Massive FPS drop when fighting inside cities/fortresses

[Carl]

I'm pretty sure graphics has NOTHING to do with these slowdowns, even with a Radeon 9800Pro (real old these days), i find my PC's proccessor is chugging along WELL before my graphics card is straining. In fact if the game actually just runs really slowly and dosen't jump thenm it is most defintlly proccessor related. i think it's a combination of keeping track of what units are where and what towers they activate, plus the sheer number of missiles fired means that their are a lot of processor intensive calculations going on. Add that to keeping track of all the hitpoints of all the wall sections and towers and gates and it's a nightmare. I suspect the values stored in memory are updated at least a few times a second, along with tower activation status and probably a few other things besides. thats probably a few tens ofMB worth of data every single second before we even think of all the arrow data and everything else. Moving that much data from Ram to processor and back is probably whats causing the slowdown here. Probably some don't suffer from it because they have a really efficent motherboard, or maybe the ones that do suffer hav really inneficent motherboards. But I suspect it's a data flow rate issue and their isn't much you can do about that kind of thing.

[FactionHeir]

Well, how do you explain then that facing away from the settlement decreases that "lag" dramatically? It kind of does sound graphics related.

What is processor related is the number of units alive (and to a small extent dead) on the battlefield. You can face away and not get any performance improvement for example.

[SnowlyWhite]

same prob.; tested with everything at minimal(playin' normally with high details) and still a siege is unplayable(autoresolving every siege battle after the 1st 30 or so turns - basically anything after "minor city" lvl gets autoresolved unless it's "the battle of the campaign"). All this would point out to mem./proc. bottleneck - 1gb here.

However, when you're not facing the city... though aint' much of tactics you can do without actually facing that bloody city, things are more or less ok.

However, a thing that DEFINITELLY makes me think it's a "graphical design problem" is the fact that lag occurs from the DEPLOYMENT phase of the battle. There are no arrows flying, there's nothing but looking at the city and deploying your troops.

[holycow]

I've thought of this as I've experienced the same fps drop when facing city/ and sometimes citadel. Could it be that the buildings are partway destructible and cpu or whatever has to keep a tab or re-checking all those buildings. I've tried turning down details and even at lowest setting, the drag still happens- so from this I'm guessing it's not the vid card. Anyone w/more hardware know how weigh in?

[SnowlyWhite]

again, if it's not a vid card problem, how does it occur also in deployment phase? when there's nothin' to calculate.

[holycow]

re vid card - intuition, and honestly don't really know. When I turned down everything to the lowest setting, it makes zero difference in fps, I'm expecting that w/ lowest setting the units wouldn't all try to re-enact the Matrix - gravity defying casualty

ina campaign map, it doesnt matter #units, vid setting, I have no fps problems - only on seige maps. so why the difference?

[Boyar Karhunkynsi]

My system:

Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz
2gb of RAM memory
Geforce 7800 GS

I get that, sometimes. I think it's just the whole elevation bonuses for archers and stuff. It goes down to about 25-30 sometimes...

Sexy specs, too.

-Max

[AussieGiant]

Hi Forward Observer,

Thanks for the tips, I'll try those today.

I'd certainly like to hear with Sapi can suggest when he reads this.

My machine is brand new and purpose built by professionals for gaming. I did not build my machine myself.

My specs are high enough to pretty much ensure that this must be some kind of application side issue.

I'm up to date on all drivers, Windows XP is tweaked for optimum performance and I have only 5 other games installed on a standard clean build I received only two weeks ago.

FWIW the machine bench marks off the Richter scale. This is a 11 000 3dMark 06 machine.

It post 7030Mb per second on memory bandwidth!!

The Dhrystone and Whetstone processor numbers are sky high.

I can't believe this machine is not configured correctly.

BF 2142 runs in the 90's on FRAPs with everything on. I have even gone into the control panel and overridden everything and it still up there.

Rainbow Six: Las Vegas is also very similar. I'm around 50 fprs with everything forced in the control panel. For MIITW I go back and let the application decide and have to play around like I'm doing now.

I get the impression something is just not right with Dual processors and the latest hardware.

