High Performance drop during gameplay

[broom]

Hi,

I've experienced a very high performance drop when your town grows. It doesn't really depend on explored but not-conquered sites as stated on the support page.

To me the game more or less becomes almost unplayable that way. At the beginning of the game i have interactive or even real time FPS (> 30fps) but it drops to about 5 fps when i have my town filled 1/2 or 3/4 getting worse the more houses i build and/or the more areas i 'conquer' (so it's not a GFX settings issue).

Anyone else experiencing this? if so, could you take a look into this and possibly fix it? thanks!

cheers,
broom

ps.: great game otherwise

[Kiya]

I have never experienced this, and that proves nothing of course.
Could you post your dxdiag please as that may show us something.

[broom]

no problem.
please find my dxdiag attached.
weird weird... starting a new game it once again runs smoothly growing the town drops the performance.

[Nenjin]

I've had the exact same experience as you. On my long game, I've only got 3/4 of my town filled out and my FPS is hurting bad. I fired up a new game for a friend to show it off, then switched to my current game to show him how big it could get, and as soon as it loaded up my developed game, the first words out of his mouth were "Holy crap, that is choppy."

The game, for me, definitely seems to have processing issues the more stuff it has to deal with.

[mouse]

Broom not to put to fine a point on this but it's a wonder your system doesn't stumble to a halt. The size of your free space on primary partition C drive is less than your page file. This is not enough free space for windows to move files around let alone play any game. Windows needs a minimum of 20% free space to move files around without moving them in and out of the page which is slow.

To solve your problem free up space on your C driver another point you have a ton of partitions most of them with little free space. That means files on all drives are fragmented and in need of room.

XP and the page file require 7gbs of hard disk space just sitting still doing nothing. Personally I would never set up a partition of less than 20gbs for windows and that requires installing no programs on C drive.

[broom]

@mouse: just for information, but my pagefile is on partition D with a current on disk size of 2 gigs and my free space is 13 gigs. i guess that nullifies your guess (so windows does not need any of the still more than 2 gigs of free space on the C partition which is a lot more than enough for temporary files).
the system runs as smoothly as could be and, again, the game does as well at the beginning but it horribly drops as soon as the town grows.
if it were a system issues it would start with a low framerate right away, no?

[mouse]

Broom Windows moves the files first from free space on C drive then through page file and 2gb is not enough room for windows to move files without resorting to using the page file. BTW that is not a guess it in fact is how windows works. If you choose to not use the suggestion don't be surprised that you still have problems. Only trying to assist you in resolving your problem.

[broom]

alright i did exactly as you said (sorry but it did seem like a "tell the stupid user something so he shuts up already"-reply).
i had a C partition with 20 gigs, moved the pagefile there, set its initial size to 4 gigs and voila. heavy performance drops as soon as the town grows. now what?

oh, it seems that Nenjin does have the same or at least a similar problem

(just for the record: i did check several things before posting even if you don't believe me but: no swapping ever occurred (no heavy disk activity anytime during playing the game, of course not including loading times). i had more than 50% of free ram, > 1gig during game play. i've tried high low... graphics, different resolutions, window mode, fullscreen mode... each and every settting i could think of and nothing helped;
then i posted here)

btw, while i don't want to question what you've said i have my doubts about "Windows moves the files first from free space on C drive then through page file"
1) i really think that windows moves data between RAM and pagefile
2) if it did in fact use first free space and then the page file, the partition which hosts the page file does not matter: it would even boost performance if the page file is on a different disk since the write head doesn't have to be adjusted between reading and writing the different chunks of data.
3) i didn't understand what you meant with your whole statement about free space page file...

[mouse]

Sorry I wasn't clearer put it down to early morning for me. Let's see if I can address your issues a little better.
1. yes data is moved from hard drive to ram as first order with page file useage coming in third because it's slower.
2. the partition that hosts the page file is important because unless the page file is on the first partition access is even slower. Now the page file doesn't have to be on the first partition of the primary hard it can be on the first partition of the secondary drive.
3. Windows sets aside space for the page file think of it as a reserve space. So if your page maximum exceeds the space available windows won't have room the move files into and out of ram nor will it have enough room on the page file.

If anything I've said is unclear please keep asking questions until I've made myself clear

My sole purpose of trying to help is to make your gaming experience the best it can be.

[_KPaul]

Umm...broom, do you happen to have a DX SDK installed on your machine? Your DxDiag very clearly states you are running 'd3d9d.dll' and that it will run slow. It would seem that your DX control panel is probably set to use the debug dll.

Let me know if that was it.

_KPaul
_DevSupport

[broom]

hi,

i'm sorry i missed the reply in the thread.
yes i do have the dx sdk installed, but the debug dll will not be loaded when i play the game, only the release version (i've checked that. hinterland uses d3dx9_33.dll the one located in the steam/hinterland directory).

just to be sure though i've removed the SDK reinstalled the newest directx version but i still have the same issue
town small -> fast
town grows -> slow

[Ottis Spunkmeyer]

FWIW, I was playing a long game with all but 2 spaces in my town filled last night. I also noticed a massive drop in FPS when I was in town. I just attributed it to all the models in town. Didn't slow down enough to make gameplay suffer.

[broom]

well, i've just installed a fresh new windows yesterday and thought i'd might give it a shot again.
newest updates, newest drivers, same old problem with _horrible unplayable performance_ as soon as my town grows to a reasonable size.

please please please look into this and fix it.

[Jeff Fiske]

Broom,
Do you have access to a utility that can give us frame rates?
I am curious to hear what you have to say if while you are in town if you -
a)- pause the game - Do you get a small or large jump in frame rates?
b)- don't pause the game but turn off shadows or turn down AA or other graphic features
c)- both a & b

Your setup on first look appears to be good enough to avoid the issues you are describing so the above tests might shine a light on where the potential problem lies.

[broom]

Originally Posted by Jeff Fiske

Broom,
Do you have access to a utility that can give us frame rates?

I suppose i can't enable this somewhere in the game no? (do you have the name of such a utility?)
hmm, what i can tell you right now is that i have all fancy gfx things (shadows, AA..) turned off already, so i suppose the problem must lie somewhere else.
i'll try to get the numbers you're asking for.

cheers

[Jeff Fiske]

http://www.fraps.com/

A great general utility for accurate frame gathering information as well as capturing your own ingame footage or taking screenshots.

[broom]

right, fraps tells me what i've roughly said.
in a town with 14 buildings i get 8 FPS both in windowed and fullscreen mode for resolutions 1024x768 and 1680x1050 (shadows and AA are both turned off).
my native and desktop resolution is 1680x1050.

if i pause the game it boosts up to an incredible 22 FPS

oh, with shadows and AA I get 1-2 FPS.

no apps running other than steam and fraps.

[CannibalBob]

I, too, get poor performance with large cities. It's not as bad as 1-2 fps, maybe in the range of >10 and <20 fps.

I realize my system specs are pretty crappy so that could just be the problem

[Manni]

Originally Posted by CannibalBob

I realize my system specs are pretty crappy so that could just be the problem

Your specs ain`t crappy..........some of your drivers are!
You have an MSI-board..........why don`t you use their Online-Update tool?
It`ll get you latest chipsetdriver and ethernet/network-driver easily!

Your soundriver is "vintage"
The directX9 version looks also old
Get the latest from Novem08

[Manni]

I like searching & finding

Your SB Live! Audio seems a problem and isn`t supported anymore cos it`s old.

Try to replace your SB LIVE! driver from 2002 with this one from 2005:

http://www.treiberupdate.de/treiber-...hp?load=163859