Graphics optimising

[Naetha]

Just upgraded to a Geforce 6800GT and disappointed to find that I still only get 10 FPS looking at the crowd in Svasud, and a max of 30 FPS the rest of the time (in game graphics set to minimum, except for SI water (classic water = teh ugly) also using classic models. Anyone know what happened to the pre-caching options though? They used to be on the options page, but not there now

My comp specs are:
MSI K7N5 Mobo
Athlon XP 3200
2GB PC3200 DDR RAM (Kingston)
Asus V9999 Geforce 6800 GT (256MB)
Seagate Barracuda 7200 40GB HDD (5GB free)

I have updated antivirus, regularly run adaware/spyware blaster. Defragged my HDD last night, run TweakNow registry cleaner, and use FreeRAM XP to optimise RAM use. I also have display settings in Windows to best performance.

As a comparison, my husband has a slightly better mobo and processor (Athlon 64 3400), same HDD, RAM and a 6600GT 128mb gfx card, yet gets DOUBLE framerate in all places, including on the loading screen, which makes me think its system related rather than daoc related.

Any ideas on how to max my framerate?

 

[Roalith]

What previous GFX card were you using? If an ATI card I'd point at the drivers, myself. I'm using a p4 3 gig HT, 1 gig of the same ram, and an ATI x800 XL.

Maxed settings at 1600 x 1200 resolution, and I get about 40 FPS average.

If it's a case of a clean OS install followed by the GFX card drivers and DAOC, etc, then check your card driver settings to see what level your anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings.

 

[Naetha]

Previous card was Geforce 5700 Ultra. I uninstalled drivers, ran driver cleaner pro, then installed the latest Nvidia drivers (same as my husband uses with his card)

I guess I could try using the Omega drivers, but have only previously noticed real improvement if the nvidia ones crashed my system.

I run at 1280 x 1024 on desktop and in daoc btw.

What should my anti-aliasing and anisotropic settings be for best performance?

Edit: my gfx card is overclocked to 440MHz core and 1.13GHz memory - very stable, no problems.

 

[Bahumat]

my specs almost identical to Naeth's except i have an amd 2800. Mine works fine but before i downloaded the current drivers it was really messy, try getting the latest nvidia drivers and see what happens

EDIT:- do you have programs running in the background that could be causing this? maybe your anti virus runs a scan at a particular time which co-incides with your playtime.

 

[Naetha]

my specs almost identical to Naeth's except i have an amd 2800. Mine works fine but before i downloaded the current drivers it was really messy, try getting the latest nvidia drivers and see what happens

Currently using latest Nvidia drivers - currently downloading Omegadrivers, although they date back from June 2005 so may be a little outdated

EDIT:- do you have programs running in the background that could be causing this? maybe your anti virus runs a scan at a particular time which co-incides with your playtime.

I usually have a couple of firefox windows open in the background, but not usually anything else - occasionally sites like allakhazam or VN boards will completely lag my PC out, so I use them a minimum amount, and not when I need good performance

In terms of background processes - these are they:

 

[Ryuno]

I would check the AGP bus speed of the mobo and gfx card. It could be thats set low. Both should proberly support 8x.

EDIT:

Also the precaching options were ditched when Catas came out I think. I havent seen em for ages.

 

[Roalith]

FSAA and AA should be set to 0 for the best framerate - image quality may suffer a bit, but it's a tradeoff

Also - that FreeMem program. I've always been very dubious about programs which supposedly prioritise memory bandwidth for applications - generally speaking I've only ever found they degraded performance. Tried running DAOC with that program closed?

 

[Konah]

tweek the gfx detail settings in the nvidia drivers, i use ati myself but know with them the quality comes set high by default.

texture quality medium
mipmap quality medium or high, not highest
aa2 max, af2 max
turn off vsync
reduce your clip range to medium in game, seems with cata(?) they increased the range on the "far" setting, medium is enough now.
check bios settings for agp

after that you could try overclocking card ofc but seems u have a more fundamental problem. you dont say what resolution your running btw

 

[Roalith]

Oh, also - you're running FRAPs? Are you sure you're not - even accidentally - writing to disk at the same time as playing?