Ironically its interesting to note that Total War and RTS games like company of Hero's are more intensive than FPS right now.

Thanks to everyone for the information.

More advise would be greatly appreciated. I still want to get this game running smoothly!!

Cheers
AG

[sapi]

You put AMD instead of ATI. It really wasn't that funny though.

amd = ati as of late last year

I have the same problem when I play in a massive siege battles;even on low setting with buildings.

My Rig Intel core dual 6600
ATI x1950 PRO 256 mb pci-E
1 GB heat spreader
Mother board Evga
Sony Q17 18x DVD dual

I think the game is not really compatible with Intel core dual processor;thats why its causing lag in battles;or jest the graphics card.

hmm any one know what is causing the problem?

It's not incompatibility with anything - in fact games don't have anything to do with compatibility - but it's a general engine problem

Hi Sapi,

Could you please help me?

You'll know why in a minute.

I've got fraps running so I see the numbers.

I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 running at 3.4 GHz
8800GTX stock
2 Gigs of 800 Hz ram
150 Gig WD Raptor 10 000 rpm 16Mb Cache

I am having problems!!

I'm on a 21inch 1600 x 1200 4:3 screen.

AA:nothing
AF: x 4
Unit detail: Highest
Building Detail: Low
Vegetation: High
Effects: Medium
Grass: High
Textures: High
Shadows: High
Bloom: On
Reflections:On

I just sieged Bruges with 1500 guys against their 2300 and it was under 30 and 20 for most of the battle.

I'm just going nuts here!!

No way you should be lagging - this just emphasises that it's a problem with the game

Nope thats not why. Someone saying theres no difference between the two. *sigh*

They're right. Read the news

i only get lag when the walls get destroyed.

you dont need AA with high res.

and whats the point with Anisotropic Filtering? is there really a diff?

2x aa makes a huge difference, even at high res, although you're right to say, as i did, that over that makes little.

af also makes a big difference - google for some comparison screenshots to see what i mean.

I'll always run af

[sapi]

I'm pretty sure graphics has NOTHING to do with these slowdowns, even with a Radeon 9800Pro (real old these days), i find my PC's proccessor is chugging along WELL before my graphics card is straining. In fact if the game actually just runs really slowly and dosen't jump thenm it is most defintlly proccessor related. i think it's a combination of keeping track of what units are where and what towers they activate, plus the sheer number of missiles fired means that their are a lot of processor intensive calculations going on. Add that to keeping track of all the hitpoints of all the wall sections and towers and gates and it's a nightmare. I suspect the values stored in memory are updated at least a few times a second, along with tower activation status and probably a few other things besides. thats probably a few tens ofMB worth of data every single second before we even think of all the arrow data and everything else. Moving that much data from Ram to processor and back is probably whats causing the slowdown here. Probably some don't suffer from it because they have a really efficent motherboard, or maybe the ones that do suffer hav really inneficent motherboards. But I suspect it's a data flow rate issue and their isn't much you can do about that kind of thing.

I think the issue in TW games is and always will be the processor - try changing from high to highest unit graphics (increases sprite view distance) - there's no noticable change in fps.

change the unit scale and there is

Well, how do you explain then that facing away from the settlement decreases that "lag" dramatically? It kind of does sound graphics related.

What is processor related is the number of units alive (and to a small extent dead) on the battlefield. You can face away and not get any performance improvement for example.

The smoke from the buildings, for example, puts a strain on not just the gfx but the cpu

same prob.; tested with everything at minimal(playin' normally with high details) and still a siege is unplayable(autoresolving every siege battle after the 1st 30 or so turns - basically anything after "minor city" lvl gets autoresolved unless it's "the battle of the campaign"). All this would point out to mem./proc. bottleneck - 1gb here.

However, when you're not facing the city... though aint' much of tactics you can do without actually facing that bloody city, things are more or less ok.

However, a thing that DEFINITELLY makes me think it's a "graphical design problem" is the fact that lag occurs from the DEPLOYMENT phase of the battle. There are no arrows flying, there's nothing but looking at the city and deploying your troops.

