->Advanced" panel.

Now, that should make a pretty good difference.

To fine tune it all, I need to see a DXDIAG output.