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Zipmos
Village Dweller
Joined: 29 Jun 2003
Posts: 1
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| Do I have to upgrade my computer? |
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My specs are:
AMD Duron 900mhz
GeForce 2 GTS 64 mb
256 SDRam
SoundBlaster 128
And other less important components.
So, my problem is very low amount of FPS´s inside the first city. If I use 800x600 resolution and all the graphical settings about half of the maximum, I get less than 10fps when running in the city.
If I lower the settings to minimum, they rise to max 15fps.
In the wilderness it run´s allmost smoothly.
I think there´s nothing to be done about my comps low performance in the city. I just wonder how could the developers screw it up as bad as it is.. If you compare Gothic 1 with maximum graphical settings and Gothic 2 with lowest possible settings, you see that Gothic 1 looks way better and also runs a lot smoother.
Well, I guess I´m in a minority with my antique computer, so I can accuse only myself for its poor performance. But the min. requirements say that it should run with even crappier comp. than mine. I´d say that Fps of 8 isn´t really playable, but who knows, maybe I´m just too picky.
Anyway, to the real purpose of this topic: I have decided to upgrade my PC. What parts should i upgrade then, if main goal is to get Gothic 2 to work? Do I need more Ram? Maybe a some more memory?
I looked some prices and I might just get enough money to buy these:
AMD Athlon 2200+
New motherboard, maybe Epox 8K9A (its the cheapest i noticed)
512 mb more memory.
Those parts would cost around 220e. Are those part´s more crucial to Gothic than a new Geforce 4 Ti-4200 64mb + 512 RAM? Which one improves Gothic´s performance more?
I just hate looking that oh, so lonely cover of Gothic 2 in my shelf with all the CD´s inside.. I cant, in any possible way play it with these low FPS ratings.
Sorry if my english isn´t that great and there may be some repetion in my post, but just ignore those parts and focus on my problem, okay? Thanks for your help if you decide to do so. |
Sun Jun 29, 2003 7:31 pm |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
Well, it actually does run on your system, although less than 10 fps in the city are of course unplayable.
First thing to do is convincing a friend to lend you another 256MB stick of SDRAM for a day. Maybe the bigger memory alone gives you enough push to make the game playable - on lowest details in the city and medium details in the woods.
If you want to upgrade your assumptions are correct. Gothic II needs 1. RAM and 2. CPU power. The graphics card is less important. So an Atlon in the 2000-2600 MHz range plus 512 MB DDR RAM are a good idea. When you´re playing other games it should be obvious that in such a system your GeForce2 is the bottleneck. Exchanging it could easily double your performance in certain games (but NOT the Gothics).
Regarding CPU and RAM it might be good to purchase a combination with 166 MHz frontside bus (--> labelled 'PC2700' or 'PC333'). The higher FSB makes a difference of ~14% in gaming performance.
Most cheaper mainboards should support PC333, but nevertheless make sure before you buy. (edit: The Epox board seems to be okay.)
And do yourself a fovour, do not buy NoName memory modules. It doesn´t really matter if you buy Samsung, Infineon, Apacer, TwinMOS or god knows which brand, but make sure the module has a ,usually well-designed, sticker on it clearly stating who manufactured the module (not the chips on the module!) and what kind of module this is. Be careful if nobody admits to having manufactured the module.
_________________
Webmaster GothicDot |
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Sun Jun 29, 2003 10:36 pm |
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fenres
Village Dweller
Joined: 29 Jun 2003
Posts: 6
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I would say no need to upgrade system just for gaming. I have been able to play all recent game demos (fps games) well enough (even online) after I have tweaked the game (all particle effects off etc).
I have similar system athlon 650mhz, gf2 pro 32mb, 512mb 100mhz sdram, sb live value, xp, slow hard drive etc
this is what I am doing. put viewing distance to 20% (you really only need this when fighting in khorinis) in game menu. Only this gives very smooth fps in khorinis city ( first time I was in khorinis I had it at 40% and after you learn to travel there you dont need that visibility). Once I go to outdoor areas I push f1-f4 buttons to set viewing distance. Everytime I save or load it reverts to 20% viewing distance which is good since I can change the setting to higher in less than a second. You can keep your texture details at highest possible settings (so you can watch the pretty textures gothic 2 has) you can also put your screen resolution to 1024@768 32 bits. this game doesn`t stress vid card so much. Disable most effects in extended configuration area. This gets your fps up in lake and river areas.
