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NiksaVel
Village Dweller
Joined: 14 May 2003
Posts: 2
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Greetings,
I've just gotten Morrowind+Tribunal and after install, I was kind of surprised with the performance I got... my games usually run faster than that.
I have:
Athlon XP 1600+ (c. 1.4 GHz)
256 SDRAM
7,200 rpm HDD with plenty of space and VM
geforce 4 MX440 64 RAM
PC Chips m830 MoBo
DirectX 9
I know my equipment is a bit on a "budget" side, but I am not a rich man... anyways my games usually run smooth and sweet, but morrowind under 1024x768 runs c. 10 FPS in wilderness, c. 15 indoors which is pretty much unacceptable...
Is this normal or is there something up in here? What?
Thanks in advance for any help...
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Wed May 14, 2003 5:13 pm |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
You're getting typical performance. Your video card is a bit behind, as you know. You might consider upgrading to 512 RAM since that can be done pretty cheaply.
You can also try the frame rate optimizer we've got here. That might help. If you're looking for Quake-esque frame rates, you might as well forget it.
_________________
=Proud Member of the Non-Flamers Guild=
=Benevolent Dictator, X2/X3 and Morrowind/Oblivion Forums=
Sorry. No pearls of wisdom in this oyster.
RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Wed May 14, 2003 5:29 pm |
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NiksaVel
Village Dweller
Joined: 14 May 2003
Posts: 2
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Okay, thanks a bunch, I was most worried that my comp or windows are acting up...
I can live with the game as it is, it runs fine in 800x600 and the graphics loss is minimal with lowered res..
thanks again 
N
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Wed May 14, 2003 6:48 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
Here is my PC:
800 MHz Athlon
256 SDRAM 100 Mhz
GForce 2 GTS
And game is smooth enough to play in 1280*1024. Well you just need to play a little bit mainly with real time shadows.
Man you have really faster PC than I :]. |
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Wed May 14, 2003 9:22 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
Having played Morrowind with different processors, different cards and different settings, my impression is:
1) first of all, it is processor dependent. A faster processor will help a lot.
2) a good graphics card allows you to run the game in higher resolutions, but doesn't necessarily make lower ones faster
3) 512MB Ram helps. 1GB helps more.
4) Some plugins are really lowering the frame rate.
5) Shadows cost a lot of FPS
I am playing now with a 2.5 P4, 1 GB Ram, Radeon 9700 Pro, 1600x1200, 4xAA, 8XAF, app. 30 plugins loaded. Indoors, I can get up to 150 FPS. Outdoors, normally app. 30-50FPS, but this can go as low as 12 FPS. Go figure.
_________________
Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Wed May 14, 2003 9:45 pm |
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dteowner
Shoegazer
Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia |
The hardcore geeks that assembled my computer claim to have decompiled parts of MW. They claim the graphics code in MW is so horrible that it would get you flunked out of a introductory programming course. Don't know how much stock to put in either of those claims, although they've never felt the need to lie to me in the past.
_________________
=Proud Member of the Non-Flamers Guild=
=Benevolent Dictator, X2/X3 and Morrowind/Oblivion Forums=
Sorry. No pearls of wisdom in this oyster.
RIP Red Wings How 'Bout Dem Cowboys! |
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Wed May 14, 2003 10:01 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
They do not know what they are talking about. This eternal rumor about "no BSP tree, no backface culling" suggests that a game like morrowind could be programmed like a FPS. It can't. There is little that can be prerendered there.
The reason why Morrowind is slow on most computers is the enourmous amount of scripts running in the background. Morrowind is a game of ever changing dependencies. Without NPCs, the game would be really fast. That's the reason why in the wilderness framerates are considerably higher.
_________________
Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Wed May 14, 2003 10:13 pm |
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puma
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Posts: 44
Location: Poland |
I've got similar system:
Athon XP1700+ (1.43)
512 DDR RAM
graphics MSI GF4 MX440 64DDR
SB Live
lots of GB of fast disk space and VM
HOWEVER:
- lots of additional equipment and software, which I suspect slow my system down a lot (TV tuner pilot, scanner active key, Virtual Drive (CD emmulator), firewall, www server, database server, ...)
- I consider installing a clean system on second HDD and try it then
This is what I recently upgraded from 256 RAM & GF2 MX just to get better performance in MW. Helped, but not very much. I hear people with similar systems have much better FPS. Still, I haven't tried all the possible tricks you can find on this forum and other www sources.
e.g.
I heard there is a Windows setting of VM, something like ConservativeMemoryAllocation, I'll have to check if that works.
I play 800x600 res. (no shadows, no music, max. view, 20% AI distance, High Sound Quality - hardware acc.) with FPS ranging 10-20 outdoors, lots of plugins loaded (incl. Atmosphreic Sound Effects - which is cool but power consuming - had to turn off regular music). This is on the edge of playability, but I am probably too lazy to try to improve FPS further. |
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Wed May 14, 2003 10:18 pm |
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puma
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Posts: 44
Location: Poland |
quote:
Originally posted by dteowner
The hardcore geeks that assembled my computer claim to have decompiled parts of MW. They claim the graphics code in MW is so horrible that it would get you flunked out of a introductory programming course.
I happen to be a teacher in an "introductory programming course" and there is a huge difference in a poorly coded program and one of poor performance. There may be reasons to sacrifice performance for sth else, but no "reasonable" reason is known of creating a poor code - it simply doesn't pay back int the longer term (however, it happens as programmers are stressed by deadlines to launch programs/games).
I just wonder how guys capable of decompiling the engine of MW can make such a statement. I also was, at first, disappointed with the poor performance, until I opened the editor and saw what it was all about. Now I can say the script interpreter is not very well coded (many broken functions, like UsedOnMe) and even more terrible documented (as for modders). That is the reason rather than the game engine itself (i.e. graphics eng.).
And I must admit, that I haven't seen such a beautifull sky in all my gaming life.  |
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Wed May 14, 2003 10:56 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
I do not know much about programming needed in games. But when I see MW graphics, quests and a lot other things, I see 1 CD where it is all included and not large installation, I think there must be combinations of programming and compressing gods behind this all :]. |
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Thu May 15, 2003 6:02 pm |
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puma
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Posts: 44
Location: Poland |
Oh, compression is just another thing. Indeead all game data is strongly compressed, so it takes a few moments while loading new area. You must have experienced it when travelling, crossing the square (cell) border on the world map. This moment a new portion of data (graphics) is loaded, then some new scripts (recipes for how objects behave in game) are initialized. In fact data and scripts are loaded for the current cell and all surrounding ones. When I know that, it's easier for me to accept the loading time and allover performance of the game. But that is perhaps a programmer's devotion |
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Thu May 15, 2003 8:30 pm |
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