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swfan654

Join Date 01/2008

Bad Performance

As much as I love Sins, im finding it increasingly difficult to play as my FPS is like 10. Which shouldnt be happening, as my rig should be handling this somewhat fine. Im running the entrenchment beta.

Possible causes:

GTX 260 OC'd to 720 Core

Athlon 64 X2 6000+

3 GB DDR2 800

The RAM probably isnt causing it, and the processor is dated but seems to handle newer games fine. (I get 40-70 FPS in FC2 MP, with all settings on high or above. And its usually only loaded about 40-60% in Sins.

The 260 is the cause im assuming. It feels the need to downclock, because apparently Sins isnt registering as needing the full speed? When I hit the menu/pause button the card clocks back up to 720 and I get like 50 FPS, once i exit, it drops back to around 10. Running lastest official drivers on this, 180.48.

Something else thats annoying is the ingame messages that come up. Like, the attacking messages. I guess theyre 2D, and cause the card to have further FPS issues? Is there anyway to disable these?

Its all pretty frustrating to me, as I really want this to play smoothly. Any suggestions? Im open to any at this point.

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Here's another forum thread I came across with a similar situation. Dunno if this will help though as i don't have a 200 series.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1033353900

My question is what is your card clocking to when it's unpaused and how are you verifying that you card clocks back up to 720? The reason I ask is the AI and unit health/position/orders take alot of CPU power. When I pause during a frame rate chugging super battle, the frame rate returns as non of those variables need to be processed in a paused state. Did the symptoms change after you went to entrenchment or were these problems there when you were playing vanilla sins? Whats the size of your page file? I've had nothing but bad luck with 180.84 but when i did run them I encountered no problem with Sins at all.

Personally Sins for me always runs a tad bit slow in very large games or at least large games with alot of AI players.

e8400 @ 3.6 / 9800gtx+SLI / 750i P5n-d / 4 gb ddr2800

Ultimately this game does tend to chug in the late game. I play single player only but i've noticed that it's not neccessarily the size of the map that does it but the total amount of AI's. I've played a huge multi star game with 9 AI's and then the same map again with only 3 AI's and even in the late game with all planets colonized and trade ships galore it runs better. I think all the AI's processing alliances/defenses/fleet movements takes a toll on large games where you'll have 10 empires economies/research all processing numbers.

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When the game is unpaused the clocks are in 2D mode, or 301 Core. I use the On Screen Display that comes with EVGA Precision, which shows the clocks and temps, etc.

Problems have been around in vanilla Sins, but they really just started getting bad since the driver update. Which kind of sucks since performance went up fairly well in other games. Before on 177.41 i would run at full clocks, or "low 3D power/400" the whole game with semi-good FPS, then when a big battle came they would downclock to 301 and chug.

Ill have to see if I do better with less AI, as the one game in question was on a larger map with 5 AI.

No idea on the page file size either.

Obviously, Im in need of a new processor anyway, but I dont really have the money for a new mobo/cpu at the moment.

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I never knew that about the 200 series cards with them downclocking. I would definately try the steps in that forum thread i posted then just for testing purposes to keep the card at a constant core speed.

Hope it works out for ya. I've searched and searched on various ways to stop the chug with even 100 vs 100 ship battles to no avail.

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Yeah, thanks.

I know there are older drivers which will cause the clocks to remain at the highest speed 24/7, only downside is it runs relatively hotter. I might see if I can just force 3D clocks in Sins only, as other games have no problem staying at full speed, or atleast dont take an FPS hit by downclocking. (Dead Space always stays at 400 mhz, but still churns out a flat 45 FPS.)

And I tried a new game on a smaller map with less AI and things seem to be smoother. There is the occasional chug, but those seem unavoidable really.

Oh, and XP says the page file is 1536-3072 MB. Which Im not really sure if thats good or not, since Ive never had to deal with it...

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I've heard others in this forum mention that the page file should be 2 to 2.5 times the size of the amount of ram you have. I noticed my page file was about 2 gb so i increased it to around 6 gb just to be safe. It helped to a very small degree but it might help. Still though a page file of that size should be fine.

On a personal note i'm somewhat curious of this downclocking feature on the 200 series. I assume that it's automatic on all drivers beyon 178.xx right? What determines and what factors in to decide when to downclock the card? What temps do you see when it is downclocked but playing a intensive game like how you mentioned dead space vs the temps when it runs at the full rated core speed? Unless you're running very hot (80+ at full load) i personally would force lock that thing especially when it is allowed to decide on it's own to downclock which apparently isn't working to well with regards to sins. Is it just the core speed or does it change the shader and mem clocks as well? Is this only a feature on the 200 series and do you know what the technical name for it is?

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Some of the drivers will downclock, some of them will not, as some people were downclocking in games that should not, like Crysis for example. So I guess NVIDIA's fix was to remove the feature for a while until it could be fixed.

I think the card will clock up if it detects 3D content, i.e. a game. Like just sitting here typing its staying in 2D mode, but if I launch Crysis it will clock up. Right now im seeing 39/40 degress celcius ildling with the fan 100%. In Far Cry or Crysis, at times it will be around 50 to low/mid 60's degrees, depends on ambient temp, how long ive been playing, etc.

Shader and memory speed also drop along with the core clock.

I think it is on the 200 series only, and obviously future cards as well. As for the technical name, Im not sure, as I dont know if they just call it downclocking or power save mode.

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