Biggest thing that would help your system is 256mb more ram. This game eats about 320mb of ram memory in my machine. my ram memory is about 10 times faster than hard drive and latency differences even bigger so it effects performance greatly. My game reloading time is 30-50 for example and I have had no swapping ever. try to turn off all unnecessary memory taking applications too |
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Mon Jun 30, 2003 12:51 am |
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mersil
Noble Knight
Joined: 23 Nov 2001
Posts: 214
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viewing distance @ 20 % ? OMG you cannot tell me that!!
i have to be able to see the mountains in the far distance, |
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Fri Jul 04, 2003 1:15 am |
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Mr. Teatime
Village Dweller
Joined: 12 Jun 2003
Posts: 12
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Don't expect to be able to play in the city smoothly even on the best hardware available. It's not possible to get above 15FPS in some parts unless you bring view distance down to 100% or less (I have a 3ghz CPU and have this problem). UNless there is a patch released that does something to fix this. |
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Fri Jul 04, 2003 1:30 am |
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Chekote
Where’s my Banana?!?!
Joined: 08 Mar 2002
Posts: 1540
Location: Dont know, looks kind of green |
I dont agree with that. The ONLY place I have slowdown is at the harbour in Khorinis, and I have everything set to full.
I only have a 2.4Ghz CPU. Although I do have an ATI Radeon 9700. But I am sure if you have a 3Ghz you must have one of those or similar too. I would look at tweaking you system cuz that sure does sound like below average performance.
_________________
IMHO my opinion is humble |
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Fri Jul 04, 2003 2:37 am |
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konny666
Noble Knight
Joined: 03 Jul 2003
Posts: 219
Location: Babylon 6 |
Just a few things I've noticed about "performance slowdowns"...
During the day in Khorinis, performance is usually sufficient if you choose the right settings and view distance. 22 to 30fps.
During the NIGHT in Khorinis, everything is super slow. It must be those street lights. Still 15fps or above but probably not more than 20fps unless I go inside a house or towards a dark area.
800x600x32 is always faster than 800x600x16! Does that make any sense?
AthlonXP 1600+ @ 1.4ghz
512mb DDR SDRAM @ 266mhz
GeForce 256 DDR 32mb (geforce 1)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
DX 9.0a
Det 44.03 |
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Fri Jul 04, 2003 3:35 am |
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Chekote
Where’s my Banana?!?!
Joined: 08 Mar 2002
Posts: 1540
Location: Dont know, looks kind of green |
quote:
Originally posted by konny666
800x600x32 is always faster than 800x600x16! Does that make any sense?
Most graphics cards have been optimized for 32bit color rendering since the last TNT cards, so its actually slower to run at 16bits in most cases. Especially at lower resolutions where memory requirements arent that much different.
_________________
IMHO my opinion is humble |
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Mon Jul 07, 2003 2:26 am |
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konny666
Noble Knight
Joined: 03 Jul 2003
Posts: 219
Location: Babylon 6 |
OK, here's something I noticed... perhaps its a bug.
When you start using teleportation too much, or move between OldWorld and NewWorld at least once... game starts getting jerky in places which were smooth before you used teleportation/switched maps. Anyone else notice this, and have any ideas on how to alleviate this?
This is especially noticeable if I teleport into Khorinis instead of just walking into it. I get teleported into the harbor, which is usually jerky, but even if i leave the harbor area, or even go into someone's house away from the harbor area, I get a lot of hard drive chugging and/or jerkiness...
Memory usage problem? I have 512mb DDR and 1GB swapfile on a different HD from gothic's. Also I set view distance to F1 (0.7) before I teleport.
