Have to continually reset Terrain and Water graphics settings

[TheRapier]

I have to reset my Terrain and Water graphics settings under the Advanced tab nearly every time I enter the arena. I'm told this happens because the frame rate drops for a moment. Is there any way to disable that?

Thanks!

[The Fugitive]

It means the game is trying to set up optimum settings for your computer, which may be on the weak side.

Cleaning your computer system of background programs with a start-up program like Alacrity may help the game load quicker getting you around the change. Other than that it may be time for a bit of an upgrade.

[maddafinga]

I get it sometimes too, and my computer and vid card are definitely not on the weak side.  Just sometimes when I log in, things are a bit sticky for a few seconds, then everything is cool.  When that happens, I have to reset everything in my graphics back all the way up. 

Perhaps if the game gave you a few more seconds after logging in before changing your settings this wouldn't be the annoyance it is now.  It's minor, but I could live without it too.

[TheRapier]

+1 on what Madda said.

It seems to be just in the beginning when there is a load with everything coming on at the beginning. Once that settles its fine for the rest of the session. It's just a pain resetting it every time I go into the arena.

[The Fugitive]

Even if you have a super computer, if itks running a ton of stuff in the background this the type of trouble you can get. I've also heard that a poor connection can cause enough of a delay to have the game automatically turn down the graphics.

[OOZ662]

The game doesn't have "optimum settings." It's just a boolean function. If your framerate drops below a certain amount (30FPS? 10FPS? I don't remember) for longer than ten seconds, the game will disable advanced water and terrain. During the initial caching while logging in, the framerate tanks. Luckily, mine caches fast enough to leave the settings alone. For some others, it doesn't.

[maddafinga]

Mine usually does, but sometimes doesn't, for unknown reasons.  It's a pretty powerful cpu and gpu, but only 4 gigs of ram, perhaps more ram would help? 

I still think that if they gave more time before it disabled advanced graphics, everything would be perfectly cool.  I think it only allows 5 or 10 seconds right now.  If it gave 30 I'd never have a problem with it at all. 

[oneway]

The game doesn't have "optimum settings." It's just a boolean function. If your framerate drops below a certain amount (30FPS? 10FPS? I don't remember) for longer than ten seconds, the game will disable advanced water and terrain. During the initial caching while logging in, the framerate tanks. Luckily, mine caches fast enough to leave the settings alone. For some others, it doesn't.

Where is it pre-loading texture?....Hard memory or virtual memory?

If its virtual memory maybe some tweaking on the swap file size would help?

If its 2048...bumping to 4096 would certainly help...also sticking swap files on dedicated partitions can also help be keeping the swap file from becoming fragmented...speaking of which, defragging the hard drive if indeed the game uses virtual would certainly help...

Note: anything more than 3.5 gigs of RAM on an XP 32 system does basically nothing...

[OOZ662]

IIRC, one application cannot use more than 2GB of RAM on a 32-bit system regardless.

I would assume that it loads priority data to RAM, with everything else spilling to the swap file. But, I don't know the specifics.

[Wiley]

My system does this occasionally as well.  I'm running an old AMD x2 64 running 32 bit XP (yes, I know).  It works fine with a couple peculiarities, with this being one of them.

The way I interpret the 3.5GB 32 bit limitation is, I have 4 GB of physical RAM, and I disabled the swap file.  I noticed a (very) slight performance boost when I did this, and have never looked back.  If memory serves, that 3.5GB limitation includes both physical RAM and swap file.

It seems the first time I load the game after a boot, it's caching all that stuff, hard drive is spinning hard, and my framerate goes through the floor.  After it finishes loading whatever it is loading into the background that first time, the game seems to load much faster when I go into it until I reboot the machine again.  But, as the OP said, that first time quite often it disables those detailed settings.

OOZ is correct, a 32 bit app can only use 2GB RAM.  I don't believe Windows makes the distinction between swap file and hard RAM, does it?

All I know is when I build my next AH rig (hopefully soon) it's going to have a solid state HD.

Wiley.

[OOZ662]

As far as I know, the swap file is separate from RAM. Most people don't include it in the limitation discussion simply because it's so incredibly slow (though I'm sure SSDs are having an impact on that, even though only a sadist would put their swap file on an SSD).

The limitation for total RAM in-the-case is actually 4GB. However, that includes every device in your system. The little tiny bits of RAM on your sound card, modem(lol), the caches in your optical drives, and the big chunk on your video card are all subtracted from 4GB. Whatever's left is how much system RAM you can install.

I wouldn't recommend disabling your swap file. In actuality, it's impossible, as many parts of Windows require it and will either create one regardless of your settings or fail to function.