Performance issues in bf 1942

[CptDoom]

Lo all.

My very first post in BW and if u know me from irc u prolly know im gonna start bitching about my crap computer... Neway.

These are my specs..
xp1800+
384 ddr 2100
GeForce 4 Ti 4400 (creative)
60 gig 7200 ibm thingy
Epox 8k7a (4in1s etc)
Crappy soundblaster 4.1 thing (u know £30 from pc world =)

I am suffering from huge amounts of 'lag', i use the word lag but i mean slowdown to the point where it runs at 5fps at times, mebbe worse. IE very f'ing unplayable.. The thing thats really weird (i think WPKenny noticed this too) is i can turn all the effects etc off and i still suffer from this crap even on 640 x 480. I understand there is a way of remedying this if u have an sblive card but i followed the pointers neway (just in case) and lowered the sampling rate from 44 khz to 22 khz still to no avail, mebbe only slightly (2fps). I get the problem mainly when im near flag outposts etc where it gets busy but it isnt my adsl (nildram) connection causing this.

The worst thing is that on the day of release i had absolutely no problems at all, i hope my problems are nothing to do with bw servers but it seemed a lot better on say an ea server.

Still my pc pisses me off all the time neway just thought id say a couple of things about an amzing game totally screwed up for a reason which still eludes me =)

neway beddies

oh and 1 more thing, when im not getting shafted by performance issues i get around 100fps on even the big levels (well thats what it seems like neway)

 

[CptDoom]

oh and the demo server client worked with absolutely no probs whatsoever... stick that in ur pipe

 

[dazzie]

lag

Hi cptdoom,

I had exactly the same problems and for me the cure was in dxdiag reducing hardware acceleration for sound to it's minimum.

It's odd that this worked as in the game I don't have hardware acceleration for sound selected. Oh well, don't care - at least I can play the game now!

HTH

Dazzie

 

[CptDoom]

hmmmmm

tah dazzie

i tried what u said and it seems a little better now but still not running no where near as sweet as the demo. ill keep persevering, mebbe i can work out something for my setup which shouldnt really need tweaking at the end of the day, maybe therell be a patch or something soon as i dont seem to be the only one suffering from this =) Still its playable. Ish. Kinda. SHOULD BE BETTER DAMNIT!

 

[Mas-]

I've had a warp/lag problem for ages, but i just put my 256MB dimm back in to make 512mb and its fine, no lag whatsoever, aint tried 32 player yet (only 16, but it was lagging on that yesturday). I was always getting an error in windows saying system resource is low so i decided to test bf after i put a 2nd dimm in.
I also noticed i would get ppls messages in the game all at once instead of when they type it. Like when the game ends every message will spam onto the screen. Which got me thinking maybe a mem problem?.

My only problem is that my comp doesnt like 2 dimms in the computer anymore, well since i got the gf4. I get bsod galore or the games just quit to the desktop. I have no idea whats causing it, both dimms work fine on there own, and dont ever seem to crash. But when there together they just aint working .

Either gonna get a 512MB dimm, or just wait till after xmas for some new cpu's to come out. 86 quid for 512MB pc2100 innit?. Not sure which to do.

Anyway, has anyone else had a problem like this? (maybe i should of posted in the hardware/tech support forum but nm)

My Specs:

Athlon 1.4Ghz
KG7-Raid
512MB PC2100 (2x 256MB crucial pc2100)
Soundblaster live platinum
550w psu

 

[Summo]

I have this problem too, and thanks to a mysertious benefactor on a server yesterday, I found the solution was simply to lower the sound quality from 44 to 22 (or whatever it is).

Unfortunately to do that I have to disable hardware acceleration and that results in continuous white noise.

My struggle continues...

 

[Moving Target]

Originally posted by cptdoom
Lo all.

My very first post in BW and if u know me from irc u prolly know im gonna start bitching about my crap computer... Neway.

