DW Universe performance issues (Full Version)

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Shuul -> DW Universe performance issues (5/24/2014 8:30:44 PM)

Hi there!

I have some performance issues, the overall play seems laggy. There is something wrong with graphics I assume, did something changed in Universe? All releases since original DW were ok, but Universe just laggs hard and have some freezes for 5-6 seconds when I zoom in fast (never happened before either).
Help? It just very annoying and Im just at the start of the game, cant imagine what will happen with hundreds of ships on the screen.
Attached Dxdiag



mensrea -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/24/2014 10:20:37 PM)

Hi, I am also having performance issues now as well. There seems to be a lot of stuttering on any speed. I have tested this on multiple maps of different sizes with monsters on and off and independent empires on and off. I didn't have this before I got the steam install of the game. I also tried to run the game without steam which still stuttered. I have a dxdiag if anyone is interested, just message me.

EDIT: Nevermind, figured out how to attach it.



elliotg -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/25/2014 1:49:07 AM)

Thanks for those DxDiag reports. Your hardware looks fine - the main performance boost is to have a multi-core CPU, so no problem there.

Zooming into a system is an expensive operation in DW performance-wise, but pausing for 5-6 seconds sounds excessive. Zooming into a system often involves loading ship, base and planet images from disk. So this might be an area to look at. Maybe something is slowing those file reads? Anti-virus getting in the way somehow?

Game performance has actually been improved extensively in Universe over Shadows, so this is a little strange.

Our next update has some further performance improvements which should eliminate any brief pauses that players may experience (e.g. stuttering you describe)

Thanks
Elliot



Raap -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/25/2014 3:39:55 PM)

Yeah, would be great if the game could just cache all the used images into memory instead of loading them from HDD every time a ship jumps into your current system. The images folder is only 250MB or so, which shouldn't be too bad for memory usage.

Personally I've taken to just transferring the game over to a RAMdrive, which gets rid of practically all the stuttering.



mensrea -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/25/2014 5:43:45 PM)

To be fair I get the zoom lag on shadows too so nothings different in that department for me (though I am using an SSD so maybe that minimizes it a little).

The only active virus scanner I have at any time is AVG and I just disabled it, ran the game and still experienced the stutters. As far as stuff running in the background, it would be stuff that ran in the background with shadows too, and I don't get the stutters there (reverted to playing shadows all last night after I made this post, no problems). Aside, I did check msconfig and ctrl-alt-deleted anything not totally necessary and still got the stutters.

And yeah, I thought it was unusual too, given the fact that in the change log it said improvements were made. I heard you guys made a lot of changes with the AI though, and of course there are all those dependency programs which could be an issue as well. I may review all the dependency programs, uninstall them, then reinstall them as my next move. I still want to install it on my buddies computer with my steam account to see if it does the same there as well.

I also have my CPU overclocked, and my RAM under clocked. Not sure if DXDIAG can pick that up or not.

Thanks for the quick response. I will still be enjoying shadows in the meantime. Great game all around and no release is without hiccups (lol simcity).

EDIT: Just tried it on my buds computer and still the stuttering. Will post the dxdiag later.



FireLion1983 -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/25/2014 8:13:38 PM)

4x seems to be really hurting on my system, too, much moreso than Shadows. Much more stuttering than normal.



mensrea -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/26/2014 1:06:25 AM)

I tried it on every speed and the stuttering happened just as much, which seemed very unusual.



zakblood -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/26/2014 4:41:36 AM)

performance issues aren't most of the time game related, but hardware etc, what's your spec and o/s?

have you tried to alter the default? less stars, screen res or any other settings and seen if that helps?

update video drivers, have a cleaner profile just for games (have less un needed stuff run when you run the game, this will help all games tbh eg background stuff etc etc) most which can be disabled at startup and depending on knowledge isn't hard to do either.

ram drives are great, but unless you have first the extra ram, second the knowledge or cpu even to benefit it, as sdd or less clutched approach is better and cheaper, simple things like defrag (not for sdd mind you) and virus and spyware free pc and no errors works a treat, plus a good pc and vga card also helps.

stuttering sounds to me as a vga error, so either not enough memory on card for game, older drivers, slow Hdd, not enough system ram or a combination of any.

as game works 100% [:(]



STARGEN70 -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 3:28:05 PM)

I am not getting an Influence overlay on the main Galaxy screen, the minimap show influence. most of the buttons have no effect.
system info: Win7, AMD 2.8Ghz, 16GB RAM, 64-bit, Video Card AMD Radeon HD 7900S, 2Tb HDD.
If it makes a difference I purchased DW Universe through Steam.



mensrea -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 4:00:16 PM)

Zakblood - I'm running a hexacore 3.8 ghz processor, with 16 gigs of RAM, recent video card with 1 gb memory, 160 gb SSD, asus ROG motherboard, 64 bit windows 7. You may be able to see even more info in my dxdiag report attached up above.

