Performance problems (Full Version)

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Mark Weston -> Performance problems (7/28/2009 1:14:21 PM)

The AE interface is working very slowly for me.

Scrolling is slow and jumpy. There are 1-2 second delays on almost every click (selecting a hex, selecting a new spot from the strategic map, clicking on most buttons). Only the tooltips appear at once. This gets very frustrating very quickly, especially when I'm still trying to explore and get to know the game. This isn't normal, is it?

I'm running an AMD dual-core 2GHz CPU, 4Gb of RAM, ATI Radeon 4800 video card with 512Mb and Windows XP SP3. I'm pretty sure DirectX and all drivers are up-to-date as I had to do a windows reinstall about six weeks ago.

I've tried windowed mode and the -dual switch and they haven't improved things. Any suggestions?




Erik Rutins -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 1:38:16 PM)

Definitely not normal and your system is quite a bit more powerful than one of our test PCs that has no lag whatsoever.

Looking through your DxDiag, nothing jumps out, so a few questions.

1. Have you turned off all other background programs to make sure nothing else could be interfering? If something is using up a lot of CPU cycles, that could slow things down to this point. If you're not sure, try "Enditall" before you run WITP AE. http://www.docsdownloads.com/enditall-1.htm

2. Is your video driver set entirely to default settings or are any non-default options turned on/forced on? Can you reset it to defaults? If you're not sure, might be worth trying to uninstall and reinstall the latest drivers for your Radeon HD 4800 from www.ati.com

3. Can you try going into DxDiag and gradually reducing your Video and Audio acceleration, then trying to launch the game again to see if any of those settings make any difference?

Regards,

- Erik



Mark Weston -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 4:47:05 PM)

Thanks for the reply.

1. There are a few things running in the background (e.g. anti-virus), but with normal background processes plus firefox and acrobat open (because I do want to be able to read the manual and forums while learning the game) CPU activity is only running at 10-12% and there is 2Gb of physical memory free before I start up AE. I've also noticed that although I'm using the -dual command-line switch that most or all of the AE CPU load still seems to be on one CPU core.

2. I don't think I've changed any video driver options since I installed it.

I'll try messing around with the acceleration settings, back soon.




Erik Rutins -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 4:52:48 PM)

Ok, as a test try turning off all those background programs just to see if one of them could be causing an issue even with a low CPU load.

Also, more investigation has suggested that looking to see if there are updated chipset drivers for your system may help with unusual lag on dual core systems.



Mark Weston -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 5:43:02 PM)

Ooookay.

Turning off all video acceleration options (DirectDraw acceleration, Direct3D acceleration, and AGP Texture acceleration) in dxdiag fixes the problem. Scrolling is fast and smooth, and I get near-immediate response to clicking on bases, TFs etc. That's a bit bizarre really, but as long as it works...

Still, it's not ideal having all those features turned off. Does anyone else have to do this? Can you set dxdiag options from a batch file? That way I could at least automate changing the video acceleration settings every time I wanted to play AE.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 6:32:41 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Mark Weston
Turning off all video acceleration options (DirectDraw acceleration, Direct3D acceleration, and AGP Texture acceleration) in dxdiag fixes the problem. Scrolling is fast and smooth, and I get near-immediate response to clicking on bases, TFs etc. That's a bit bizarre really, but as long as it works...


Hm, that suggests that a video driver or chipset driver issue is at work. I would first try turning those back on, then just turning off one at a time to see if you can pinpoint which resolves it. Next step would be to try with them all back on and making adjustments via your video driver to see if you can find a combination of settings there that achieves the same result. Posting a screenshot of your video driver settings might help with suggestions. A chipset driver upgdate (particularly the part that handles AGP) could conceivably help.

quote:

Still, it's not ideal having all those features turned off. Does anyone else have to do this? Can you set dxdiag options from a batch file? That way I could at least automate changing the video acceleration settings every time I wanted to play AE.


I agree, it's not ideal but it's a temporary work-around and gives us a clue as to what's causing the problem. In the long run, I hope that driver updates and driver level setting changes can achieve the same result.



Mark Weston -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 8:27:44 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Hm, that suggests that a video driver or chipset driver issue is at work. I would first try turning those back on, then just turning off one at a time to see if you can pinpoint which resolves it. Next step would be to try with them all back on and making adjustments via your video driver to see if you can find a combination of settings there that achieves the same result. Posting a screenshot of your video driver settings might help with suggestions. A chipset driver upgdate (particularly the part that handles AGP) could conceivably help.


I'd already tried different acceleration options in dxdiag. Running with just AGP Texture acceleration disabled, or AGP Texture and Direct3D acceleration both disabled, didn't fix the problem. It's only when I also disabled DirectDraw acceleration (which disables the other two automatically) that AE started running properly. BTW I'm fairly certain that the "AGP" in the dxdiag settings doesn't refer to hardware - the old AGP video card slots that we all remember - because my video card is PCI-E not AGP and my motherboard doesn't actually have an AGP slot. I will check to see if there are more up-to-date chipset drivers (just because you never know) but there won't be any chipset driver software for my non-existant AGP slot ;)

I'm willing to play around with the ATI video settings, but there are an awful lot of settings to play with in the ATI control panel and I'm not clear where to start. Testing all of them one by one is a bit too brute force for my tastes, but if you can suggest which settings (3D? anti-aliasing? colour? video?) are most likely to be an issue I'll have a go.



