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Leandar
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 24 Nov 2001
Posts: 26
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| I need an answer to keep my sanity... |
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Hi guys, I'm new to the forum although I have followed it regularly since the release of the original Gothic. Most of you are a great bunch of gamers and it's definitely cool that you are constantly trying to help each other out, as opposed to other boards.
Anway, I bought Gothic II from the british site the day it came out and got it a couple of days later. I friggin' love this game (or what little I have been able to play is a better way to put it...) and really want to appreciate it to the max. What I am getting to is that I just cannot seem to get the game to run at a decent frate inside the city, and by that I mean 5-10 Frames a sec. I know the developers have stated that's the way it is, but I want to get an idea for how well it runs on somebody who has a similar system to mine and what I should expect.
Here we go:
-Pentium IV 2.0ghz
-1024 SDRAM
-80gig hard drive 60% full
-Radeon 9800PRO
-Creative Audigy Gamer
I am running the game at 1600x1200 32bit, 4xAA-16xAF and with ingame settings all set to full except the draw distances which are down to 260 each.
Now I know my problem might seem obvious to anyone reading this but I get VERY similar performance running at 800x600 32bit and no AA or AF still at max details and equal visual range. The problem I have is not so much that it runs slow, (I finished Ascension when it first came out, before the patches at stoned-turtle speed) but that I just can't win a fight in the city at these settings, and lowering the draw distance fixes the speed problem but then the game looks...just not very immersive. What are realistic setting for my machine?
Thanks to anyone who responds, all I need is an idea of what to expect so I can spend more time playing the game than configuring the .ini file and my system with no apparent result.
thx
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 12:18 am |
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corwin
On the Razorblade of Life
Joined: 10 Jun 2002
Posts: 8376
Location: Australia |
I'm really surprised at you poor frame rate. My system is much older than yours, 1.4 AMD 712 RAM and a GForce4. I have no problems in the city whatsoever!! Sorry I can't help much, but I'm not a technical person. I mainly run default settings and hope for the best!! 
_________________
If God said it, then that settles it!
I don't use Smileys, I use Emoticons!!
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 12:54 am |
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Leandar
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 24 Nov 2001
Posts: 26
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Thanks for the reply, but this makes me wonder. I hope there is nothing wrong with my system. |
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 1:48 am |
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JDR13
Magister of the Light
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 376
Location: Michigan, United States |
I can only answer your question with another question. Why are you trying to run a game in 1600x1200 resolution with 4xFSAA and 16xAA??
You're not going to be able to do that with a 2 ghz cpu and get consistent frame rates. There's no need for FSAA at that high of a resolution. Either turn off FSAA or knock your resolution down to 1024x768 which still looks great with FSAA. |
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 2:05 am |
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Leandar
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 24 Nov 2001
Posts: 26
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Well, thanks for replying first of all. To answer your question, I do notice (although minimal) a difference when runninf FSAA at the current res, and when I turn it off I really don't notice a difference in performance so i keep it on. But perhaps you are right, I'll just disable it. Now, should I disable anisotropic as well? I have done that too and still no difference. You see, my problem is only in the city, sometimes the game feels like I'm floating but it is weird...
Anyway, I'll try this and see if I've just been too obsessed with runing the game at the highest visual quality possible. Anyway, as a suggestion, what's a good visual range setting to strike a decent balance between performance and quality? |
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 2:26 am |
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Leandar
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 24 Nov 2001
Posts: 26
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hmm, unfortunately the city still is my big problem. the frame rate is just not high enough to be able to have a fight and get away with it.
Any insight will be greatle appreciated |
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 2:54 am |
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Kiwi Boy
High Emperor
Joined: 03 Jan 2003
Posts: 1086
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Sorry I cannot help much, as I'm not a tech person as well. You may get better results from the Troubleshooting Forums, both in RPGDot and in JoWooD official forums; a developer often visits those forums to provide recommendations for any technical issues.
I have to admit that your system is fine, but don't expect optimal performance when your settings are at the max. The Game is CPU dependent (for calculating NPC's AI), and clearly, a 2GHz CPU is not powerful enough for max settings. Consider upgrading your CPU if you want the best of both worlds. 
However, strangely, my system is considerably worse than yours (i.e. AMD 2400, 512MB RAM, Radeon 9700P), and the performance in the city is still acceptable for me (~20 fps at 300% view distance). So, it seems that there's some kind of "background" issues in your computer.
A stupid suggestion first: check if your system is "sober" while you're running the Game. Some of the obvious checklist items are - Is there any background virus scanner?
- Is your computer infected with virus?
- Is your computer defragmenting your hard drive?
- Are you burning CDs?
- Did you close all the "heavy-duty" and unnecessary programs (e.g. KaZaA)?
- Are your Windows settings optimized to run games?
- Are you sure ALL drivers are optimized (i.e. updated and have minimal bugs)?
quote:
Originally posted by Leandar
hmm, unfortunately the city still is my big problem. the frame rate is just not high enough to be able to have a fight and get away with it.