I have tried setting everything to its lowest setting, my video drivers are all up to date, my profile is as clean as it can get as I am obsessive about not running unnecessary programs (regularly review msconfig, running processes, etc)at any time. I removed a bunch of stuff from my SSD to free up space for paging files too. I have tried the lowest sized maps with no pirates/monsters/independent AI.

In addition, I run AVG, spyware blaster, Kaspersky TDSS and a couple other things routinely. I also run firefox with script blocker to minimize infections to begin with.

More than likely this is a result of some specific hardware/software combination, which tends to happen even on very good systems with perfect software. For instance, I just went through hell with the game warframe; it turned out the game needed me to underclock my RAM or it would crash chronically...but yet it worked perfectly fine on my buds computer and I had built both using components from the same manufacturers (just more recent versions on hers).

Further, my buds computer is even better than mine, octocore 3.8+, better RAM, video card, newer motherboard (still ROG). The only difference being that she uses a HDD with over a terabyte instead of an SSD. Both computers have also been sized correctly for power needs, all that jazz. She got the stutters as well.

If anyone has any other suggestions they would be appreciated but at this point I'm afraid I may have to wait until the patch.



Erik Rutins -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 4:12:44 PM)

Hi Mensrea,

Are you using the influence overlay when playing (the one that shows empire borders)? If so, try turning that off an let us know if it makes any difference for you.

Regards,

- Erik



STARGEN70 -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 4:54:11 PM)

I fixed it, I had the "Clean Galaxy view" checked. it's located in main menu, Options, Advanced Display Settings,very bottom check box. I had it checked. After I unchecked the box I loaded up my game and everything was fine. Thank you guys for your help.



Grimnirsson -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 4:56:02 PM)

Well, said problems on these high end machines make me hesitate with my notebook to jump into the experience...



Raap -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 5:06:35 PM)

Specs? I can play it fine on my 3-4 year old dell laptop running a quad core sandybridge at 2ghz. Game stutters a fair bit in late-game with larger galaxies, but it's definitely not unplayable.



zakblood -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 5:13:50 PM)

i use a i7 with 16gb of ram and a ati 4gb card and windows 8.1 64bit but also have tried it on a dual core with a ati 2gb card, don't have any issues tbh, so it may just be a driver issue with Nvidia or some users not having enough video ram even maybe, turning some stuff down or off may at least for test purposes make it either better or at least then you know if its any better or worse.

Nvidia just posted updated drivers as well if you want to try them

[image]local://upfiles/43185/167006D768AB45A1921714F7671BECBD.gif[/image]



zakblood -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 5:18:57 PM)

are you doing any overclocking? either cpu or memory etc?

as this can give you errors like stuttering etc, but also you're spec is plenty but your video memory is low, can you add system memory to it in bios? slower yes, but if you can it will help, apart from that i'd turn a few things down, for me if you're having problems in other games as well, i'd upgrade to a better card, doesn't have to be the fastest tbh, just more ram would help with large textures etc in most games.

looking at your report now,

Card name: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x6739)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6739&SUBSYS_0B001787&REV_00
Display Memory: 4095 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1003 MB
Shared Memory: 3092 MB

Drive: C:
Free Space: 7.3 GB

DirectShow Filters are old, same as Video Compressors:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows%207%20-%2064#amd-catalyst-packages

update your video card drivers to the latest, reboot and see if it's any better, i've picked the right ones for your card and o/s for you, if it makes no difference do you have any codec packs installed? as noted above they are older / out of date as well, might make no difference tbh but worth a try, can't make it any worse as you should always have the latest versions anyway, good luck...

ps, while you meet the Product Requirements : minimum and recommended spec etc, it doesn't mention video ram size but to play anything almost nowadays, more is always better tbh..... :(

other things to try, in your settings of your video card, alter, v-sync is on, see if it's any better, if not and it's turned on then turn it off, running a game in windowed mode, same again try both and check results, using triple buffering in conjunction with vsync, capping the frame rate to 60, 58 or 30, changing the maximum pre-rendered frames in Nvidia Inspector to 1 or higher, there are others to try but i could go on for ever tbh.

better to try 1 things first and se the results, none will be as good as newer drivers, more ram on video card, more space on hdd or a better faster one altogether tbh.

cpu is a real thing, games now days aren't multi threaded / core programed, this may or may not be one of those games, so a dual core with a faster speed maybe better than a quad core running at a slow clock speed if you understand, it all depends on many factors, o/s aware and multi core use, games programmed for multi core / thread use..

seems a funny thing to say but in the odd game i've disabled the first core of my i7 and got the game working better, as most games work in the first core =0, so disabling the first 0 core made the the work get shared in windows 8 to the rest of the cores, this isn't the same thing at all, just mentioned it as one solution never fits all faults, and most faults are never game related either, normally hardware first, then drivers second etc etc

quote:

ORIGINAL: mensrea

Zakblood - I'm running a hexacore 3.8 ghz processor, with 16 gigs of RAM, recent video card with 1 gb memory, 160 gb SSD, asus ROG motherboard, 64 bit windows 7. You may be able to see even more info in my dxdiag report attached up above.

