12oclockhigh

I checked for Cool n Quiet. Not installed. Thanks.

Bandy, Game mode made no difference. It is an interesting program though. Thanks.

It was already disabled. I have to think about this multiplier. I don't know anything about overclocking. Actually this is probably not true overclocking. It is just getting the cores to run at spec but I don't want to mess anything up. I have no clue what might happen if I put in a wrong value. Worst case I guess is resetting CMOS but that's a pain. I think I will look into the BIOS upgrade first unless someone with knowledge of overclocking wants to help out.

Hi Parky CIE Support under CPU Config was disabled already. I can't find the reference to EIST. Can you give a more definite location?

OK, I'll give that a try first and let you know. By the way to set the multiplier (which I think is the CPU/NB frequency) the BIOS wants input in voltage. Starting minimum at .8V and increasing/decreasing by.0125V. Am I looking at the same thing you guys are and is so what voltage should be set for 3200 mhz?

Yes, I bought the components and assembled them. The CPU I installed at the computer store. Then we checked the BIOS to make sure it found the CPU and the ram. Last Asus board and BIOS that I had on my older computer would not see past 4gb. ram. I am OK with flashing and upgrading the BIOS. I just like to know what I'm doing a head of time and there is no hurry. I'll check TurbV. Thanks. You have been most helpful.

Hi Von Paulus, I have been reading my mobo manual and noticed that as well. I'll give it a try and let you know.

Hi. I will do the uninstall for sure. I am also reading up on BIOS flashing. I have always left the BIOS alone but maybe now is the time to change. Thanks for your help.

Thanks for the tip Bandy. I'll give it a try.

I'm wondering about that. When I built this system in June of '09 I had Vista as an OS. Then in October or November I upgraded to Win7. We went on holidays in December so I didn't do much gaming. I wonder if the core speed was changed by the upgrade and I'm just getting around to noticing now. The Asus utilities that are on the mobo disk won't work with the Win7 OS so maybe that's a clue. I went to their website for newer versions but they don't seem to work either. I didn't read anything in the bios fixes that talked about this but maybe I should update.

Motherboard is m4a79t. Bios verson is 0902 but has seemed fine so I haven't worried about it. I don't know about a 'Windows Cpool 'n Quiet'. I looked through bios settings and can't see any obvious 'green' stuff. AI Tweaker settings are all at 'auto'. I've never changed these.I'll check. I have AMD Overdrive but have only looked at it and never changed any settings. It shows core speed at 800mhz too. I don't have Asus AI Suite installed. If so that would explain different core speeds when gaming and at idle. This is new territory for me so I am moving slow. Maybe I should install that utility and see if it overrides any hidden settings I am missing?

This looked very promising but 'Cool and Quiet' is disabled in my bios.

I am looking at this with interest. I do not know much about this sort of thing but will check the bios settings on the newer computer and will let you know. Thanks very much for your help.

Hi Von Paulus, here is .txt file for older computer. FAMILY-9B20069F.txt

Hi Von Paulus Here is .txt report. Some very entertaining reading to be sure. UPSTAIRS-NEWEST.txt

Thanks for the reply. I am glad your system runs well. It's a fun game for sure and I am enjoying it, even the 'problem' stuff is fun. Yes certainly. First chance I get this evening.

Hi Parky, Yes, I've been careful with drivers and Directx X. I do see decent performance on other games. Crysis for example. This issue for me seems OFF specific on my computer. I do have the luxury of a second machine that runs OFF decently so I'm not complaining too loudly.

