Project Reality Forums

Posted: **2007-05-18 15:27**

I'm a bit concerned about the performance of this wonderful mod. I have already noticed this in the current release; alot of Maps (especially Al Basrah) are running a tad too slow on my rig. Mods like EoD or OPK run just fine on medium settings, but PR forced me to set almost everything to low and still i'm getting slowdowns here and there (well, on the other hand alot of servers have been upgraded to 64 slots which doesn't help me at all). Now, i've seen what you guys are up to, the new Muttrah City seems to become alot bigger and you also want to increase the view distance - if we will actually see this one is not the issue, it's just an example so you get my point.

So yeah, the question is quite simple: Have you guys put any thought into optimizing the performance?

Btw, my rig:
P4 3.0GHz, 1GB Ram, Ati X800XT 256MB, Audigy 2 ZS. Any tips for getting some more fps are appreciated too, but i'm pretty sure i already have covered everything. It's not the first time i'm sitting at a comp.

- a concerned citizen

Posted: **2007-05-18 15:30**

The thing I really want to see is how hte draw increases affect performance. Hopefully not at all. The main reason for your lag is RAM, I can tell you that for a fact, grab yourself another gig or two and you'll be super

Posted: **2007-05-18 15:30**

Fill it up with RAM, that'll do the trick.

Posted: **2007-05-18 15:32**

With the tweaks we are doing at the mo to basrah it should be alot less laggy in the new version

We will see in the open beta if we need to turn down the view distance (since duckhunt insists on increaseing it...)

Posted: **2007-05-18 15:38**

You can still turn down the viewdistance in the options menu I guess?

Posted: **2007-05-18 15:48**

Hate to say it but 2 gigs of ram is really the sweet spot for PR.

At the same time as we try and find ways to optomise performance, we are trying to make the game play experience richer with stuff like larger cities and longer view ranges.

With 1gb ram you should be able to play with setting compromised, with 2gb ram and a fairly current video card, you should be able to play with settings maxxed. The BF2 engine is 2 years old and I've seen 2gigs of quality ram for as cheap as $75... so I'm not saying "f u" to folks who dont have 2 gigs of ram, but I am saying you will likely have to tone down some settings with less than 2 gigs.

Posted: **2007-05-18 15:52**

Hey Scratch. My system was very similar to yours except instead of the P4, I have an AMD 3500+. I could play all the maps on mostly high settings except for Al Basrah. I upgraded my RAM to 3 gigs and still had some problems with Al Basrah until I turned down the textures. The RAM did shorten the load times between maps and improved performance. I think my X800 and 3500+ are overclocked by the manufacturer, but I think your system shouldn't be having as much problems as you are experiencing.

Posted: **2007-05-18 16:09**

i have a p4 3GHz with geforce 6600 and 2 gigs of ram. I run all highs on basrah except dynamic lights and lighting and get a consistent 30 fps.

Posted: **2007-05-18 16:12**

Gangrene wrote:I upgraded my RAM to 3 gigs and still had some problems with Al Basrah until I turned down the textures.

well that confirms my theory even more to suggest that the basrah lag problem should be better in v0.6

Posted: **2007-05-18 16:15**

it has something to do with textures ?

Posted: **2007-05-18 16:17**

Well, my current issue is my connection...sometimes it runs fine, then again, I could call 56k better...

Anyone know how much does a gig of RAM cost and/or if its cheaper to buy 2x512 Mb or one whole Gb?

Posted: **2007-05-18 16:20**

77SiCaRiO77 wrote:it has something to do with textures ?

with the lightmaps, which is a kind of texture

The main problem is not excatly "not enouth RAM" in peoples pcs. The problem is more to do with "not enouth RAM in peopes GFx Cards" as basrah use to have loads and loads of lightmaps, 178mbs of lightmaps to be excat. Now just think, how much memory dose your GFx card have? most will only be 128? so 128mb GFx cards are 100% buggered, and 256mb GFx cards might get away with it but you need to do all the vhicle, static etc textures aswell as evetything else, so you are pushing it for a 256mb GFx card hehe.

but in .6, weve managed to get the lightmap size down too 64mbs, nroaml map size

Posted: **2007-05-18 16:31**

Yeey, I can finally go back on Medium settings...or High if I can get another gig of RAM..

Posted: **2007-05-18 17:09**

a good trick is to turn down dynamic lighting settings.

Posted: **2007-05-18 17:59**

'[R-DEV wrote:Rhino']with the lightmaps, which is a kind of texture

The main problem is not excatly "not enouth RAM" in peoples pcs. The problem is more to do with "not enouth RAM in peopes GFx Cards" as basrah use to have loads and loads of lightmaps, 178mbs of lightmaps to be excat. Now just think, how much memory dose your GFx card have? most will only be 128? so 128mb GFx cards are 100% buggered, and 256mb GFx cards might get away with it but you need to do all the vhicle, static etc textures aswell as evetything else, so you are pushing it for a 256mb GFx card hehe.

but in .6, weve managed to get the lightmap size down too 64mbs, nroaml map size

I generally try to stay away from giving people tweaking advice because i do not like being constantly bugged by people looking to improve performance, but I've seen enough people complain about performance problems in Al-Basrah and PR.

