Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: Zooty on August 16, 2005, 06:38:21 PM
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My present frame rates average around 35 fps, but fall into the teens when several aircraft are in close view (in a furball, for example).
I am running a 2.4 GHz system with 1 GByte of system RAM and an ATI Radeon 9600XT video card. I've tried all the tweaks discussed in Tweakguides, including BIOs tweaks, but with little difference. Within Aces High, the graphics sliders are in the "performance" mode. I am using the latest ATI drivers (and have also tried the Omega versions).
Just as an experiment, I switched the display resolution to 800X600 (from 1028X768) to see if doing so would improve the frame rates. To my surprise, it did not.
Does this indicate a bottleneck other than my video card? Could this indicate a motherboard issue? (Yes, I've checked my AGP speed.) Is there anything else I can try to improve the frame rates?
SKZooty
Skyknights Bomber Group
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The 9600XT really does not benefit from running at lower resolutions. What is the maximum texture size set to? Try running at 256.
Do you have any anti-aliasing enabled in the ATI control panel?
Did you install the ATI Catalyst Control Center or the normal ATI Control Panel?
How many background processes are showing up in the Task Manager?
In the lower center of the Task Manager it shows the CPU utilization. It should be bouncing from 0 to 2 % and no higher when nothing else is running. What does yours show?
What type of Internet connection do you have? If it is broadband, does the modem/router connect to the USB or Ethernet ports?
Are you behind a router?
Did you make sure to disable your anti-virus program before running Aces High II?
All the above can have an impact on performance.
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Skuzzy...
>What is the maximum texture size set to? Try running at 256.
I am running at 256
>Do you have any anti-aliasing enabled in the ATI control panel?
"Application Preference"
>Did you install the ATI Catalyst Control Center or the normal ATI Control Panel?
Catalyst
>How many background processes are showing up in the Task Manager?
Very few. I use FSAUTOSTART to disable most applications and processes before running AH.
>What type of Internet connection do you have?
DSL
>If it is broadband, does the modem/router connect to the USB or Ethernet ports?
Ethernet
>Are you behind a router?
Yes, with port forwarding to accommodate AH.
>Did you make sure to disable your anti-virus program before running Aces High II?
Yes
SKZooty
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The Catalyst control center will hurt your performance by a good margin due to the .NET layer. Unfortunately, once you activate .NET, you cannot shut it off.
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have you reset your modem and routor lately ??
next what drivers are you running.
somethings slowing you down ....
i run the 4.7 cats , 512 textures, 8x, vsync on, app pref onmost others, ingame sliders at 2/3rds-3/4ths to left.
35fps low in huge furballs/cv's ,65-85fps norm with a 9600 pro 128 . nothing loaded to mem .
my other pc runs the 4.12 cats and it see's around the same .
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Personally I find that Max Zoom causes the a REAL BIG FPS hit
Test it for yourself
Go offline
Jump in a tiger
Bring up the info with Ctrl I
Goto the main gun find a patch of trees on a near hill and max zoom
Give it a sec and watch the FPS fall
Use the square bracket "]" to drop the zoom just a bit and watch the FPS rise.
This is just my experience though.
Later All
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Thanks. I appreciate the tips.
Based on Skuzzy's comments about NET, and Roscoroo's experience with the older Catalyst, perhaps I should try uninstalling my Catalyst 5.7 and installing version 4.7 or earlier. I assume those earlier versions don't use the NET framework.
I'll let everyone know what happens.
SKZooty
Skyknights Bomber Group
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you can use the ordinary control panel instead of CCC I think. Just don't install CCC.
I thought ATI had improved the Control Centre hogginess Skuzzy?
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When you say check how many processes you have running in task manager....
I prob have way too many...i'd shut some down but how do youknow wich ones you can safely shut down when you dont really know what is all this stuff...?
I've had problems in the past after trying that....
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I use an application called FSAUTOSTART. You will find it at:
http://www.kensalter.com/fsautostart/
FSAUTOSTART can be configured to shut down all processes that you don't want running. Best of all, it will advise you if a process should NOT be shut down, so you can pick and choose.
Concerning my framerate problem, I installed the older ATI version 4.1 drivers and there was an improvement, but not a great deal.
Perhaps my motherboard does not have the necessary horsepower. The front-side bus is only 333 MHz compared to modern 800 MHz boards. I may need to consider a motherboard upgrade.
SKZooty
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you should get around what i have ..
my systems are 1.3 ghz and 2.4ghz (2500+ M barton) w 512 ram and win 98se.
did you rerun Dxdiag after the driver changes ?? that can make a diff too..
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Originally posted by Kanawa
When you say check how many processes you have running in task manager....
I prob have way too many...i'd shut some down but how do youknow wich ones you can safely shut down when you dont really know what is all this stuff...?
I've had problems in the past after trying that....
FSAutoStart looks like a cool program. I've read their site and it looks like it should work OK, I don't use it because I approach things a little differently.
Being a tech geek for many years I am always suspicious of terminating services and processes. What I've seen in the past is that some of these, especially if they are not MS services/programs can leave traces of themselves in memory. I have even seen this with some MS programs in the past but not as much lately.
What I do is setup 2 hardware profiles, one for day-to-day use and one for AH. This allows you to designate whether a service is enabled for a given profile.
While this does work for services it does not work for programs started in your registries RUN keys nor for programs executed in your Startup folder on your Start menu. These programs have the most potential for problems. I do not start ANY program that is not absolutly necessary in my RUN keys or my Startup folder. If I need a program for something, i.e. my digital camera I start them manually.
I did some research on my system comparing a normal startup, stopping services and killing processes manually and starting up using my hardware profile. There was a slight difference in available memory between manually removing programs and not having them start at all. That slight difference could cause potential problems. Then again, it may not, I just don't wish to take the chance. As I said, my suspicious nature. Again, these results are from my system running my programs. Your results may be quite different.
I posted the process I use to setup the dedicated hardware profile a few months back in this forum. Here is a link to that post. http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=150447
I'm not saying one way is better than another. I have seen an increase in the stability of my system using this process. This process will require you to reboot your system prior to playing AH, though rebooting is always a good idea anyways.
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When I run DXDiag, no problems are found. I notice that the soundcard hardware acceleration is set to MAXIMUM. Is that normal or necessary?
Would including the DXDiag information here be at all helpful?
SKZooty
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set soundcard to 3/4 acceleration
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I get low fps now :( ati 9800pro 1024mb ram amd 3000+