Which is why i think the city graphics, and in particular the fireplaces, are the problem

I've thought of this as I've experienced the same fps drop when facing city/ and sometimes citadel. Could it be that the buildings are partway destructible and cpu or whatever has to keep a tab or re-checking all those buildings. I've tried turning down details and even at lowest setting, the drag still happens- so from this I'm guessing it's not the vid card. Anyone w/more hardware know how weigh in?

that could be it too

again, if it's not a vid card problem, how does it occur also in deployment phase? when there's nothin' to calculate.

if there was nothing to calculate, you'd be seeing a black screen (or a bsod )

The game still has to display the city, hence my theories

re vid card - intuition, and honestly don't really know. When I turned down everything to the lowest setting, it makes zero difference in fps, I'm expecting that w/ lowest setting the units wouldn't all try to re-enact the Matrix - gravity defying casualty

ina campaign map, it doesnt matter #units, vid setting, I have no fps problems - only on seige maps. so why the difference?

I'd say you're on to something

I get that, sometimes. I think it's just the whole elevation bonuses for archers and stuff. It goes down to about 25-30 sometimes...

Sexy specs, too.

-Max

specs seem to matter little, that's for sure

Hi Forward Observer,

Thanks for the tips, I'll try those today.

I'd certainly like to hear with Sapi can suggest when he reads this.

My machine is brand new and purpose built by professionals for gaming. I did not build my machine myself.

My specs are high enough to pretty much ensure that this must be some kind of application side issue.

I'm up to date on all drivers, Windows XP is tweaked for optimum performance and I have only 5 other games installed on a standard clean build I received only two weeks ago.

FWIW the machine bench marks off the Richter scale. This is a 11 000 3dMark 06 machine.

It post 7030Mb per second on memory bandwidth!!

The Dhrystone and Whetstone processor numbers are sky high.

I can't believe this machine is not configured correctly.

BF 2142 runs in the 90's on FRAPs with everything on. I have even gone into the control panel and overridden everything and it still up there.

Rainbow Six: Las Vegas is also very similar. I'm around 50 fprs with everything forced in the control panel. For MIITW I go back and let the application decide and have to play around like I'm doing now.

I get the impression something is just not right with Dual processors and the latest hardware.

Ironically its interesting to note that Total War and RTS games like company of Hero's are more intensive than FPS right now.

Thanks to everyone for the information.

More advise would be greatly appreciated. I still want to get this game running smoothly!!

Cheers
AG

Personally, i'm inclined to agree with you that it's an issue with the game engine regarding cities.

There have been a lot of interesting theories, and we just have to hope that CA are either reading this or already know the cause of this, because I think we've established that specs don't matter in the slightest with this problem.

I don't really believe it's to do with the type of hardware though; as other games run fine with the core 2 duos and the like...

[SnowlyWhite]

c'mon, they definitelly know... on the other hand, it's the type of bug that is awfully hard to fix:p

[sapi]

exactly

[TevashSzat]

Lol this thread has turned into post your hardware specs and lagging troubles

[sapi]

That is true, and is to be discouraged

[AussieGiant]

Hi Sapi,

Thanks for the feedback.


It is reassuring to come on the boards and see other people having the same issues.

At least I can just try my best rather than wondering if I have really screwed something up on my machine.

There are so many things to take into account you really need to be some what of a professional now days.

Cheers
AG

[Carl]

First, regarding the deployment phase, it probably comes from updating all the HP of buildings and it's probably running through a lot of calculations regarding arrows. In addittion, when you are looking at the walls the processor has to do a lot of work figuring out where everything should sit reletive to the way your looking at it, and then feed that data to the graphics card. Each wall/tower segmant probably needs at least 9 chunks of data assosiating with it. That 36 bytes of data, theirs over 500 buildings in the biggest citedals. and thats without including data relating to what visual effect the damage should have, some of that, (for the puroposes of smoke and the like), has to go through the CPU too. Also a lot of instructions relating to what to send to the craphics card do too. I think thats the problem, it can handle the visual data, OR the postional and damage and arrow data, but not both sets a once.

IMHO, considering people with all kinds of processors and memeory are sufffering issues. It isn't a processor issue or a memory storage area issue IMHO.