Now before doing anything i need to say this specific tweak will only yield an improvement if your system falls within certain specifications. (At least 2 gigs of ram, And the biggest improvement will be seen if you are using a 256 meg graphics card, though improvements may be seen with other sizes of video memory as well). The setting you are going to want to change goes by the name of AGP Aperture Size ( Here's an in depth explanation of exactly how it works http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/ove ... vidcard/43) now for a brief overview of exactly what this setting governs, this setting will allow your Graphics card to map system ram for it's own use. Therefore on maps like Al-Basrah that use insane amounts of video memory for Light Maps, Textures, etc... So by increasing the value of this setting you can eliminate nearly all of the stuttering that occurs as your graphics card has to dump memory that is being occupied to fit new texture's.

This setting is found in your BIOS generally under the Advanced Chipset Features section, just look around if it's there you will find it (Though i must caution you, be careful not to change any settings that you are not familiar with or you may find your system not able to boot up) Now the value i would suggest is 512 for people with systems similar to at least 2 gigs of ram and a 256 meg video card. If your system meets this criteria and you suffer FPS freezes on maps like Al-Basrah This fix WILL make it play butter smooth.

Posted: **2007-05-18 18:03**

SethLive! wrote:i have a p4 3GHz with geforce 6600 and 2 gigs of ram. I run all highs on basrah except dynamic lights and lighting and get a consistent 30 fps.

I'm sorry but for me 30 fps is not very playable, it runs but i will definitively notice a good lagging party. 40 fps and upwards is what i'm aiming for. Perhaps you don't notice the "lagging effect" with 30 fps because you're using an LCD screen, i've noticed that on some of those you seem to have a better gaming experience although the fps are still low.

Posted: **2007-05-18 18:08**

@Diesel0ne, Awesome info! going to try this out in abit, will it work for PCI-E cards aswell? I notice it dose state AGP but just wondering if you know offhand?

PS, welcome to the forums

Posted: **2007-05-18 18:14**

'[R-DEV wrote:Rhino']@Diesel0ne, Awesome info! going to try this out in abit, will it work for PCI-E cards aswell? I notice it dose state AGP but just wondering if you know offhand?

PS, welcome to the forums

I'm not sure, i haven't had the money to upgrade my x850 agp card until recently but my new PCI-E card hasn't got here yet so i can't say for sure as I've never had the opportunity to tweak one. I did some google searches but can't find anything concrete, if i were you I'd just poke around in your BIOS and see if you can find a setting that looks similar.

Posted: **2007-05-18 18:18**

I told you guys a few months a go from a few tests I performed that the lag problem in Al Basrah was related to textures, and I suggested to get rid of it you need to turn down ONLY your textures to medium while you can keep every other settings the same.

Hers what I posted more than a month ago:

Cheeseman wrote:System specs:
CPU: AMD 64bit Dual core 2.4Ghz
System Memory: 2GB RAM
Graphics: ATI Radeon X1600 512MB
OS: Windows Vista 32bit

When I used Windows XP, I could run PR with settings all on high and Anti-Aliasing on x6. For Al Basrah I would only get 7-10mins of lag in the beginning and then everything would be smooth. Now on Windows Vista, performance has dropped by a lot. I can still run every other map in PR (except Al Basrah) with the same settings as when I had XP, but for Al Basrah I need to bring down textures to medium. Everything else can stay on high and Anti-Aliasing on x6, but I have to always bring down textures down to medium for Al Basrah. I’m guessing the map has a hard time processing textures, because I performed a few tests and this is what I found out:

Fact 1: Every map in PR except Al Basrah works fine with my graphics settings on all high and anti-aliasing on x6.

Fact 2: If I join a Al Basrah map with all high settings and anti-aliasing on x6, I get bad FPS and lag.

Fact 3: If I join a Al Basrah map with all high settings except textures set to medium and anti-aliasing on x6, I don't have bad FPS or lag.

Test:

I first lunched the game with video settings on all high and anti-aliasing on x6, then I join a server with Al Basrah map. As soon as the game starts and I spawn for the first time, I press “Esc” and Disconnect. Then I go back to video settings and I ONLY change textures to medium, while leaving every thing else on high and anti-aliasing on x6 (I DON'T RESTART PR AFTER MAKING THE CHANGE). Again I join the same server, but this time although I have textures set to medium, in game the textures haven’t changed and are still on high from when I had previously joined the map. BUT the bad FPS and lag issue is no longer present. This concludes that the map probably has a problem loading or reading textures.

http://realitymod.com/forum/showthread. ... ight=Vista

Posted: **2007-05-18 18:28**

@cheese things like that get lost, PM them to someone like me, if map related, or who ever it may be relatyed too (not egg, hes a busy man

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Project Reality Forums

Performance and v0.6?

Performance and v0.6?