Performance - ingame frame rates

[Fubar512 1,350]

Just a thought, Brain: Give the Omega drivers a try.

[rovert97 1]

well ive got a x1650pro 512meg on order from newegg, i pray that it will be a better card then this aging 9800pro im using, that and another gig of ram may help a bit. oh and because of this site, i had to order a 500gig hard drive. my 120 gig drive is just about maxed out thanks to all the great mods of this game.

[Fubar512 1,350]

I have a mid-high end ATI card for God's sake not "Bulgarian Electronics GFX 2000"

 

You're lucky that Tipari hasn't been around around in a while He'd probably blame it all on the Latvian mafia

 

For those of you just tuning in, here's a couple of gems by Tipari:

 

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?s=&am...ost&p=78838

 

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?s=&am...ost&p=78779

[FastCargo 412]

Dude, that hurt my eyes to read!

 

FastCargo

[Ruiner29 0]

Just figured I would share my recent experiences on the frame rate issues in this game.

 

The thirdwire series seems to be very picky about which video cards and cpu's a person has in order to get good frame rates.

Yesterday I installed a brand new ASUS/Nvidia GSO9600 which has 384mb of GDDR3 ram @1600mhz, a 600mhz (g92 series) core gpu and a 192bit memory interface at stock settings. This is a very good card for overclocking BTW !

This is also a very nice card if you want to play Call of Duty 4 or Quake Wars:Enemy Territory with high settings but it doesn't seem to run the thirdwire games worth a damn !

 

The card I upgraded from was an Nvidia 7300gs 256mb DDR2 with a 400mhz core that wouldn't run either of the games mentioned above at all unless you like 800x600 with all options on low LOL!

It could however, run the thirdwire series fairly well considering the low specs of the card. I usually got around 25 to 30 fps when playing WOI with most of the settings on high except for the cockpit reflections, mirrors and the water detail would have to be set to low or medium.

 

The frame rates i'm getting with the new card are only better by maybe 5 to 10 frames when using the same settings even though it absolutely blows the old card away when it comes to graphics intensive games like CoD4, Quake Wars etc.

 

Whats up with that?!!

 

My other specs are: Intel Dual Core Pentium D @ 2.66ghz, 1gb ram, WD 7800rpm 200gb hard drive.

 

Long story short: why is a kick ass card only beating an old slow card by a couple of frames on Thirdwire games but totally crushing it on every other game ?

[Fubar512 1,350]

My other specs are: Intel Dual Core Pentium D @ 2.66ghz, 1gb ram, WD 7800rpm 200gb hard drive.

 

Long story short: why is a kick ass card only beating an old slow card by a couple of frames on Thirdwire games but totally crushing it on every other game ?

 

 

Upgrade to a C2D if possible, with at least 3 GHz of speed, and 4 mb (or better) of L2 cache. Also, 1 GB of RAM isn't really enough. I recently ran WoE in windowed mode and tracked its memory utilization with task manager. Much to my surprise, WoE used 1.12 GBs of RAM, all by itself!

[+X RAY 83]

All maxed out!like silk! Intel Q 6700 quad core (OC to 3Ghz) and a SLI of 2 9600GT (planned to get a 9800GTX2 asap) Don't get ATI with this game,I've got a 1950 pro in my other pc, nvidia is the RIGHT CHOICE!!!!!

[+X RAY 83]

Well I upgraded to a new system a few days ago:

A64 5000+ Black Edition - currently stable at 3GHz

2GB DDR2 - waiting for another 2GB stick to come, to lazy to go far for it lol

ATI4850HD - yes one of the new ATI series 48xx kick @ss cards

 

Since it seems I'm the first one here to get a new series ATI card and have a habbit to collect a bunch of games from my friends and test the living sh1t out of the new hardware, let me write a short non-proffesional review:

 

1. The card is by Sapphire it seems it's a lightned edition as it came with only a few necessary cables and a driver installation CD, what I especially appriciate it came in a small box not much bigger than the card itself. Don't you get pis*ed when they sell you a freakin' USB sitck sized product in a box sized for dishwashing machine. -"Yeah sure I'll rent a pickup truck and come back to the store for my USB stick, thx." Ok enough ranting...

