Whats Holding me back ?

Amps

Amps

Amps

Soldato
Joined
23 Mar 2003
Posts
2,651
Location
Scotland
Current system specs below

Opteron 2.8Ghz (can do 2.9 but throttling back to put that out the equation)
Geforce 7800Gt (stock)
2X 512mb of Ram diffrence brands running at 217mhz
Dfi Ultra D mobo
Hiper 580W Type R


The problem i am having is in games like need for speed most wanted the frame rate is fine say 50fps and then it will pause for a 1/4 of a second and then play and then pause it does this every 40 seconds or so which i think could be due to it having to draw new textures.

This also happens in quake 4.. games runs fine when threes lots of action but at some strange points it will do a similar pausing.


Do you think the low memory bandwidth could be the problem or possibly a psu issue?

It really is starting to bug me as for the game need for speed most wanted it doesn’t matter what i do it still does the jumping every 1/4 second. Even after lowing the graphics settings considerable .
 
You need 2 gig of ram its sounds to me its paging to disk.
Move your page file to a seperate disk if you have more than one hard drive installed.
 
Paging file is virtual memory, using a seperate disc means when accessing paging file and drive the game is installed on there is less hard disc activity on a single drive (accessing both at the same time slows it down)

I think the slow down is a mouse problem. He should buy a faster mouse :-)
 
in laymen's terms ( I wouldnt know how to describe it otherwise) windows needs to address two different parts of the hdd - one part holds the nfs:mw program and the other the paging file ( incase you dont know the paging file itself is a storage on the hdd that windows determins it will need at some time in the future - of that windows session- to be used after cpu cache and RAM) there fore if you have two hdd one with windows os and game adn second one for data and paging file both of these can be addressed at the same time therefore causing less stuttering

The other possibility is to increase your ram ( and preferably get matching 2gb set) which will allow winodws to use paging file even less frequently.

If you already have 2nd hdd, I would certainly do this first as its a no cost option, however you mayfind there is still slight stuttering due to relatively low amount of RAM
and unmatched timings
 
Boost performance by moving your pagefile to a separate volume.

A significant performance gain can usually be achieved on Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 by moving the pagefile to a different partition or volume. By default, Windows creates a pagefile of size 1.5 x RAM and locates it on the root of the boot partition (usually C: drive). Unfortunately, this means the I/O subsystem must contend for access to operating system files (%systemroot% and %systemroot%\system32) and the pagefile (%systemdrive%\pagefile.sys), which increases disk activity and slows performance. By moving pagefile.sys to a different volume, this contention is reduced--especially if the pagefile volume is on a different hard drive with its own controller.

To move the pagefile, open the System utility in Control Panel and select the Advanced tab, click Settings under Performance, then select Advanced and click Change to display the Virtual Memory properties sheet. Moving the pagefile is a two-step process. First, create a new pagefile on the target drive by selecting the drive and specifying its pagefile settings. Then select C: and remove the pagefile there by selecting No Paging File (Windows Server 2003) or specifying initial and maximum pagefile sizes of zero (Windows 2000). You'll be warned that having no pagefile (or a pagefile smaller than RAM) on your boot partition means that Windows won't be able to save a crashdump file should a STOP error occur. If you're concerned about that (no crashdump could make it harder to troubleshoot system failures) then go ahead and leave a pagefile of size RAM + 1MB on C: drive as you'll still experience the performance gains desired. The reason is that when you have a pagefile split across several volumes, the VMM chooses the least busy drive for writing pages to disk, which in our example would mean the pagefile on E: would almost always be used since C: has a lot of system activity. And, by the way, always restart the computer after moving or reconfiguring the paging file, even if Windows doesn't prompt you to do so. Otherwise some Windows utilities may display an incorrect value for total pagefile size. :)
 
I would agree with the ram statement until i used the program mem watcher it shows that my memory usage when playing nsmw is not going over 800Mb.

I will try moving the page file as i have a faster hd on this machine that doesnt contain the os.
 