Also.. its worth noticeing that the Valley of Mines map *rarely* gets jerky, even if I teleport a lot. I assume that its because its much less complex and smaller? Is it the same map used in gothic 1... ? exact same? |
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Mon Jul 07, 2003 4:22 am |
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Daedalus
High Emperor
Joined: 04 Jan 2002
Posts: 2516
Location: Estonia |
the same thing happens to me if i try to teleport from one map to another then it will be toooo laggy. offcorse every graphical stuff is in my options on maximum 300% view distance 300% another every shadow effects water effects and all on maximum only resolution is 800x600 32
AMD Athlon 2100+XP
512 DDRam
Ati Rage Radeon 9000
60 Gigabait HDD
Win XP Pro |
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Mon Jul 07, 2003 3:38 pm |
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Ragnar
High Emperor
Joined: 30 Oct 2001
Posts: 486
Location: NJ USA |
This ones for Nico…I now your out there somewhere.
First…The Stats:
AMD Athlon 1.2ghz TBird
1gig 333 DDRam
GF4 Ti 4600 64MB
Win XP Pro
After reading how a RAM upgrade boosted game performance, I installed another 512MB in my system and doubled the cache settings in the .ini file. I didn’t notice any real performance increase so I blamed it on the crappy CPU speed. Then a few nights ago…for no apparent reason…I decided to max out all the video setting from the control panel in the game (didn’t want to exit out of the game). Everyone was saying how great the game look and I wanted to see too! I even went from 102x178 to 1280x1024 and hit enter. I resumed the game (after picking my jaw up off the floor) and fell back in my chair…the game was blazing!!  I couldn’t believe it!!! Common sense told me that the game should be running slower, but it didn’t. IT RAN FASTER!!!!  I hadn’t smoked anything…so I know it wasn’t me. Man, I played all night (2-3am). Even the city ran smooth (kind of). The next day I started G2 and went to get something while it loaded. When I got back the screen was blank…  ...the HD light was fickern so I knew it wasn’t a lock up but the monitor power light was orange, no video signal, shit! I cycled the power on the monitor and regained the vid. G2 was playing the into again and everything was good…until I started playing. Back to a mediocre system performance  . Why, why I ask you? What happened during the intro that set my system back from deamsville?
I remember you saying the intro does a perf setup…what does it change? More importantly, can I get it back?
_________________
"That one hurt..."
Sylvio |
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Mon Jul 07, 2003 9:03 pm |
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konny666
Noble Knight
Joined: 03 Jul 2003
Posts: 219
Location: Babylon 6 |
Isn't there an INI file setting which can disable the intro?
And another one to disable the recalculation of system performance... |
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Mon Jul 07, 2003 10:44 pm |
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Daedalus
High Emperor
Joined: 04 Jan 2002
Posts: 2516
Location: Estonia |
it changed something on old defaults probably if it really did go smooth and all then try to play with the configs it will go smooth again probably  |
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Tue Jul 08, 2003 1:53 pm |
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Ragnar
High Emperor
Joined: 30 Oct 2001
Posts: 486
Location: NJ USA |
Maybe Nico is the wrong person to address this issue. I have done some reading and he seems to be more related to QA (Keeper of the Bugs). But I work for a small software company and are QA guys know more about our product than most of the programmers…they have to. Anyway…I am positive that the intro changed the .ini. And I know there is a switch that turns the intro on and off, I just didn’t know that changing the settings in Options would set off the intro the next time I started the game…and the blank screen troubles me also.
I guess what I am looking for is what settings the intro effects. I did not make a backup of the .ini file prior to the changes (I should have known) so I have nothing to compare my .ini file to. I guess I can backup my current .ini file and then reset everything to default and compare the to files, but not knowing what to look for would be like running around in the Valley of Mines with my eyes closed. It kind of pisses me off because it WAS running supper smooth.
_________________
"That one hurt..."
Sylvio |
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Tue Jul 08, 2003 2:56 pm |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
Nico is coder. QA is not his business.
_________________
Webmaster GothicDot |
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Tue Jul 08, 2003 5:28 pm |
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