 

2. The card itself is nothing special, unfortunetly it comes with reference cooler so I knew immidiately it will go hot as hell, in idle it came as high as 80C and about the same at load. Fortunetly there's a nice tweak via control panel to increase the rpm of the cooling fan on the card, increasing it to 44% did the trick, the card is now 50 idle and less than 70 under heavy load and is still quite silent.

 

3. I didn't use the drivers that came with CD as I pre-downloaded the latest Cat's 8.7 this may had been a mistake...

 

Let's go for testing, not all tests were done at same CPU speed so I'll just write it next to it, card was always at max image quality only AA and AF were varied, and resolution in all games is 1024x768 due to my 17" CRT monitor:

 

1. Lock On Modern Air Combat v1.02(CPUat2.8GHz) - always wanted to play it, never had the hardware, well now I can.

The game runs super smooth maxed out with 4xAA and 16xAF! I think I saw it at 23fps...once lol

 

2. il2 sturmovik 1946 v408 - maxed out super smooth(never below 60fps online) with 4xAA and 16xAF, with standardized bench tracks things were not so good until I OC'ed the CPU to 3GHz, I still think it must go better...but generally OK

 

3. 3DMark2006 - 11100(can't remember exactly) marks, CPU at 3GHz, standard 3DMark testing

 

4. FEAR - couldn't find anything more to max out, built-in benchmark Min:48, Avg:126, Max:327

 

5. Quake4 and Oblivion - I didn't have a special benchmark I just took very messy levels and played looking at FPS, I saw Oblivion at 32fps once lol

 

6. Wings Over Israel - the biggest WTF for now... I used clean install with April patch, F-15 and my wingman over nothing but the desert, game was maxed(shadows medium) out, in def.view I only managed 29fps, when I zoomed out in wide view I only got 16-19fps!!! Something is not right here and I hope I'll solve it soon.

Other than that, there are no visual problems the picture quality is waay better than on my old GF6800

 

All in all the card is performing waay above what my monitor can display and aside from this WOI low fps issue I'm VERY happy with it, I'll experimet with it for the next few days and report my findings ;)

 

Do u play Lomac at 4x aa????without the shadow bug????

I must play it at 8x aa and 16x anizo 1280-1024 maxed out to get out the bug!

Yep is the same standard setup that i use in every game,except R6 vegas (disable the AA to don't have troubles with HDR!) and replace the standard 1024-768 rez with the 1280-1024 founded on an Italian site.(It's a rar to download) on your display appears 1024-768 but the rez is real 1280-1024!

[Sentry 0]

According to your experience, it clearly indicates that Third Wire games are CPU-bounded games. I am using Pentium D also, but mine is 945 which is overclocked to 3.4GHz. Still I am getting low 20s when all max'd out. My card is ATi X1950Pro AGP version.

 

I think this game worth the money to play. All the mods are fantastic. I actually saw this YouTube video yesterday, it simulated a nuke explosion but looked very laggy guess the smoke effect is dragging the card's performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RySgaWAsS4M

 

This game requires good video as well as good CPU to run.

By the way, if you go to http://www.guru3d.com website, you will get a pretty good sense of frame rate of any games. Anything less than 30 is basically undesirable for gameplay.

Edited August 20, 2008 by Sentry

[Ruiner29 0]

From what everyone's experience tells me in order for me to get good speeds out of the Thirdwire games I will need to buy an Alienware computer !

 

The crappy motherboard in this computer won't allow for anymore than 1gb of ram so in order to upgrade to more ram and a better cpu I will have to buy a better mobo first.

There's no way am I buying all of that just to get a few more frames out of these games any time soon.

I simply cannot afford to build a high spec gaming rig on my current income.

 

The bills are piling up faster than the money LOL !

[FastCargo 412]

Okay, that's simply not true.

 

This laptop I'm running is 3 1/2 years old. Now, it was a fire-breather back in it's day, but it's still doing just fine...running CA_Stary's Green Hell, parts of the widesky mod, the HDR/bloom mod, etc, and still getting 20+ frames per sec for the most part...slowing down only when I get blown up (because I'm using the enhanced explosions pack). It's an older Pentium M in fact...even before they started coming out with the various 'Core' CPU names/iterations.

 

However, certain combos of parts seem to not work well, especially with WOI. My big hiccup is with shadows...so most times I simply limit the distance the shadows are cast.

