Games slows PC down? » Forum Post by MikeL1977

Quoting BulletMagnet,

by all means; do a better job yourself. i'm sure a university degree in software engineering, and several years work experience count for absolutely nothing.

of course; pathfinding is absolute childsplay. it's so easy that they teach it in high-school programming classes.

Not sure what you are trying to say here... lol...

I mentioned this earlier in the post... If my PC isn't supposed to be able to handle this game, who the hell is it suposed to cater too? State of the art PC's? This isn't a state of the art game... lol

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But come on... let's look at the minimum requirements. It turns out that those are misleading!

Windows XP SP3 / Vista SP1
2.4 GHz Processor
512 MB Available System Memory
8 GB Available Hard Drive Space
128 MB 3D Video Card (ATI Radeon X1600 / Nvidia GeForce 6800 or better)

Procesor - i have AMD Athlon 3200+ which has 2,2 Ghz clock speed, but on the other hand it is superior to 3 Ghz intel procesor in terms of gaming, and since it is not mentioned what kind of processor should be minimum 2.4 GHz to play the game, intel processor with 2.4 GHz clock speed should run the game, meaning my Athlon should be doing a great job here.

Ram - i am short here, but 1 GB 800 MHz i have should be still within minimum requirements.

Video card - i have GF 6600GT 256 MB RAM card which is below minimum requirements. My experience tells me that i can play games with this card but quite often runs games its not supposed to. Never the less fps drops were often in new games. So i bought a new card i will get this week i hope which should run the game smoothly and that way my PC specs will be above the minimum requirements in every possible way. I'd hate to hear that i won't be able to play the game smoothly even then.

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I hate to bump topics but any word of wisdom from anyone that have any insight into the topic and what are actual problems with the engine would be very apriciated.

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I'm yet to see an official response on the simspeed issue - so I wouldn't hold my breath. Seems like they will just try and sweep it under the rug. I know they have their hands full with the multiplayer issues - but this is a big issue as well.

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Minimum requirements is there to show what you need to actually START the process and load.

Minimum does not mean that if you have this -> your game will run at minimum settings (it should, but thats not that the rules are laid out).

Realistically a P4 for gaming is getting too old now, it can lift the weight, but it can't hold it for long. Getting a high frequency dual or a quad is a must-have if you plan to game.

My simspeed always stays at 10-15, 1 hour into game, same stuff. There are no issues with it, sorry to say it.

So if you barely pass minimum requirements, you will not have any fun.

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There are plenty of issues with it, that is pretty clear - many people don't even know what sim speed is and would probably put the problem down to FPS.

I seriously doubt you ever run anywhere near 15 sim speed in a full game with lots of units. I know people with new quadcores and it starts at 10 or 9 for them at the very start of the match. I'm getting a new core in a couple of weeks so it won't be much of an issue for me - but the fact is there is an issue.

Good luck if you can play at a sim speed of 10 and the other people on the network can't, because FYI the game slows down to match the slowest computer.

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Which I've seen at -2 many a time. Heck it's happened to me as well. Come on Devs! Give us a response on what will be done to improve this. Has to be something in the unit coding eating away at the memory and CPU processes.

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Quoting Sheezwack,

reply 6

There are plenty of issues with it, that is pretty clear - many people don't even know what sim speed is and would probably put the problem down to FPS.

I seriously doubt you ever run anywhere near 15 sim speed in a full game with lots of units. I know people with new quadcores and it starts at 10 or 9 for them at the very start of the match. I'm getting a new core in a couple of weeks so it won't be much of an issue for me - but the fact is there is an issue.

Good luck if you can play at a sim speed of 10 and the other people on the network can't, because FYI the game slows down to match the slowest computer.

As long as every is above 1, it will be fine.

I am running a quad core, you are correct. I get 9 if I run DotA and Demigod at the same time on two monitors. Most people don't even use quads to full potential.

Either way, minimum requirements = can star t the game, recommended = can play it "okayish".

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Ok let's have look at recommended requirements:

3 GHz Processor (Multicore Supported)
1 GB Available System Memory
256 MB 3D Video Card (ATI Radeon 2600 / Nvidia GeForce 7600 or better)

As for processor same thing again - it doesn't say i NEED multicore processor, it just sayes it is supported. Agian game should run "okayish" in 3 GHz Pentium according to those specyfications. And again my 2.2 GHz Athlon will work better in games the 3 GHz Pentium - according to my knowledge.

1 GB RAM available. Considering i have 1 GB RAM overal i might be little short. This isn't much of a problem since RAM is cheap. But on the other hand when i start the game i have around 800 MB RAM available, provided this is quite fast RAM, it shouldn't be alot of a problem.

And again my current v. card is very old in terms of gaming, and i will have a new one as soon as it arrives. But what i would realy hate to see is that it doesn't help at all with my game. Aspecialy since i will actualy met the recomended requirements.

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ILK:

You clearly aren't running full 5v5 multiplayer games with fast respawn, and people are clearly having problems with it. I don't understand why you don't want them to improve the performance, everyone benefits from it. Maybe you just play single player all of the time so it doesn't bother you.

The point is there is no reason why the game should be raping the cpu so much, the minimum requirements should be able to play it okaysih with all detail down, and the recommended specs should easily be able to play it.