I have tried setting everything to its lowest setting, my video drivers are all up to date, my profile is as clean as it can get as I am obsessive about not running unnecessary programs (regularly review msconfig, running processes, etc)at any time. I removed a bunch of stuff from my SSD to free up space for paging files too. I have tried the lowest sized maps with no pirates/monsters/independent AI.

In addition, I run AVG, spyware blaster, Kaspersky TDSS and a couple other things routinely. I also run firefox with script blocker to minimize infections to begin with.

More than likely this is a result of some specific hardware/software combination, which tends to happen even on very good systems with perfect software. For instance, I just went through hell with the game warframe; it turned out the game needed me to underclock my RAM or it would crash chronically...but yet it worked perfectly fine on my buds computer and I had built both using components from the same manufacturers (just more recent versions on hers).

Further, my buds computer is even better than mine, octocore 3.8+, better RAM, video card, newer motherboard (still ROG). The only difference being that she uses a HDD with over a terabyte instead of an SSD. Both computers have also been sized correctly for power needs, all that jazz. She got the stutters as well.

If anyone has any other suggestions they would be appreciated but at this point I'm afraid I may have to wait until the patch.




mensrea -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 6:25:06 PM)

Eric - I am using that overlay and as soon as a get home I will toggle it off and report the results.

Zak - My CPU is overclocked and my RAM is underclocked. I will turn off overclocking/underclocking to see if that makes a difference, but as I said, it stuttered on my buds computer and I don't think hers is overclocked (will check when I get home). I can and do run any game on my steam list at max display settings (skyrim, TF2, endless space, if your interested look me up: foughthelaw&won) with no problems; warframe is the only game that gave me problems and its issue wasn't related to my video card at all but my RAM's speed (had to underclock as per a suggestion on the warframe forums, after that it works fine) and to be fair, warframe is technically still in beta.

I have already tried playing with all settings turned to the lowest available. No dice.

I will also update those drivers and codecs on both computers and see if that has an impact. If its video memory, though, why can I play shadows fine, with all settings on max on the largest maps after 10 hours of play at 4x speed but yet still stutter on universe with all settings on min on the smallest maps 10 seconds into the game on normal speed? I'm thinking this is a driver issue as that is the one common denominator with mine and my buds computer (that or as Erik suggested, some issue with the overlay).

Thanks again guys, sorry to be such a pain in the ass!



zakblood -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 6:28:01 PM)

one solution will work for you as game on same basis as previous one so should work the same in theory, apart from a few better eye candy etc, good luck hope you get it sorted soon and get to playing it as its well worth it tbh[;)]



Kylan -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 9:54:27 PM)

mensrea - not on topic here but this is all I could think of after seeing your name

See no evil, Hear no evil.



mensrea -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/27/2014 11:58:48 PM)

Erik - I tried to turn off the territory overlay, and actually turned off all overlays, but had no luck.

Zak - I updated the catalyst suite and the graphics driver, no luck (my drivers were up to date anyway, those ones you linked me were beta drivers, but I wanted to give it a shot).

I also cleared up 20 more GB of SSD, leaving 28 GB in case for some reason it needed a paging file that big.

I tested everything on the smallest map with the least amount of stars and all graphics settings set to the lowest they can go.

Finally, I checked up on system resource usage and noted that multiple cores were engaged while playing, so the computer isn't just offloading all the work on the first core.

I will definitely not buy a new video card, or go get a processor that can do better than 3.5ghz+, for one game, when every other I have played works fine. I will also definitely not spend X+too many hours trying out 10k+ combinations of video card settings; that sounds like a game in and of itself and certainly not one that I wish to play. To be frank, a 1 GB video card memory is not exactly chintzy, or unusual, and radeons are far from some esoteric knock-off. Sorry if this sounds brash or obnoxious, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

Aside, I checked my buds computer, and according to dxdiag she has 4 gb of video memory (though is running a radeon as well). Further, she is at 4 ghz processor speed and has 100's of GB free on her HD, and has 16 GB of RAM to boot.

If the game needs more than 4 gb of video memory, 16 gigs of RAM, and 4 ghz of octo-core processing power, then its safe to say the problem lies elsewhere, especially when plenty of other people on low end systems don't seem to be having any problems at all.