 

FastCargo

[links 0]

I recently bought a new GFX card, ATI 4870 1GB running on a Athlon 6000+, Vista, 3Gb RAM..

 

Currently I can pretty much assume that the game is 99% CPU bound.. Using GPU-Z I get about 3% GPU Load while flying.. I get a higher GPU Load in the menu's.. to give you something to compare too, Crysis Warhead sits around 70 - 80% GPU Load..

 

Anyways - unless something up with GPU Load, I suggest downloading it and taking a look.. Gfx on Unlimited @ 1600x1200 = 15fps in cockpit.. on high @ 1600x1200 = ~40fps. Changing to 1280x1024 made no difference..

 

Anyways - thought i'd share..

Links

[kct 5]

I would say pretty much the same thing about the laptop I use to game on (it is about 2 1/4 years old, and bits of it are falling apart). Brain32's WoE tilesets + trees + related stuff, Widesky with Polak's SKYmod backgrounds, with AA 2x or 4x (although the screenshots I've posted in the screenshots thread is done with 4x, PLUS graphics set to Unlimited at 1280x800), not to mention a slow processor (1.66GHz Core Duo), and a rather bad graphics card (X1400). The game does lag, but it is real bad when Flankers are thrown at me (this is a very usual occurance, at least on my side).

 

Something is telling me by the end of next year I need to start looking at alternatives...

 

Brain32: Tried the Omega drivers for ATIs? (although I've heard they are not updated for a while) Installed one of the newer versions at one time, and the FPS rate in CoD4 went up with immediate effect. Then again because the previous drivers I used were Dell's (yup, it is a Dell laptop with nothing to shout about).

[+Brain32 265]

I would say pretty much the same thing about the laptop I use to game on (it is about 2 1/4 years old, and bits of it are falling apart). Brain32's WoE tilesets + trees + related stuff, Widesky with Polak's SKYmod backgrounds, with AA 2x or 4x (although the screenshots I've posted in the screenshots thread is done with 4x, PLUS graphics set to Unlimited at 1280x800), not to mention a slow processor (1.66GHz Core Duo), and a rather bad graphics card (X1400). The game does lag, but it is real bad when Flankers are thrown at me (this is a very usual occurance, at least on my side).

 

Something is telling me by the end of next year I need to start looking at alternatives...

 

Brain32: Tried the Omega drivers for ATIs? (although I've heard they are not updated for a while) Installed one of the newer versions at one time, and the FPS rate in CoD4 went up with immediate effect. Then again because the previous drivers I used were Dell's (yup, it is a Dell laptop with nothing to shout about).

 

What shut me up lol, was the ATI's CAT8.9beta, it brought massive improvement to my system, not only WoI but even other games that did run excellent run even better with it. 8.9beta especially boosted OpenGL games but also D3D enough for me to enjoy the series again, not strange bugs btw ;)

[Arrow 83]

I run WoV and WoE on a low - mid range spec'd PC.

 

AMD X64 3200+

1 GB DDR2 RAM

Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS

Sound Blaster Audigy II

 

I run all graphic settings on medium with the exception of cockpits, objects, object details, water and ground objects which are high. I have cockpit reflections off, mirrors on and shadows at normal. I get anywhere from 19 - 38 fps depending upon the terrain. Occasionally while flying around Thud ridge and Hanoi I get momentary drops -up to 5 seconds- where fps are 10. I've found the single biggest robber of frame rates is the horizon setting which when set to 'Far' costs me at least 5 fps if not more. My sound settings are on 32 channels.

 

I have the enhanced VietnamSEA terrain, enhanced runways and currently Green Hell - LOW, but I'm considering bumping up to MED. For WoE, I have Brain32's enhanced German terrain, enhanced runways and the trees and farms enhancements. I get much better frame rates in WoE, but I've put that down to mostly flying in non-mountainous areas which aren't too common in WoV.

 

I'd love for there to be a tweak guide for this sim as it took me quite a bit of tinkering after the Sept 08 patch to arrive at a decent frame rate.

[kct 5]

For now I place everything on High. This is without the bloom mod (which did a good job in killing framerates a while back).

 

Anyhow, I would love to see what a PC with a spec similar to Brain32's (except that it is a 3650 or something, the PC belonged to my friend, lucky bummer on getting the Black Edition) would do to the game.