PC Performance and BF1942

[[AK]Hylander]

Hey all,

I'm trying to determine if BF1942 is performing well on my machine, or normal should I say, or if I'm having problems.

When I'm by myself or only one or two people, I stay up around 80 - 100fps... but as soon as it starts getting crowded, I sometimes get the "skippies". This happens most when say 12-15 or more people (especially with equipment) get into the same area of view and there are explosions, firing, etc. Is this normal for most of you guys too?

Obviously you can see my system settings in my sig (Bribo & Squid - Let me know if you need me to make it bigger for you guys )

Some of the settings I can think of off the top of my head:

1024 X 768 X 16 resolution
Shadows off
All other settings are "maxed"
Sounds at 11mhz with the setting to "low"
Hardware acceleration is on for sound

Have any of you guys figured out any other settings that effect fps the most?

Thanks.

[[AK]Bribo]

Does your mainboard run with the VIA chipset? If so, do you have the PCI latency patch applied? Try turning off hardware acceleration on Sound Card.

[Hale]

Could be server lag.

Especially if you see planes start jumping around in the sky, but the effects around the plane like trailing smoke and such seems to still be occuring in real time.

I find that quite a few servers start to lag with a lot of people on. Do you see lag on Zorro's server?

[[AK]Hylander]

I have a VIA motherboard and have the latest 4 in 1s installed. Does this include the latency patch? To be honest, I can't remember if I applied the latency patch or not....

Hale, I didn't notice it Monday night... but we never had that many players on at the same time either.

[[AK]Bribo]

The latency patch is not officially supported by VIA but works!

[Widowmaker]

Your performance is slow then. I have a simaler system except for a 2100xp processor and only a 350W power supply and a c-media sound system (built in on the MB, good enough sound for me).

I can play at 1024x768 32bit color with all video settings maxed. If I so choose I can set the sound to 44khz and high quality though I tend to turn it down to 22khz at high quality just because I like the sound that way better... personal preference, with the c-media 44kz sounds a little off. But I can run at the lowest seems to be 40fps in heavy fighting with tons of people on the screens and stuff happening. I hit a 64 player server once and my fps droped into the 20's with the occational dip to the teens. Could have been server problems though because the CPU was going red when I joined. I hit a 48 player server later last night and never saw a frame drop below 40.

I would say you are way underperforming in BF1942.

Most people with performance problems are running SBLive cards and that could be a problem. Disable sounds for a bit a try playing on a crowded server to see if the sound could be the problem.

I even have shadows turned on.

By the way, my DSL roXXors my cable, so nice to have steady pings now.

[[AK]Hylander]

I'll try the PCI Latency patch tonight and if that doesn't work.. I'll wait for the Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1 to be released. It's suppose to be a killer card for gaming.

[[AK]Hylander]

Now that I'm sitting here thinking about it, I better check my settings when I get home. I was doing some testing/experimenting and I might have left V-Sync or AA on.

[Widowmaker]

V-sync can be the killer.

AA I've experiemented with and don't see a *LOT* of performace drop with 2x or Quintox. I see a performance hit but nothing like you describe.

[[AK]Hylander]

Well I applied the PCI Latency patch and not much of a difference, if any. If I disable the sounds, I get on average a 20fps boost. No matter what I set the sound settings too, this is about the hit.

I guess I'll try a new sound card in the near future.

However, I just played on quite a few servers and I'm not so sure that it's not the server with the 'hiccups' because my fps are still in the 30s when I occasionally see the 'lag'. When I'm by myself and not allot of people around, with everything available maxed on video and sound at 1024X768X32 I get between 65 - 90 fps depending on the map. Once people start showing up, I dip into the 40s - 50 fps. When it gets extremely crowded with allot of airplanes and tanks, that's when I dump into the 20s - 30s and get the 'hiccups'.

[[AK]Leonidas]

My theory is that BF1942 has shoddy network code. Many people insist that high pingers will drag down an entire server. I've had my connection go up and down in the middle of a game, even though the ping monitor doesn't show a change. Maybe it's packet loss. Or it could be my ISP. Whatever the cause all my performance issues are network related.

You can demonstrate this to yourself, Hy. Get on a vehicle-heavy map, like El Alamein, pull a bunch of vehicles together in the middle of a base, and look at them. That should give you the highest poly count possible in the game. If your FPS is still fine, then it's a network issue.

[[AK]Bribo]

Just add 384meg of RAM to my system bringing my memory up to 640meg from 256. Wow! What a difference! Loading is super fast! No choppiness when the game starts. Gameplay is much smoother. I woudl heartily recommend a memory upgrade to any of your running with < 256megs.

[[AK]Hylander]

Well I just replaced my SB Live! Value card with an Audigy Gamer. Although I didn't gain a ton of FPS, what I did notice... at least from my limited testing... is that I no longer have the slow motion to the extreme I was having. I still get some slow down when there are a ton of things all in one area, and that is to be expected... but it's only down into the 50s now. My "normal" fps is back up into the 70 - 80s range depending on the map.

I also noticed that I get better performance when I turn hardware acceleration off for this card.