Performance! Memory leak?

[tank29]

Another tip that may help performance is apparently putting the game in "low" priority... I'll just link to the discussion over at GameFAQs http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/gen...topic=17718441

I haven't tried it yet, but I just finished going through once, so I plan on trying this fix for the the second time around through the game...

That last battle was really laggy and could use some performance help!

[vesselle]

sorry bout my previous links not working anymore.

the dilapidation forums were hacked and erased 11/26 by some disgruntled postman type.

V***V

[Gauda]

Well, I can only say that troikas thoughts are inscrutable, why they would ever want to release a game with so evident, and enourmous performance problems is beyond me. Especially since they had all the time in the world improving it, since it was finished half a year ago, but couldn't be released because valve wouldn't let them.

Most of the performance problems is probably adressed in the patch though, which should be in the work now.

[Maxinion]

Other random performance tips:

Turn off all the "eye candy" in Windows XP. Don't use those round buttons, go back to classic view, etc. You don't need shadows, etc. All these things eat up RAM.

Turn off your anti-virus, and all background programs. They eat up RAM as well, and every little bit helps sometimes.

Sweep up the spyware! Go get Spy-Bot and Ad-Aware, and run them both. Together, they'll get rid of pretty much any malicious software attacking your computer and eating up resources. Just google for them.

Lastly, you may want to restart your computer before playing. Some badly written programs don't clean themselves from memory after you close them, and so as your computer stays on, its performance starts to degrade ever so slightly. Restart, and you get a "fresh start," as it were.

These will give you a TINY (~1-2 fps? Something like that, more if you close or sweep some really large/bad programs) benefit, but for me they've become second nature, so they're no longer very annoying to go through.

[Nihilanth]

I read through the topic and still am wandering about the game running on my system...

Celeron 2.2 Ghz
512 DDR-RAM
GeForce 4 MX 440 64 MB-ram (i HATE this graphics card and have not enough money to buy a new one...)

1.62 gb free space
HDD free space can be increased...

[meanie]

my computer specs..

Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz
512Mb Ram
Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 440 (64Mb GFX card)

playing the game with all specs set to low (800x600 res .. no shadows ect)

i get lagged out in City Hub areas .. FPS (net_graph 1 in console to check) get as low as 10-15 FPS .. this is due to my GFX card and RAM .. a better/newer GFX card and/or extra RAM will no doubt fix this lag in those areas .. in combat areas such as houses/buildings my FPS are fine 40-60 .. this lag isnt from the maps im finding but the amount of a Ai characters within the area .. while in one of the last areas, the Lacroix building at the end of the game .. with all the Ai enemies around shooting and what not i get a little lag at times

also after about 2-3 hours of play the lag becomes regular and noticable .. for a quick fix to this i just exit the game and restart it fresh .. empting the cache

[Gauda]

Well, I for my part get excactly the same performance with lowest resolution, bump mapping off, and shadows off, and all other settings to lowest, as I get when I have highest resolution, bump mapping on, and all the setting set to its' highest. There seems to be very little difference between the settings too.

[Alaphic]

one thing to try if it's being laggy and such is to force it to use a different version of directx. add -dxlevel7 or -dxlevel8 to the shortcut. it may make some of the textures look a little funky (some of the NPC's mouths light up in bright pink in the cutscenes, etc.) but you'll get better performance and there's no real perceptible graphical difference.

[Intergalactic]

It runs ok on my machine, only Downtown reminds me of Morrowind style laggyness sometimes. The resolution and the amount of Details didn't have a great influcence on the framerate for me (maybe ~5 frames.) But i did get a runtime error, when my pagefile was only 740mb. Seems like this game is memory crazy.

[vesselle]

don't forget, the ingame console code:
flush

it flushes out your memory immediately and clears your cache. next to rebooting, it's a big help.

V***V

ps: a pagefile of 740mb? no wonder you returned an error. that's waaaay too low.
i run mine at 4500mb.
and don't let windows manage it, either. make it constant.

p4 2.53
ati 9600 XT, 128mb
512mb RAM
120gb WD hdd, 7200rpm, 8 mb cache
WinXP, SP2
DX9.0c

[Intergalactic]

It was constant at 740 before i got Vampires...
Now it is 4Gbs on a 64k - Cluster partition.
That helped loading times a *lot*
btw you have a 8Mb cashe Harddisc? I'd kill for it

[Nihilanth]

call me stupid, but what's "paging file" and is there any way to increase it? Is it determined by the hdd size or what?

[Ruds]

Paging file is your virtual memory. You can change it by going into you My Computer properties > advanced > performance settings > advanced > change virtual memory.

There seems to be a consensus that around 4000 virtual memory is a good setting. Don't set it to that much if you don't have more than that amount in extra hard drive space though. If you don't, clear some up if you can.



About those pink mouths. The bottom of my game box says that directx 9.0c is required to play this game, and so is a directx 9.0c compliant 64mb video card. Well, it then says that ALL nvidia geforce series chipsets are supported. I'm using an nvidia geforce 4, and I installed directx 9.0c from the CD when I installed Vampire, but I have pink mouths!

Is my video card not good enough and I'm being deferred to a lower directx setting? Any idea what the problem is? I DON'T have one of those -dxlevel settings in my shortcut either.

[Intergalactic]

What kind of Geforce 4 do you ahve exactly? I have an Geforce 4 Ti 4200
and it works without problems.
Have you tried downloading new drivers for your graphic card?

[Ruds]

geforce 4 mx 440

And I've got the most recent drivers.