It's GOT to be down to the FBS, (or the AMD equivelent, i forget the name), being unable to handle the amount of data having to pass to and from the processor. It's probably down to motherboard chipsets. The best can hack it and the rest can't.


Also, bit off topic i know.

But intresting to hear about the AMD/ATI joining up. Although if you ask me i'm shocked the USA competition laws would allow it, and it's going to be hell for PC buyers. It's a given now that both Nividia and Intel will stop making AMD chipsets/buying ATI internal graphics chi[psets as soon as they possibly can within contract limitations. Add to that that Nividia is (or was last time i looked), the only company producing top of the range high performance AMD chipsets and that intel are probably going to tweak their chipsets to nerf ATI performance and buff Nividia performance and it's going to push people who buy intel to get a Nividia card and those who go AMD to get an ATI card.

Not to mention that AMD+ATI is going to lack as good a motherboard as the Intel+Nividia combo, or that AMD used to be cheaper than Intel for a given performance level, (thats probably going to change now).

It bothers me doubly because I allways loved my Nividia+AMD combination, whiklst i do use an ATI ATM, my old Nividia was much better drivers wise and less buggy. Not to mention other things i prefer about nividia cards.

Now i've got that off my chest. Good day.

[Omisan]

Lol this thread has turned into post your hardware specs and lagging troubles

..and after reading about all the fps issues that other people have, I realise that my fps drop problem that sometimes happen inside cities and fortresses isn't too bad.

[sapi]

@Carl - off topic, but the amd/ati merge will be great for the market - the GPGPU project might become a reality :o

[-Amon-]

Uhh,I have

pentium 930 D

1 gb ram

ati x1900gt bla bla...


And i have no problem with full detail,in battles,in sieges etc..


Are you sure that installed last drivers in your system?

[sapi]

Out of interst, what resolution are you running that on?

[crpcarrot]

i got

Intel C2D 6400
1 gig ram
8800gts

i have not yet experienced a lag in or out of seiges. yet to have experienced the "ladder bug" as someone called it.

graphics setting are not maxed out but set pretty high.

has anyone tried playing with shadows and refelections.

more building would mean more shadows maybe thats the problem

[sapi]

might be that, too

It's hard to say what the cause is; but it definitely shouldn't be happening

[dismal]

I keep waiting for someone to point out that "FPS drops in sieges are historically accurate".

[Whacker]

I keep waiting for someone to point out that "FPS drops in sieges are historically accurate".

Why state the obvious? For example in the famous First Arab Siege of Constantinople in 674 the Arab general Muawiyah I suffered several severe setbacks when his video card overheated and caused a major FPS drop. The drop caused his control interface to slow to a crawl, and his troops were promptly wtfbbqpwnt by the cities wall defenses. He was last seen/heard shouting "u sux n00b!!11oneone" at Constantine IV who famously responded with "pwnt lol".

Please get your historical facts right folks when posting.

[Goofball]

Why state the obvious? For example in the famous First Arab Siege of Constantinople in 674 the Arab general Muawiyah I suffered several severe setbacks when his video card overheated and caused a major FPS drop. The drop caused his control interface to slow to a crawl, and his troops were promptly wtfbbqpwnt by the cities wall defenses. He was last seen/heard shouting "u sux n00b!!11oneone" at Constantine IV who famously responded with "pwnt lol".

Please get your historical facts right folks when posting.

Siggied.

[AussieGiant]

LMAO @ Whacker!!

[holycow]

I keep waiting for someone to point out that "FPS drops in sieges are historically accurate".

but it is historically accurate, or have you learned nothing from hollywood. when you get hit and are about to die, the whole world goes into sloooooooooooow motion and sounds are muffled and all you hear is Ruuuunn Forresssst Ruuuuuunnnn!

[Omisan]

Seems like setting shadow to medium solved the problem for me. I get smooth fps in big sieges now. Everything else is still high +AA, AF, bloom and reflections.

[sapi]

There probably is some more constructive posts that may come out of this thread, but if it keeps being spammed up like this it won't be open to get them

Something like dismal/whacker's comments is fine; but remember, we're not here to discuss instances of video card overheating in history ;)

[FactionHeir]

Considering I have everything on lowest with shadows off, I still get the major siege lags.