Przemcio231 -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 9:25:12 PM)

Hi Erik i have the same problem Intel 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of Ram with 512mb GeForce 8800 GT Galaxy DDR 3 Video Card but i have some NVidia drivers and i do not see such options as ATI has:(



Erik Rutins -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 9:34:11 PM)

Przemek,

Can you give the DxDiag settings above a try?

Regards,

- Erik



pad152 -> RE: Performance problems (7/28/2009 11:43:58 PM)

Try creating a short cut with the dual option

"F:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -dual -altfont



medicff -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 5:18:55 AM)

I think the slow performance especially graphic/scrolling and clicking open new boxes is related to Nvida cards and the antialiasing and anisotropic effects. I turned both off and got a tremendous boost in speed. Not related to other background stuff.

Pat



fcam1387 -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 6:21:48 AM)

I posted this on my thread:

-----------------------------------------------------------

It's definately a graphics card, possibly NVIDIA issue.

I did some troubleshooting of my own and rolled back my drivers to default VGA mode. The game runs like clockwork. When I reinstalled the NVIDIA drivers, performance deteriorates... Is this something that can be patched in an update?

My only problem is that for some bizarre reason I cannot turn of my video acceleration in display settings or dxdiag because it says: "your current display driver does not allow changes to be made to hardware acceleration settings". Supposedly this is because I have a "dependent driver" - I'm a bit stuped with what to do now but for others that do not have this issue I think the problem is fixable.



Crimguy -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 6:56:18 AM)

I"m noticing monster CPU utilization on my Vista computer - the meter is bouncing around 50-80% on one of my cores.  Not sure what the cause is.

Running in Windowed mode, using an nVidia 8800GT.



jwilkerson -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 7:47:48 AM)

The cause is the main loop in the code - it does "runs and runs" ... waiting for you to press a button!



Przemcio231 -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 9:28:03 AM)

Ok killed all options in Dxdiag and map moves like a charm but regretfouly i still need to weait some time after i click on a hex to see whats there[:(] O i also added the lines you suggested to the shortcut[;)]



wdolson -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 11:00:55 AM)

I'm working on a solution to this.  From the didiag reports posted, this looks like it's happening to both Nvidia and ATI video cards.  I initially thought it might be an ATI problem, but I see fcam has an Nvidia card.  I can't reproduce the problem here, every computer I test it on here is quite zippy with the game. 

I sent a new EXE to someone who has had some slowness issues and we'll see how that works.  I probably won't know until sometime Wednesday afternoon (US time).  I also have some more data to do some research.

One factor that I've been suspecting from the start is that there is a timing issue on some dual core systems.  So far the only people who have had problems are ones who have had dual core systems.  There are some known issues in the software industry with older applications (and the core of this program predates dual core technology's wide spread use) with multi-core machines.  Some older programs run fine, some have problems.

The video drivers seem to contribute to this too as one guy saw the problems go away when he downgraded his driver to the default and turning off DirectDraw makes a difference.  The game makes heavy use of DirectDraw, but I don't believe it uses Direct3D.

Bill



Erik Rutins -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 12:45:14 PM)

Guys, can you please also give the steps here a try and let us know if it helps:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2182033



Mark Weston -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 1:19:21 PM)

Based on other posts I thought I'd try looking at anti-aliasing settings. Unfortunately the ATI control centre doesn't seem to have a way of explicitly turning anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering off. I have "use application settings" ticked for both of them, but what does that mean if the application doesn't specify (as I presume AE doesn't)? Does it disable them, or does it set them at some default level?

I can't try that intel program in the linked thread as my processor is AMD. I did earlier try switching the affinity of AE (while running) to one core or the other, or both, but it didn't seem to make any difference.



traskott -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 1:39:47 PM)

Hello, I'm not sure if it's the same trouble, but, yes, I have experienced a little retard on clicks. Besides, every time there is a screen of naval combat/air combat/whatever the game turn slow...veeery slow, looks like freezed. 10 seconds and then go run again, til next moment it freeze....



Erik Rutins -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 1:50:16 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Mark Weston
Based on other posts I thought I'd try looking at anti-aliasing settings. Unfortunately the ATI control centre doesn't seem to have a way of explicitly turning anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering off. I have "use application settings" ticked for both of them, but what does that mean if the application doesn't specify (as I presume AE doesn't)? Does it disable them, or does it set them at some default level?


That should disable them if the application doesn't turn them on (which WITP AE does not)

quote:

I can't try that intel program in the linked thread as my processor is AMD. I did earlier try switching the affinity of AE (while running) to one core or the other, or both, but it didn't seem to make any difference.


One suggestion posted there for ATI:

"Also if you have a Black Edition AMD quad core you can give it a shot with AMD Overdirve (can be downloaded from amd.com). You can set the priority theere to high and also even tweak your CPU cores speed when you run AE. Or you can chosse which cores to run it on if you want to do something else in the background (with AE running windowed there is plenty of real estate left on a full HD screen for a manual etc. :D)"



Przemcio231 -> RE: Performance problems (7/29/2009 1:59:08 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Guys, can you please also give the steps here a try and let us know if it helps:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2182033



Works like a charm for me... i even need to do map scroll delay becouse it moves to fast now:)
Thanks Erik i think all game company's should learn your way of doing product support[;)]



medicff -> RE: Performance problems (7/30/2009 3:15:27 AM)

Yes seems to help. Much faster as I had to actually put back in a scroll delay of 1. [:D]

Thanks for the quick responses as the game takes a long time as it is LOL



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