It IS normal. Because the city is highly populated and requires a lot of AI calculations, typically, the Game performance is at its worst when you're in the city; expect a loss of at least 10 fps. You can easily improve the performance by changing the view distance with F1-F4 hotkeys (80%, 120%, 200%, 300%). Normally, I use F2 (120%) in the city and F4 (300%) outside.
quote:
Originally posted by Leandar
I do notice (although minimal) a difference when runninf FSAA at the current res, and when I turn it off I really don't notice a difference in performance so i keep it on. But perhaps you are right, I'll just disable it. Now, should I disable anisotropic as well? I have done that too and still no difference.
Did you try altering the Gothic.INI file? I'm not sure if there IS anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering in your Game. For Radeon 9700 drivers, the Game by default disables anti-aliasing. You have to change the settings manually in the .INI file to enable it.
Perhaps this is why there's no performance hit when you turn on AA/AF in your Display Control Panel. Try changing AA/AF settings in the .INI file and see if there's a difference.
Here are some .INI settings you may want to consider to change:
- zSyncAmbientCol
- radeonHackAmbientColBug
- zVidEnableAntiAliasing
- zTexAnisotropicFiltering
I don't know if they'll help, but experiment with them.
Since you have a huge amount of RAM (1GB), increasing the cache size will not hurt. So, try altering the cache settings to see if there's a difference:
- zTexCacheOutTimeMSec
- zTexCacheSizeMaxBytes
- zSndCacheOutTimeMSec
- zSndCacheSizeMaxBytes
Explore the [RENDERER_D3D] and especially, [ENGINE] sections in the .INI file. You can turn off options that are unnecessary most of the time in the Game. Here are some options I would rather change:
- zVobFarClipZScale
- zFarClipAlphaFade
- zWaterAniEnabled
- zCloudShadowScale
- zMusic16ChannelsOnly
- zWindEnabled
Also, have you lowerred your resolution? IMHO, 1600x1200 is a bit too detailed to show any visual difference for FSAA. 1024x768, or even, 800x600, is better for visual display without sacrificing too much performance.
quote:
Originally posted by Leandar
Anyway, I'll try this and see if I've just been too obsessed with runing the game at the highest visual quality possible.
... but will you allow for lower audio quality as well? Try turning off the music; iit's a heavy memory hit. Memorize the music and sing it instead.
Don't know if it helps, but try turning off reverb and EAX if you don't need it. Lower the quality of sound effects as well.
Clearly, I'm not a tech person; some of my "advices" are misleading. In summary, try the following:- Post the question again in an appropriate Troubleshooting forum. I'm sure a better person will help you.
- Explore your Windows installation to see if there is any "background" issues
- Lower view distance using F1-F4
- Alter Gothic.INI to turn on anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, turn off unnecessary visual details, and increase the cache size.
- Try lower audio settings
- Ultimately, do a hardware upgrade to achieve maximum performance.
Good luck for optimizing of the Game, and hope you have a good fight in the city. |
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 7:59 am |
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fenres
Village Dweller
Joined: 29 Jun 2003
Posts: 6
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Hi! This game is very cpu and memory bound. The reason you don`t see performance difference between 800*600 vs 1600*1200 w aa and af is your graphic card has enough memory bandwith and fillrate to get maybe over 30 fps even in such high settings. Graphics engine of this game is not so good imho.
I don`t think anyone will get high fps in dock area in Khorinis. There is quite easy solution for this though. Push f1-f4 buttons to change drawing distance. You probably need only do this in town area since your system is quite good.
Maybe you should try following settins since you have a lot of memory.
zTexCacheOutTimeMSec=480000
zTexCacheSizeMaxBytes=256000000
zSndCacheOutTimeMSec=20000
zSndCacheSizeMaxBytes=200000000
; ... with these settings you can tune the memory usage of the texture and sound resources.
; if you have more ram than 512 MB, greater values will improve performance |
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Sun Aug 24, 2003 11:33 am |
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karaknic
Village Dweller
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 16
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It'll take me one sentence to tell you why you're getting those framerates and how to fix it - You have SDRAM, buy DDR RAM. This game thrives if you have good memory bandwidth dont change d3d settings because your card is godly and can take on anything Gothic 2 is very memory intensive - think about it you're loading 25 sq. kilometres with huge textures and billions of polygons - so either turn down the model detail which might help or get DDR RAM is my best advice. |
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Sun Aug 31, 2003 6:37 pm |
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Leandar
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 24 Nov 2001
Posts: 26
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thanks for the help guys. I'm still trying to figure this out. Now, for the memory part, I can't buy DDR. I don't think the board could take both types of memory...or is it possible?
Please, If anyone knows this let me know 'cause I'll be out in a second buying some DDR. |
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Tue Sep 02, 2003 3:01 am |
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Locoman
Village Dweller
Joined: 09 Dec 2002
Posts: 9
Location: Fort Worth, TX USA |
Well, first of all, you need to determine whether you really have SDR SDRAM instead of DDR SDRAM. SDRAM is a term that covers most memory used in home PCs, from SDR to DDR to RDRAM. Is it called PC133 or PC2100? PC133 is old SDR SDRAM, while PC2100 (sometimes called PC266) is the newer DDR SDRAM. DDR and SDR slots are different, so unless you have have two different types of memory slots on your motherboard, you can not change from SDR to DDR without changing motherboards. |
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Tue Sep 02, 2003 7:04 am |
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