Last night I installed a dual boot system on my newest computer and used it to run some unscientific tests to obtain some unscientific results. The results and my opinions apply only to my system and the settings at the time. I certainly could have switched settings during the tests and was really tempted to on occasion when I felt a setting was just 'wrong' for the situation. However, I wanted a general benchmark and for that all settings had to stay the same. The tests involved OFF, an AMD quad 2.2 ghz 32 Bit CPU and an AMD Quad 3.2 Ghz. 64 bit CPU. I tried two different graphics cards, ATI's 5770 and 5870. Operating systems were Win7 64 bit and XP Home edition 32 bit SP3. OFF settings across the board were sliders at 54454, Overrides had High Rez, Terrain Detail, Disable Validate device, and Disable Shadows checked. Texture info was set to the texture managed, rendertarget settings recommended in OFF's ATI help section. Graphics cards were set to HD Anti-Aliasing edge detext 4x, HD Anisotropic 4x, Cat AI Advanced, Mipmap to Performance, Wait for Vert. Refresh to On, Anti- Aliasing mode to Multi-Sample AA, and triple buffering checked. Monitor resolution was 1920x1200x32. Actual game play testing consisted of starting the game in June of 1918 so the Weather was consistent, sunny with some clouds. I would run Quick Combat with six enemy planes in the vacinity, takeoff and fly South at rooftop level over Clairmarais. After traversing most of the town and noting FPS I would turn and charge the persuing enemy headon as this seemed to be where frame rates dropped to their lowest. And the results. On my old machine, the AMD Quad 2.2 32 bit under XP SP3 with either ATI 5770 or 5870 cards OFF turned in FPS in the 30's to low 40's at rooftop level, and mid 20's when turned towards the enemy. There was some very slight stuttering but all in all gameplay was smooth and enjoyable. Obviously at higher altitudes the FPS improved considerably. On my newer AMD Quad 3.2 64 bit machine with either Win7 or XP and either ATI5770 or 5870 cards FPS were disappointing to say the least with roughly 15 to 20 at rooftop level, 5 to 10 when turned towards the enemy. There was stuttering and a good lag or two. I didn't bother with higher altitude checking because I simply wouldn't play a game that performed like this one long enough to reach a higher altitude. By the way I do play many other games on this system and it performs wonderfully. In summery, I know I was certainly restrictive in my 'settings' but OFF ran faster and felt 'cleaner' under my older slower CPU 32 bit system. I felt the XP 32bit OS was responsive. Tweaking would and could help big time here to improve an already decent performance. However, in the AMD 3.2 64 bit machine OFF ran much slower and felt stuttery, despite a significantly faster CPU. It also didn't seem to matter which graphics card I used. They both had similarly dismal results though if I had to pick one I'd go with the older, slower 5770. Overall I just got the feeling that my 64 bit machine doesn't like OFF and that's too bad for me. What's good for me however is that I have another computer that seems to like it just fine. So until someone more enlightened that I can help with a solution I'll be playing OFF on my old computer.

I agree and should have been more specific. It is my operating system and setup that is the issue. I'm hoping the dual boot will show, if the OS and graphics are the same, that it's an issue with the hardware and how that is handling things. From there...who knows? I tried affinities last night and it seems to be controlling the cores but I didn't get into it too much. I'll have time to look more closely this weekend. A thought I had at the time is the game could run on one core and the graphics on the other three. That's interesting. I'll also have a look through the bios as well though I prefer not doing stuff like that for games.

Is this the same as setting 'affinities' through task master? That seems easy enough. I'll give it a try and let you know. Thanks kindly. By the way I am very interested in dual booting as Von Paulus suggested. Seems to me that would narrow things down to OS or AMD.

@Maxiku I tried forcing OFF to run at 640x480 through properties but the game seems to default to the OFF settings once it starts so no luck there.

I didn't know that. Thanks for the info. I'll set up a dual boot with Win 7 and XP first chance I get, probably this weekend. By the way I moved my 5870 card over to the XP machine. Overall I think it runs OFF a little better than the 5770 but there's not enough improvement there to warrant the expense.

I do have an extra hard drive and don't mind dual booting but there would be a license issue. My old machine was dual boot with Vista and XP Pro. I upgraded Vista to Win 7 on the new computer and left XP on the old machine which is turning out to be my ace in the hole for playing OFF. I also have XP Home edition running on a third computer but can't touch that. (my partner uses it and it chugs along nicely for her needs. Everytime I glance longingly at it she gives me a dirty look...) I have tried the other 5770 card I have and did manage 20to 25 fps with medium settings. That's what prompted the purchase of the 5870. Anyway, for now I am quite happy playing OFF on the old machine. I think I'll move the 5870 card over to it just to see what improvements that makes to an all ready well preforming game and in the meantime I'll keep tinkering with the Win 7 install. Sooner or later we'll get it. I really appreciate everyone's time and efforts so far. Thanks all....

Hi ConradB, I've had good luck with AMD and ATI. This machine does preform well. For example I can run Crysis and Bioshock maxed out. The graphics are simply amazing. That is why this issue with OFF is so frustrating to me. Fortunately my old machine runs it quite well so I play and tinker at the same time.

Hi Maxiku, You've given me something to think about. I have CFS3 ver 3.1. What is 3.1a? I've never really played CFS3 much but it does seem to run OK tho I've never checked frame rates. It's smooth enough for sure. I don't run anti-virus software. My experience is that they are more trouble than they are worth and I've owned computers since the early eighties. What is the thinking behind forcing OFF and CFS3 to run under one core? I think there are freeware programs that would do that. Maybe AMD Fusion does? So that could be an option. Tonight I will check and see what the cores are running at. I know for ROF all four cores were maxed out under WIN 7 while my GPU's were at zero so I switched that game to my XP machine and it runs fine now too. (The devs at ROF tho just tell you 'tough luck' if you run Win 7). USB periperals are the ones you've mentioned with the exception of my camera and Freetrack program. I have tried OFF without Freetrack running and there is no difference. And finally I will try the ultra low res suggestion for interest's sake. Overall my thinking is that there is something basic I am missing not just some tweak. Thanks very much for these suggestions.