About 2 weeks ago I updated my video drivers to the latest and greatest. I run a batch file before starting the game that reduces my Win7 processes to 32. I don't run a firewall and my AV automaticly shuts itself off when a game goes full screen.
The new drivers made a few things in the game look better and didn't seem to affect my frame rates. But, I started to experience constant rubber bullets and I had to unclock my video memory back to the factory default becasue I was getting (AcesHig.exe) CTD game errors to the desktop. It was funny becasue it was an old problem I had gotten finaly rid of last year with a new video card.
The CTD problem was based on 2 scenario:
1. Rapidly shooting a 5incher while looking into the sun with a giant furball and battle noises raging around the ship.
2. In the middle of a giant furball low over an airfeild with loud noises and constant VOX chattter.
Resource exhaustion.
My Varyence and Delay was flat except for a perodic sharp spike at an interval of half the distance of the Varyence and Delay view screen. My Host Queue time was it's usual range from flat to strange spiking semi-square waves that often indicated 2 of the Texas routers between my house and the game server were dropping packets again.
Last night I finaly got tired of 2 weeks of the rubber bullets. I rebooted my router and checked my path with pingplotter. For once none of the Texas hops were showing errors or dropping packets. My Host Queue time reflected this but, that periodic spike in a flat Varyence and Delay line was still there. When I had the previous drivers installed that spike never showed up.
I closed the game and rolled my video drivers back to the previous version. Started the game back up and logged into the MA and my rubber bullets were gone. Cons were once again going boom while flying through my bullet streams rahter than me emptying my magazines into a con from 100 yards watching on full zoom and they fly away. This could be coincidence on a grand scale but, with that single sharp spike gone from my Varyence and Delay line I stopped having rubber bullets.
Be careful thinking newer drivers for your video card means better AH game performance. Most of the time nothing will happen and the game will run like you expect it to.
You might want to keep a few recent versions of your vdeo card's drivers handy. If you are comfortable with uninstalling and installing video drivers, it's one place to test changing if you are having strange rubber bullets, frame rate issues or CTD's. Admitedly sometimes newer drivers will be the solution to these issues.
Only after eliminating the possible source as errant firewalls, AV programs, too many processes running in the background and pingplotter showing you routers dropping your packets. Or even bad hardware in your machine. This is a cautionairy tale about one possible tool to help your game experience.
My video card is an ATI HD 6770 1G.