Your PC is so much better than mine :/

 

[CptDoom]

Yes my pc may be better than a lot of pooters out there but it was put together by a fucktard (me) and i am not convinced i have it setup right, there fore ur pc is prolly better than mine =)

Neway one of these days i may have it working, tbh its not just bf1942, most of my games shoud be running far better than they are, i mean ud exoect it to given the spec, maybe im just asking to much...

laters

 

[EvilGrin666]

I believe the BW servers are lagging due to them cramming 4 servers to a box. I've posted about it in detail here

 

[CptDoom]

Mebbe so...

This is not the first i have heard of this, as i said the servers for other communities seem to behave a lot better. But then again i dont want to kill people i hardly know, where is the fun in that?

In actual fact i believe this may well be the case, what does BW have to say about this..... Eh, eh??

 

[EvilGrin666]

Blueyonder ran its test server on a dedicated box and ramped up the player limit to 64. Guess what? it was fine..

As soon as they started craming 3 or 4 24 player servers to a box it all went pete tong.

 

[CptDoom]

grumble grrrrr...

How do u know that BW has 4 servers per box? I have seen somewhere mentioned that u need at least a 2.4 p4 to host a 64 player game (the truth in this statement i am not sure about due to lack of knowledge) which seems quite believable due to the vehicles and spare seats etc.

However if BW are using, say a p4 2.4 to host 4 32 player games and the above statement holds true, no wonder my pc jerking more than a rabbit on heat. This is really annoying me now.. No one seems to (not most) to have issues like these.

If it is my end thats at fault i would love to know what is so wrong, i get 9500 3dmarks etc and play rtcw, sof2 at blistering pace.

Mebbe i have to start looking back into xp related conflicts, i had just thought id weeded them out tho =/

Feedback appreciated =)

 

[EvilGrin666]

Server IPorts are as follows are they not?

213.221.174.71:14567
213.221.174.39:14569
213.221.174.71:14568
213.221.174.39:14570
213.221.174.39:14568
213.221.174.39:14567
213.221.174.71:14569
213.221.174.71:14570

so, you can see by the IP info they have 2 boxes, each running 4 server processes.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

I was going to post about it, but decided not to to give BW the benefit of the doubt. However, considering this is probably their most played game, I can't see that they can run the risk of pissing off the players they do have left...

 

[CptDoom]

Learn something new every day =)

So why is it just a handful of us who have these problems?

 

[MrChumble]

This is not an unknown problem on BW servers...they did the same with MoH (trying to run 6 servers off one box for a time) and it was a complete disaster.
The servers just seem to be overloaded at the moment, which is frankly crazy considering that only 1 is in use at any one time

Hopefully they will notice and fix it tomorrow.

 

[CptDoom]

And this may explain the lagging/jerking/tearing/fucking crappy performance im getting at my end?

I really do hope so...

 

[EvilGrin666]

I'd like to offically term this stupid type of setup 'Jolt Syndrome'

 

[EvilGrin666]

Originally posted by cptdoom
And this may explain the lagging/jerking/tearing/fucking crappy performance im getting at my end?

I really do hope so...

To put your mind at rest. Try running Winamp in the background (assuming your SFX card doesn't complain) If it skips, corrupts or generally messes up while playing bf1942 then you have performance issues, if it doesn't then its the server/netconnection/etc.

 

[CptDoom]

i just ran the winamp test u just suggested and there was no skipping on the track i just played, David Holmes (Zero Tolerance), if u interested =), and discovered no real differnce in performance. The only thing that did happen, which has happened b4 is a machine gun sound tends to hang repeatedly, ie it doesnt stop and is irritating but this only happened last time when i turned on the hardware acceleration in the options (page2).

Neway...

 

[^Vas]

Game quality was far better on Friday afternoon (less than 24 players on the server). By mid evening there was around 30 players and it was skipping like that kangaroo from Oz.

Sound hardware acceleration in BF is a no no Caused no end of trouble with my PC.

Currently there is no need for all the servers on the 2 boxes

1 CTF
1 DM (Who wants to play DM in this game?)
2 Regular (1 FF (preferably 2))

There just isn't enough players at the moment.

Split these servers over 2 boxes and hopefully a better performance, I reckon the skipping in game comes from the server paging to the hard drive.