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Very similar setup to mine which runs nfs almost perfectly... i usually get a freeze of around 5-10 seconds once every game but that goes away if i put the gfx back to stock :confused:

Sounds like he's probly got a ram problem tho like they say, being different brands could have something to do with it.

Are you using the latest drivers??

in addition i also get a slight stutter every second or so but only in the quake 4 demo... I have my pagefile on 2 seperate hd's and my windows/games on the main hd so it cant be the pagefile, any other ideas?
 
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I was uisng the latest drivers just changed to some beta ones 83.40 to try and rule out the drivers as an issue.

My inital thoughts where it was either something to do witht he graphics card possibly psu related or a memory problem.

What settings are you running n3x in nsfmw?

from a memory point of view i am running relativly decent timeings.

2.5 3 3 9 15

These timeings are memtest solid for over 24+ hours.
3d mark 05 gives me a score of about 8100
3d mark 03 17500~
3d mark 01 30500

Rincewind said:
ram out of sync with something. and what harddrive? that's my main problem at the mo....
Click to expand...


i didnt think this was possible on an A64 system i was also under the impression that not being 1:1 on a 939 system makes no diffrence to performance , though i maybe wrong.
 
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2xAA @ 1280x1024 with everything else at max i think!

Thats a pretty decent 3dmark05 score, i can only manage around 8000 :(
 
i am running

2XAA @ 1280X1024 with a lot of options turned of. And i have nvidia control panel set to quality.

Theres something not right here.
 
So what would anyone recomend trying.. i have tried running a single stick of ram with the same thing happening so i think its either the psu or the graphics card..
 
Could be vsync. Try disabling that as it is know to cause issues by dropping the FPS from 30 down to the next level when it cannot keep up with complex scenes so that 30 becomes 15 in places especially with AA enabled. Another thing to try is lose the AA but keep the vsync on. NFSMW even on my 7800GTX512 struggles in places with AA + Vsync but just vsync @ 1920x1200 is a contant 30FPS all the time and very smooth indeed ;)
 
Amps said:
Current system specs below

Opteron 2.8Ghz (can do 2.9 but throttling back to put that out the equation)
Geforce 7800Gt (stock)
2X 512mb of Ram diffrence brands running at 217mhz
Dfi Ultra D mobo
Hiper 580W Type R


The problem i am having is in games like need for speed most wanted the frame rate is fine say 50fps and then it will pause for a 1/4 of a second and then play and then pause it does this every 40 seconds or so which i think could be due to it having to draw new textures.

This also happens in quake 4.. games runs fine when threes lots of action but at some strange points it will do a similar pausing......
.
Click to expand...
HDD or PSU imo, most likely HDD.
Im not hugely familiar with either game you mention but similar things happen to other games where, especially at decent IQ levels, things need to be loaded from HDD during play.
 
It's your ram, as mentioned before. NFSMW needs more than what you have to run perfectly smoothly - Therefore windows is using the page file and you get slowdowns/freeze.
 
Just about to order 2Gb of ram.. but still the one thing thats stopping me doing it is that the memory usage acording to a couple of apps doesnt exceed 800Mb when playing NFSMW.

could it be that its leaving 200mb in reserve or windows that isnt letting it use all the ram.

I know i have non of these issues in games like Call of duty 2.
 
BruceLee said:
I had a problem similar to this with IL2, some system process kept using cpu time every 10 seconds. I reinstalled XP, did the trick.
Click to expand...

I was wondering if it might be a problem with the install. If the memory doesnt work ill try a reinstall on a diffrent harddrive.

Games like Call of duty 2 dont have the problem they run perfectly but other games somtimes older games really stuter every 10 seconds or so. Need for speed Underground 2 , medal of honour (but not all the time just sometimes) for example.

The Extra bandwidth should help performance and i suppose 2gb will be used eventualy on this motherboard.

Ill report back with my findings when i get the memory.
 
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