May be worth disabling/killing that one off too

 

[Naetha]

tweek the gfx detail settings in the nvidia drivers, i use ati myself but know with them the quality comes set high by default.

texture quality medium
mipmap quality medium or high, not highest
aa2 max, af2 max
turn off vsync
reduce your clip range to medium in game, seems with cata(?) they increased the range on the "far" setting, medium is enough now.
check bios settings for agp

after that you could try overclocking card ofc but seems u have a more fundamental problem. you dont say what resolution your running btw

Done all of that now, no change
Already said resolution (1280 x 1024) and gfx card overclocked to 440MHz and 1.13 GHz. I'm gonna try OCing my motherboard tonight, although the one I'm using can't be pushed that far.
Double checked that I'm not recording to Fraps. Also freeram that I'm using has improved my performance since I started using it about 3 months ago.

Is it my processor thats dragging my FPS down, or is there something I'm missing?

 

[Roalith]

Processor should be fine with DAOC. Give it a go without Freeram though - DR client is very memory intensive, and there could be problems with the bandwidth addressing or similar.

 

[Konah]

i think theres smth ur missing, noway your fps should not improve after buying a better gfx card, smth is fooked!

i dimly remember smth about a bug where your fps gets stuck at half your monitor refresh rate, but dunno if it happens in doac. you could try increasing the refresh rate tho and see if it helps.

RefreshForce

 

[Roalith]

i think theres smth ur missing, noway your fps should not improve after buying a better gfx card, smth is fooked!

i dimly remember smth about a bug where your fps gets stuck at half your monitor refresh rate, but dunno if it happens in doac. you could try increasing the refresh rate tho and see if it helps.

RefreshForce

Careful if you try that, as setting a refresh rate higher than your monitor can handle at a given resolution can end up just giving you a black screen

 

[Roalith]

Hmm, also - try upping the AGP Aperture size in your BIOS to 256mb?

 

[SkarIronfist]

I think what you have to remember, is that buying a new graphics card doesn't necessarily translate into higher frame rate.

Its often the case of marrying up the gfx card and the cpu. So if you have a really good gfx card, but your cpu and memory subsystem is older, then you will find that the gfx card can't open up alot.

The big thing you are getting from newer cards is better shader models, SM2 - 3. Better handling of Anti aliasing and Anstopric filtering. But these only really kick in within the gfx card itself, so improved images resulting from use of the Shader models.

I would at switching to an AMD 64 3500+ (Switch to Dual Core 939, when prices come down) and a suitable motherboard. I assume that your current motherboard is AGP based, so I recommend the ASRock board with the AGP and PCI express graphic card slots (About £46). So you have an upgrade path.

 

[Naetha]

Just shelled out £150 for a new graphics card - can't afford a new board and processor for another year at least

 

[Roalith]

In my honest opinion DAOC (even DR client) really doesn't warrant a 64 bit system, unless of course you're dual accounting (Actually - are you dual accounting on the one box Naetha? Two accounts running a DR client would be a problem).

 

[Konah]

Careful if you try that, as setting a refresh rate higher than your monitor can handle at a given resolution can end up just giving you a black screen

in which case u boot to safe-mode, fire up the proggy and "load defaults".

the settings it suggests automatically are taken from your monitors plug n play info so should be no probs, but yes be careful with user selected refresh rates ^^

 

[Naetha]

Nope, only ever run one account at a time - got a second PC for the other account

I've taken all the advice you guys have given me, but its only improved the performance by about 10%

 

[Darzil]

Make sure the camelot directories are excluded from the av checking (the live one, make sure you have a weekly scan that includes it).

Also, clean install every time in my book when you put a new graphics card in.

When you install, make sure you apply the chipset drivers before the graphics drivers.

Darzil

 

[Oboy]

Nope, only ever run one account at a time - got a second PC for the other account

I've taken all the advice you guys have given me, but its only improved the performance by about 10%

have u reinstalled your OS when u switched gfxcard?
U specially have to do this when switching between ati and nvidia because when you install a OS its gonna tweak itself to the gfx thats in your comp. If u change u can get problems in performance. If nothing else helps and u havnt tried i suggest u reinstall your OS. I run a new installed winxp with amd xp2000+ with an old gf4 4600ti and 1.25 gb ram and have no problem att all with lagg. Can see some glitches sometimes in zergs or when someone with an ugly pictare is logging in to my msn

 

[Naetha]

OK sorry for being a girly noob - can anyone tell me quicly how to reinstall my OS, and do I have to do any fiddly formatting?