is a game limited by the creators source of hardware?

FixupSellon · 5 Jul 2015 at 21:22

im slowly upgrading my acer veriton m221, got what seems to be a nice 400w corsair psu and a asus hd6670 xt(turks) 1gb gpu along with 2gb ddr2 800mhz(4 max) ive put in it to go with the decent athlon 5000b dual core and so far haven't dont much testing of performance other than xbmc..

now i own old games and dont have steam setup again yet so one of the games i tried which i brought weeks ago but never played is call 'Damnation' which seems pretty good actually for the quid i paid lol and had never even heard of it, but there does seem to be a slight graphical thing that could be normal, but not sure..

none of my upgrades are new, but that shouldnt make a difference..

game spec as followed:

minimum:

xp/vista
2.8ghz pentium or amd equivalent
1gb ram
direct x compatible sound card
10gb hdd space
gpu geforce 7600/radeon x1300 or above
dual layer compatible dvd rom

recommended:

xp/vista
c2d 2.66ghz or athlon x2 3800+
2gb ram
gpu geforce 8800gtx or above/ radeon 3800 series or above
creative sound blaster x-fi
11gb hdd space
dual layer compatible dvd rom

support graphics cards - x1300 or above/hd2***/hd3***/hd4*** series
- geforce 7600 or above/7/8/9/gtx2** series

now i dont know much about the 6670 other than its much better than my geforce 210 :rolleyes:

and chances are its still not really considered a gaming card right??, but surely my system is more than good enough, im using windows 7 32bit home with no compatibility mode slected so surely that cant be at fault and i have 200gb/250gb/80gb hard drives(80 not connected mind) so space is fare from problematic..

the issue that im now getting to lol is it has a wave effect(rendering i suppose) when in motion mainly movement than pointing and shooting
and it looks like im playing a 360 game :rolleyes:

i had this same effect on mw2 on steam with totally different and less spec ages back, have i not set my system up properly or down to the creating of the game and hardware they used to optimize it???

mickyflinn · 5 Jul 2015 at 22:25

Could be a lack of ram as windows 7 takes up much more than xp does.

McGraw · 5 Jul 2015 at 22:35

Tried a different monitor?
Latest drivers?

Confused Stu · 5 Jul 2015 at 22:35

Try running Task Manager in the background, then flick to it while running the game - do the graphs show your CPU or RAM are maxed out while you're playing? I use Afterburner to show me that info in game, but if we're maximising RAM then I'm thinking the least amount of things we have running, the better!

Not clear on what graphical issues you mean when you say a wave effect while in motion. Could it be screen tearing if your frame rate is too high? Does it still happen if you enable VSync in the game options (assuming it's there).

Never heard of the game before, but there are a couple of YouTube clips showing the game "maxed out" on PC and it doesn't look that graphically impressive. Maybe it looking like a 360 game is simply as high quality as that particular game can be made to look?

FixupSellon · 6 Jul 2015 at 15:47

thanks for replies. .

i use a tv and have no other monitor and i havent looked at usage either and no it doesnt have the best of graphics, for the era it was designed for probably okay, so it is probably what i meant by limited hardware, just ive run older games with no issues like this before(not on a card like the 6670 or always a dual core)..

i say WAVE EFFECT as i dont actually know what you'd call it, but i get it on xbox games and any other console games(not xbox 1 or ps4 as dont see the point) which makes me still assume hardware limitations.

maybe im just being a bit fussy as its an old game and only one i tried, i need to get steam installed again me thinks and download some more modern indies..

vsync is an option in game menu, but leave it off as it doesnt sound something i need.

i will try this afterburner you mention and i know on xbmc my cpu is high percentage where as my ram is not, but then thats not a game..

joeyjojo · 6 Jul 2015 at 18:02

A recording of this "wave effect" would go a long way to helping diagnose the problem.

First thing I thought of is those tacky interpolating effects new-ish TVs have. Got all that stuff turned off?

spoffle · 6 Jul 2015 at 18:05

Where did you bring the game from?

The issue you're experiencing sounds like screen tearing to me.

FixupSellon · 6 Jul 2015 at 22:54

It's a cheap brand e motion hd ready, was my daughters for ages till I got them a bigger one with dvd and it's been doing fine, haven't seen nor can afford a monitor with hdmi as I don't watch TV so don't need a designed one so a simple hdmi monitor will do. So the TV is at its best for what it can do I suppose.

Anyways I turned on vsync and did seem to clear things up if the odd lag, but then In afterburner I have set(or assuming so as it seems to reset every time I load the program even if I save a profile??) memory clock to max of 1150mhz and turned up core clock to 835mhz and the game runs much smoother with or without vsync also with the other game option of static or static & dynamic, so maybe that's why or maybe the game needed to adjust...

Either way I can enjoy he game better now for what it's worth.