Why is C&C Generals so SLOW?

5tephen

5tephen

5tephen

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I have played C&C Generals Zero Hour on 2 different PC's now and once a skirmish game runs for 5 minutes (at most) with 6 to 8 players (1 person, rest are CPU) the game slows to unplayable levels and I end up just quitting.
It seems to be a well discussed problem everywhere but no definite resolution. My PC spec is in my sig, obviously more than capable of running generals at full gfx settings.
I heard that it doesn't like anti-aliasing, tried turning that off (in-game and ATi CCC) - no different. What else can I try?
 
Its badly programmed. The AI code (imo relating to unit path finding specifically though some dispute this) is terribly inefficient. I dont know of any way to get a decent experiance with that many AI players.
 
I've found it runs fine but when those patriot missiles fire and all the green lines get drawn over the screen it just slows down to like 10fps, other than that though I've found it to play fine.
 
PlatinumFX said:
Its badly programmed. The AI code (imo relating to unit path finding specifically though some dispute this) is terribly inefficient. I dont know of any way to get a decent experiance with that many AI players.
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The thing is, I recall approx. 2 years ago when I got pretty good performance with 6 - 7 AI players and on a machine of a lot lower spec than what I have now. I have been reading (again!) and others say it doesn't like overclocked machines, but what the france would that have to do with it if my machine is 100% stable at its overclocked speed?
Regarding programming - that is indeed true to a great extent, and even worse for some of the downloadable maps. There are some excellent ones out there available for download, but are much, much, much slower than the default maps once the AI gets busy, from my experience anyway.
 
My guess is your CPU is too weak. When running with that many AI players it probably (rightly or wrongly) gets quite demanding once a lot of units have been builts. Yes, I know that in theory an A64 at 2.4ghz should be able to handle games from a couple of years ago, but it may not be that way. Might be worth clocking your cpu speed right down and see if that makes things even worse? If so you've found the problem :)

That said I wonder what you class as "full gfx settings"? As you only have an X850XT, playing at very high resolution (say above 1600x1200) with AF enabled could potentially cause a little slowdown.
 
PlatinumFX said:
Its badly programmed.
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Nuff said tbh. One of the worst coded games I've ever come across, since SiN. C&C Generals was so unstable on my main rig that I never even got past the single player campaign until I installed Zero Hour which iirc updated generals itself.
 
Firstly, I can only agree with everyone saying about how badly programmed it is. Also, it is the biggest bugger of a game to set up on a LAN, even if it's just 1 on 1; doesn't matter if both players have the same version and no mods installed - nope, still won't work.

HangTime said:
My guess is your CPU is too weak. When running with that many AI players it probably (rightly or wrongly) gets quite demanding once a lot of units have been builts. Yes, I know that in theory an A64 at 2.4ghz should be able to handle games from a couple of years ago, but it may not be that way. Might be worth clocking your cpu speed right down and see if that makes things even worse? If so you've found the problem :)

That said I wonder what you class as "full gfx settings"? As you only have an X850XT, playing at very high resolution (say above 1600x1200) with AF enabled could potentially cause a little slowdown.
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I haven't updated my sig in a while :o The AMD64 3200+ is gone. I actually now have an Athlon X2 3800+ running a shade under 2.4GHz. I'm thinking that might be even worse for Generals because I can't imagine it being programmed to use both cores :rolleyes:
You may be right about the X850XT, although I owned a 9800pro for a good 12-18 months which is what Generals was mostly played on. Had it at 1280x1024 with 2x AA. The X850XT should be capable of running 1600x1200 at 2xAA, 2xAF, but I will try lowering the settings anyhow :) (I play BF2 at 1600x1200, 2xAA, 2xAF, never once had a stutter).
 
yeah i get loads of slowdown on an X2 3800 aswell with 5+cpu players

i've tried setting the program affinity to one core but it just runs even worse, but i've got nothing to do so i'll test it again

[edit] weee, just finished testing see below for results
 
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Well...

Generals and Zero Hour work perfetly for me with everything on high and at max resolution..... and I have a 64mb GPU, 1.6Ghz Centrino laptop and 512mb ram.....

Odd.
 
jdickerson said:
Well...

Generals and Zero Hour work perfetly for me with everything on high and at max resolution..... and I have a 64mb GPU, 1.6Ghz Centrino laptop and 512mb ram.....

Odd.
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I knew somebody would show up :) It worked for me before on a lower-spec system so there has to be some setting somewhere.
Do you have anti-aliasing set in Generals or in Windows, or anisotropic filtering? And do you mean that you have every checkbox ticked in the options, e.g. water, 2d + 3d shadows etc?
 
okay just played an 8player skirmish and it ran much better if the affinity is set to one core, make sure you do this before the skirmish game has started though

otherwise the only slowdown i experianced was probably because of my x800pro, there was a lot of stuff in that game, so i didn't really mind :)
 
when me and my bro play this i have to make sure i'm the server...

my xp3200 runs it perfectly... his x2 3800 even on one processor affinity, makes the game jump every few seconds. weird that one...
 
it used to run fine on my old dell, 2.6ghz 478 p4, 512mb ram, mx400. then zero hour came along and some of the new maps released in a patch would just slow after 10 mins for no reason. then one day i overclocked it by a few mhz (gcard) and i could run 1 of these always slow maps, 8 player perfectly fine.

then i tried playing it a while ago on my 2.6ghz amd 64, 6800gt at 450 / 1200 nope still being crap.

tried it the other day, both zero hour and generals on my now 2.5ghz amd 64, 2gb ram and x1900xtx and it still goes slow sometimes on 8 players. its performance is so crap and random.
 
i blame the ai players... are you playing on hard ? as i find they spam so many useless units its bound to slow down the pc ... on normal i never have this issue
 
lol you get slowdown,....im maxed out and can run all players and never ever get slow down im on a fx5900 1 gig ram and 3.06 the first pentium 4 chip with ht
 
I think its Zero Hour that is the problem, i had Generals and it worked fine, installed Zero Hour and now its crap.
 
I had *** same problem recently..

On my old 1800+ AMD it used to work fine 2 human vs 6 pc ...

Now on new systems, new vgas, at least double the RAM we used to have its running slow 2 human vs 6 pc... I used to play on patch 1.02 and now on 1.04 maybe thats the reason hmm...
 
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