X800 Major Framerate Stutter At Certain Areas of Dark Messiah

jgraham2k · 12 Aug 2006 at 13:08

Hi guys,

I was going to post this in the graphics card area but I thought i'd try here first.

Its actually a problem that I had with the scene at the beginning of Oblivion when the assasins attacked the king and his guards. I installed the demo of Dark Messiah and I'm having this issue too.

Basically what happens is that the game (Dark Messiah) runs like a dream when you run down the first corridor until you look into the room on your left with the key. Then the FR drops like crazy and picks up again...running beautifully. FR dropping dosnt even describe it, its like a major stutter in the framerate. Yet if you look away back to the corridor, its back to normal.
When you use the key on the door, the FR problem comes back big time. The sound stutters like mad too. Very strange. My thought is that a graphic effect (possibly light source related) behind the door and at the assassin scene in the start of Oblivion is causing the problem.
The strange thing is that other more detailed and complicated scenes run great.
I updated the ATI drives but not help.

Thanks in advance

Zefan · 12 Aug 2006 at 13:20

Sounds like you aint got enough RAM to me.

How much have you got, 1gb?

jgraham2k · 12 Aug 2006 at 14:08

Nope, not a problem there.... 2Gb. x2 1Gb PC3200 sticks.

Zefan · 12 Aug 2006 at 14:11

Well it sounds like a problem with RAM to me. If you were having 3d card troubles then it should really be constant, not just when things are loading or for a couple of seconds in each enviroment. I'm stumped now.

VeNT · 12 Aug 2006 at 14:14

what about the hard drive?

Zefan · 12 Aug 2006 at 14:16

VeNT said:
what about the hard drive?

I would've thought this wouldn't matter too much seeing as the environments are loaded during loading sequences. I can understand if he only had 1gb ram as it'd be paging to disk.

VeNT · 12 Aug 2006 at 14:17

Zefan said:
I would've thought this wouldn't matter too much seeing as the environments are loaded during loading sequences. I can understand if he only had 1gb ram as it'd be paging to disk.

it will have to accsess the disk no matter how much ram he has.
if his drives in use or just slowed down it will cause this problem.

BrynS · 12 Aug 2006 at 14:22

How much RAM does your graphics card have? I would assume 256MB if it's an X800 GTO/Pro/XT/XTPE, but depending on manufacturer some of the X800 SE/GT/GTO/etc have only 128MB of slower DDR1 which could result in bottlenecks if you have in-game settings, especially textures, dialed up to the highest settings. Also, do you have adaptive AA enabled in the drivers? If so, try setting it to performance or turn it off.

Cheers,

BrynS

jgraham2k · 12 Aug 2006 at 14:49

Yeah its 256Mb on the card.

Ok i set everything to absolute minimum in the demo then slowly built it up.
It turned out changing the texture detail from Medium to High killed it. Turning to certain areas must have displayed complex textures and the card just couldnt cope with it. Strange that the framrate drop isnt constant if it doesnt like the high textures. Everything else is maxed out and there are no framrate problems at all.
P.S

Just turned AA to performance.

Thanks

Jonny

Zefan · 12 Aug 2006 at 14:51

That really does sound like either RAM or HDD as VeNT said. I can't think of a reason why your 3d card would show that sort of lag. Weird :confused:

VeNT · 12 Aug 2006 at 15:19

jgraham2k said:
Yeah its 256Mb on the card.

Ok i set everything to absolute minimum in the demo then slowly built it up.
It turned out changing the texture detail from Medium to High killed it. Turning to certain areas must have displayed complex textures and the card just couldnt cope with it. Strange that the framrate drop isnt constant if it doesnt like the high textures. Everything else is maxed out and there are no framrate problems at all.
P.S

Just turned AA to performance.

Thanks

Jonny

maybe its a bad file?
if one of the files that the textues are stored in are corrupted then it can cause issues

jgraham2k · 12 Aug 2006 at 17:51

VeNT said:
maybe its a bad file?
if one of the files that the textues are stored in are corrupted then it can cause issues

hmm that might be it. I could see through it if the framerate loss was happening in obvious areas but it isnt.

VeNT · 12 Aug 2006 at 17:55

jgraham2k said:
hmm that might be it. I could see through it if the framerate loss was happening in obvious areas but it isnt.

if its missing some tiny texture, somthing silly but used everywhere it could cause it.
only when its visable etc aswell.

or could be the memory on your card?