 

[Buzz007]

turn your sound off and see if that fixes your lag, it worked for me. Just got to find out why my sound slows the game to 5 fps.

 

[retardo]

With the demo, I found that it all worked alot faster and more reliably once I'd got the latest soundblaster live drivers from creative. HUGE difference.
Also, I have to leave sound accelleration turned off.

I think the drivers were released in the last 3 months or so, and its fine now.

Course, I still cant hit a damn thing :/
Dont know if thats lag issues (blueyonder cable, low and stable ping) or just me being crap, but I'm nowhere near as useless at other games!

I have to hide in tanks etc, because as a foot soldier, I empty clips into peoples backs, and they turn around and nail me in a couple of bullets.

Retardo

 

[Deathace]

Thought i would address some of the questions asked in here.

In regards to the servers we are still testing optimum performance with different scenarios to see which way is best for performance and cost effectiveness (that means we dont go overboard buying kit for the sake of it) at present we are running Dual Xeon P4 2.0 GHz machines which in all fairness should cater for the 4 servers we are running on there (1 x 64 for 2.4 normal p4 = 1 x 64 on p4 2.0 xeon per cpu) so in all fairness that makes a dual box capable of running 2 64 players (as multithreading is not possible with the game) meaning that 4 x 32 should be sufficient in normal means. Now the problems that arise is that BF is a bitch and wants to take all the cpu for 1 instance so we use the hyperthreading that comes with Xeons (emulates 2 cpus per actual cpu) meaning we can run 1 32 player server on each of the 4 Cpu's without it affecting the others running. Obviously this is a guideline and we are doing various combinations on these machines with hyperthreading on/off cpu affinity set on/off and so on.

We are still trying to overcome certain issues with the game aswell which may affect performance of the servers but that is only in the aspect that the game will crash Nathan has been doing load testing on various setups to see which is the best overall for any particular piece of hardware and once we have something sorted you will know about it.

As to the client side lag I have experienced it on various servers regardless of numbers of players (retail not demo) and am having problems like alot of others. I attended a LAN a couple of weeks ago where we played this and found it to not be a problem as much as it is online this would indicate that it is to do with the server/network/client code but different scenarios offer different problems one I found out pretty quickly was incorrect network card setup on the server which caused people to suffer from lag (even on a LAN) this was due to the switch having one configuration and the card having another (auto/auto full/100 conflict) once this was sorted the server seemed to perform just fine.

BW servers have been checked for this issue and are configured correctly on each machine and the switches they are connected to so I have ruled out a network conflict so that leaves client issues or server issues which im sure at present are both possible and hopefully as we get things under control more it will sort itself out for everyone.

Keep trying the tweaks people have suggested and if there is a noticeable problem with the servers then please let us know as much info as you can when submitting a support request.

hope this helps you understand a bit further what we all go through to make your life as easy as possible

 

[Insane]

Originally posted by Deathace
at present we are running Dual Xeon P4 2.0 GHz machines

suit you sir!

 

[Summo]

Comprehensive update there, Deathace. Much appreciated.

 

[Veng]

Oh, Deathace forgot to mention:

=FUK= 0wns j00 all!

 

[Insane]

Originally posted by Veng
Oh, Deathace forgot to mention:

=FUK= 0wns j00 all!

next thing you know, =FUK= will be invading an old QW TF server and playing a 12v12 game on 2Fort5r

or if you feel suicidal, RS_ZZ :uhoh:

 

[CptDoom]

Since i turned off the lightmaps there has been no problem with the bw servers. It was an issue worth raising tho as people do seem to have these problems...

Thnks deathace, the post was appreciated.

Btw, if ne one needs a suicidal assault trooper for their clan feel free to let me know, this game just begs organisation.

 

[Deathace]

nah if your looking at the numbers of people nowdays if the server had chaos or navajo32 on it then its worth invading for old times sake RS_ZZ was a good map in moderation along with many of the old greats. but its BF 1942 now its the most addictive atmospherical game for me and other TFers since TF in terms of team play and getting the old gang back up and playing again.