You should not need a brand new current system to be able to play this game reasonably. Anyhow I'm not going to argue with you, the FACT is people with decent systems that should play it fine do have issues with it - so there isn't anything to argue about. If you play one of the slower maps on 5v5 with fast respawn and say you get 9 sim speed, then I really don't beleive you, I would be surprised if you stayed above 5 after 30 minutes. Which quad core do you have? I've noticed the game seems to prefer AMD cpu's as well.

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You can do '/' forward slash on your keypad to check your FPS during the game, and press TAB to check your sim speed. I would expect you shoudl have 2gb+ of system Ram, Single core processors will suffer quite a bit, but any dual core should in theory be able to run this type of game quite well (but they don't)

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It's not about believing him or not. If he runs the game smoothly with another game running in the background - hey good for him! But it doesn't change a thing. I don't want to be forced to steal one of latest NASA computers to play the game that should be handled with a decent PC. Because come on - this game shouldn't be co hardware eating. I've run Fallout 3 on medium video settings smoothly with the specs i've listed above.

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Demigod uses the Supcom Engine. It does full attack simulation instead of tablebased attack(ala wc3) This takes quite alot of cpu power. The engine itself benfits greatly from mulicore processors.

to those with P4 era chops (AMD ATHLON XP chips included in this) Clockspeeds can not be used as a metric to mesasure CPU performance except against other CPUs of the same type. You are also using Chip designs that are 6 years old on a game designed with modern multicore CPUs in mind. The game will run on your machines but you will always have slower sim speed due to the older CPU.

You don't really need 1500 machines to run it well either, a new Core 2 Duo based machine can be built for 500ish (or less if you are reusing old parts)

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Hi support-team and community,

as Waldfried said I have quite severe problems with the game. When I start the game, from the beginning or within the first minute(s) the system begins to lag. Though it has nothing to do with the increasing number of units. And it gets worse over time (at least the quality of eg skype ). This effect even holds on after quitting the game, but after rebooting everthing is fine until I start the game again. I listed the system information below, I think it is far away from beeing high-end but should be enougth for the game. Moreover the system deals very well with hours of MMOPGs like Warhammeronline, even if there are 200-300 players on the battleground. I have to mention that everything was fine with the retail version, the lag effect came with one of the patches. Hopefully you can bring back the fun to play this game.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 4/20/2009, 18:39:59
       Machine name: SAORSA
   Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)
           Language: English (Regional Setting: German)
System Manufacturer: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO.,LTD
       System Model: MS-7519
               BIOS: Default System BIOS
          Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs)
             Memory: 3072MB RAM
          Page File: 505MB used, 4451MB available
        Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
    DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
     DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
      Display Tab 1: No problems found.
        Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
          Music Tab: No problems found.
          Input Tab: No problems found.
        Network Tab: No problems found.

--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D:    0/4 (n/a)
DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow: 0/6 (retail)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
        Card name: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
     Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
        Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9442)
         DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
       Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9442&SUBSYS_E810174B&REV_00
   Display Memory: 512.0 MB
     Current Mode: 1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (60Hz)
          Monitor: LG L227W (Analog)
Monitor Max Res: 1680,1050
      Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
   Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6879 (English)
      DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 10/29/2008 04:22:02, 314880 bytes
      WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
              VDD: n/a
         Mini VDD: ati2mtag.sys
    Mini VDD Date: 10/29/2008 05:10:58, 3341824 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-D702-11CF-246E-1AC8A1C2CB35}
        Vendor ID: 0x1002
        Device ID: 0x9442
        SubSys ID: 0xE810174B
      Revision ID: 0x0000
      Revision ID: 0x0000
      Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D
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         Registry: OK
     DDraw Status: Enabled
       D3D Status: Enabled
       AGP Status: Enabled
DDraw Test Result: Not run
D3D7 Test Result: Not run
D3D8 Test Result: Not run
D3D9 Test Result: Not run

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Did you try starting the game with /nosound in a shortcut?

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Quoting Cehan,

reply 12

It's not about believing him or not. If he runs the game smoothly with another game running in the background - hey good for him!

This is true, it's just someone I play with has a Q9550 and was brought down to a sim speed of 2 when playing a realy populated game.

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I'm running on q6600, 4gb ram, 98gtx+, xfi. Vista 64. Runs Fine never drops below 2

Sim speed goes -10 to +10 0 being REALTIME. +1 or +2 means cpu can handle sim computations at double or smth ... sorry the scale isnt exactly clear here. if your sim speed is 0+ the game should run FINE .. at least the sim speed.

Now supcom engine is NOTORIOUS for CPU usage - its just the way it works. It has very good physics but that comes at a price. It can spawn up to 17 treads or smthn, but only 2 threads - Sim and graphics are the main cpu users, next come lan and sound with negligible cpu usage (if working properly) and others are not worth mentioning.

There were 2 problems with supcom: first is bugy sound drivers (try /nosound atribute)

the other is that (usually on XP) threads are being jungled around betwean cores (especialy pronounced on quads) witch has a negative efect on performance.

if you see this in task manger performance charts ... 1 CPu at 100% after a then the load jumsp to second then the third and so on .. you need to update windows and if that doesnt help there is Core maximizer (or optimizer) program flying around in supcom forum (sorry no link).

But anyway seriuosly ppl .. P4 is OLD and SLOW. Sure in a perfect world min requirements would meen that it runs fine on them (and there are some games that do), but its NOT a perfect world ad the fact is mostly min requirements measn the game only starts up .. if you dont like deeling with it there are always consoles.

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