At this point I'm just going to wait for the patch and play shadows in the meantime. Thanks for trying to help. I have faith that something will get worked out in the end.






zakblood -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/28/2014 5:15:09 AM)

sorry it didn't work for you, cpu is plenty and 1gb card should have been fine, just clutching at straws with idea's to help, apart from this one for you to try.

uninstall it,making sure you have totally cleaned the install folder 100% plus links
download off google a program called ccleaner (its free)

run it and clean the pc, default run will be fine, then use second tab and clean registry, this will check for errors and fix them, backup if needed, (i've never used the backup either as it's not needed)
reboot pc,

now restart, run ccleaner again and check startup, see whats auto running at startup, post screen if you need help here, on what to enable and disable,

install DWU again, default install and also reinstall all addon programs again like net drx 11 etc as per link below

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2414049

leave all game setting on default, then play and post results

fingers crossed



Azurian -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/28/2014 5:20:53 AM)

I have 4gb of RAM with Windows 7 32bit and keep getting out of memory errors when trying to save.



zakblood -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/28/2014 7:03:15 AM)

4gb of ram and windows 7 32bit?

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/does-windows-7-32bit-support-4gb-of-ram/76063e3e-1045-4908-9d21-3c6b94ce19b1

you can only use some of it then, use a 64bit version and you'd be better off, add your video memory into how much you have and then subtract the max a 32bit o/s will use, plus i think game has a memory leak as it seems to be a problem with long hours of use etc etc

quote for those who don't plan on going to the link,

"A 32Bit operation system supports up to 4GB of memory, however not all of it may be available for use by applications.

The 32-bit architecture has a memory access limit of 4GB (2^32 bytes). This permits you to use about 2.75-3.5GB of RAM after IO reservations are factored in, so minus your video ram and you get less

If you only have 4GB of memory max including video memory and do not plan to install any additional memory then I would install the 32Bit version as there is nothing to be gained by installing the 64Bit version. However if you plan to upgrade to 6 or more GB of memory sometime in the future then install the 64Bit version.
=================================================================================
In round numbers XP, Vista and Windows 7 32-Bit Versions of the Operating System can only address 4GB. Does not matter how much memory you have installed 4GB is the max. From that max your video card has XXXMB of ram on the card so that limits the operating system to 4GB minus the cards XXXMB of memory.
In addition other hardware also takes away additional amounts of memory (usually a small when compared to the video card)
and the remaining memory (address space) is available for Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 OS and your applications.
So that 4th GB thru 16 GB of ram you installed or will install goes unused on a 32-Bit OS. Does not matter what the BIOS reports or what the OS shows as installed memory it still limited to that 4GB address barrier.
A link to the white paper titled "Gaming Performance Analysis" by Corsair
Memory Inc. provides a good clear explanation of how a video card effects
the amount of available memory in your PC. "end quote



Erik Rutins -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/28/2014 6:03:27 PM)

Hi everyone,

We have a new update due out today with more performance improvements. Please give them a try and let us know if they help on your systems.

Regards,

- Erik



mensrea -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (5/29/2014 11:55:52 PM)

Hey, I don't know what the hell you guys did but its fixed! Seemed like a really small update, I'm kinda curious what even changed. Anyway, thanks, I expected to wait for months for this...you guys can really bust ass. Now time for me to start modding, I mean playing, heh.



FarAway Sooner -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (7/8/2014 3:05:01 AM)

I am definitely getting the "out of memory error" after 60-90 minutes of game play (most often when saving or loading a saved game), using a 4MB system running Windows Vista 32-bit. Obviously, an older machine, but running a Quad-core CPU @ 2.44GHz. Well above Minimum stated specs, and pretty much matching the "recommended" specs. I'll try playing on a smaller map and see if that solves the problem, but I do hope we get more efficient usage.

The problem seemed scarce before 1.9.5.5, but is much more frequent since then. I suspect some kind of memory leak got a bit leakier with that latest patch, at least on my system. I'm happy to dump all my dxdiag outputs if it helps any, but I gather from lots of other posts on this forum that memory usage continues to be a source of some concern for the dev staff, so I thought I'd just add my voice to the chorus!



johanwanderer -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (7/8/2014 7:09:54 AM)

I just want to bring another issue up: saving the game (auto save, too) takes a long time.

In my current game, it takes more than 10 minutes for an autosave to complete. File size is currently ~ 120 MB. In general, it looks to take about 1 minute for every 10 MB of game save. My disk is not fast, bit it's definitely not that slow, either.

I uploaded an autosave almost a week ago, it was at 95 MB then (johanwanderer-20140702-CrashUpload.zip).

Right now, I get to play for ~20 minutes, then wait 10 minutes for the autosave. I guess the game is trying to help me get up and do something every half hour :)

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to speed the saves up?

Thank you!



FarAway Sooner -> RE: DW Universe performance issues (7/8/2014 2:26:14 PM)

You can decrease the frequency in the Options menu. But that's not much help in terms of speeding the games up...



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