FryGuy

When I was using the ASUS Aegia PhysX card, I was getting lockups in the game whenever I enabled it. So be aware, it could cause instability in the game.

To the O.P., unfortunately, there's no good answer to your question. I can make my frame rate be anything between 5 and 120 fps based on how I tweak the graphics settings and which zone you are in. There are lots of knobs in "ultra mode" and it's all a matter of how pretty you want to make it look. I actually play at about 20-30fps. It's smooth enough for me and looks sufficiently pretty.

I'm running a GeForce 285 with the latest NVidia drivers and I see the same issue with a second monitor. If I click on the Firefox running on the secondary monitor, then click back to the game, the screen doesn't update until I alt-tab into the game again. The sound comes back when I click on the game, but no video updates until alt-tabbing again. I'm running full-screen. Would prefer not running windowed mode.

I already have "Desktop composition" disabled on CoH. And Aero gets turned off when the game starts, and that hasn't fixed my issue.

I have been having this problem a lot recently. Probably on Virtue since that is where the alt I play the most right now is. It's quite annoying. I had the issue big time on Saturday in the Talos Island WW. Couldn't really do anything useful with the market because anything I dragged on or off the interface wouldn't move.

Did you just upgrade to Snow Leopard patch 10.6.4? I think there's supposed to be some kind of graphics performance problem with the video driver in that release that affects some graphics chipsets. Maybe it's that issue.

Check out these benchmarks of the new Mac Mini on http://www.macworld.com/article/1513...i_mid2010.html

Specifically the benchmarks on the bottom with Call of Duty. The new Mini may be better than I ever imagined for CoH.

Yes, the IOs work the same way with diminishing returns. It doesn't matter how to get to the buff levels where DR kicks in. It will anyway.

If you want more damage, put in 2 level 50 Dmg IOs. Then put in a level 50 Dmg/Rech IO from some set. You get up to the max in damage buff plus recharge faster.

If playing on a laptop, I definitely recommend an external laptop cooler. Heat is always the killer on a laptop and probably was contributing to your crashes.

Given what I'm reading online, it appears the 320M may be a little slower than a PCI-e 130GT. But they are in the same neighborhood.

In pure clock speed, the Mac Mini CPU is at least 20% slower than the iMac. But even worse, the Mac Mini is clearly using laptop-based components where the iMac is probably using desktop-class components. Desktop class stuff uses more power and generally has more performance.

So, compared to the iMac, I'd expect the new Mac Mini to be a little slower playing at the same resolution. But it's going to be in the same ballpark, maybe 15%-20% less FPS.

However, the clunker PC is what... 5 or 6 generations back? If not more. And the GeForce 6200 wasn't even a gaming-class GPU when it was out. So compared to the PC, it's not even close. The Mac Mini will run rings around it and then some.

At least with the Mac Mini you might be able to start to touch the Ultra-mode settings. You won't get everything, but you might get the prettier water effects at least. The old PC has no hope. It doesn't even have the hardware that can do UM.

If you order the Mac Mini online for direct shipping, you can upgrade to a 2.66MHz C2D processor. If you want to eek out as much performance as possible, it's an option. On the other hand, it costs an extra $150, so it probably isn't worth it.

You can also order with extra RAM and a bigger hard drive direct. That might make more sense. The RAM is easy to upgrade later (for a cost), but the hard drive probably won't be easy to upgrade.

The new Mac Mini looks pretty sweet, but it isn't going to be a super-monster powerhouse. And I don't think it will be faster than your iMac. Close, but not quite as fast.

My short opinion: Don't mess with it. It won't make CoH go faster anyway.

Everything we've been told is that CoH processing will effectively utilize no more than 2 cores. That's the way it's been designed. So even though CoH may have 22 threads, I'm betting a lot of them are sitting around waiting for a timer to active or reading from network sockets. You trying to "wake up" idle cores won't make the game you experience go faster.

Multiple cores aren't magic. Hardware vendors are doing it because it's the easiest way to add computing capacity. But it only works if programs are designed to take advantage of them. And parallel programming is usually very difficult. Put it this way: when CoH was designed, there weren't any multi-core CPUs on the market. And it's not functionality you can "just add" to software very easily.

What is the keyboard plugged into? Make sure to plug it directly into one of the ports on the machine itself. Don't plug it into a hub. See if that make it work better. The BIOS may not be able to see the keyboard if it isn't directly attached to the computer.

The best way to deal with this issue is to go into the NVidia 3D control panel and adjust the game setting for CityOfHeroes.exe. Make a game setting that changes the Multi-Display mode to "Single Display performance" or something like that. I don't remember the exact wording. Once you do that, the secondary monitor will update slower, but that's OK. You want the game to update quickly.

Best power: Build Up

From what I'm reading online, that chip is a newer version of the one in my Mac Book Pro. So I'm guessing it should run relatively well. But you'll probably want to turn down the settings a little. Maybe reduce the 3-D scaling a bit to get the frame rate up. But it shouldn't be too bad. Luckily, you should have plenty of CPU power.

Most of the memory is in the "inactive" state which means it can be re-used for something else on demand. "Inactive" is essentially free memory as well.

When using a headset with Teamspeak, I leave the game the use the default built-in sound with external speakers. Then use the headset only for Teamspeak. I currently have a Logitech Clearchat USB Wireless headset plugged into my iMac. Works great in that configuration.

The chat client should let you configure which sound device to use. Let the game use the built-in sound as default.

The upgrade process of Vista Ultimate 64-bit to Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit was pretty seamless for me. No real issues. I was disappointed by the number of reboots and time required. Something like 4-5 reboot during the whole process. Means you kinda have to babysit it. I had to reboot an extra time to take the Windows 7 DVD out of the drive because the process didn't give you a chance to take it out. And when the machine rebooted, it booted off the DVD which is not what was supposed to happen. Lame.

Compare that to Mac Leopard to Snow Leopard. Put in disk, it copies stuff a while, reboot, does some more stuff. Done. No goofy stuff like rebooting just to get the DVD out of the drive.

There's nothing wrong. When you leave the game (to check the task manager, for example), the priority is automatically lowered. When the game gets focus, it will automatically raise in priority. Unless you have 2 monitors with task manager running on the second monitor, you won't be able to see this effect.

I agree, I have noticed this behavior ever since the mission difficulty system has been implemented. Long before Update 16. The mission holder must be in the zone when someone enters the mission, or the mission will spawn at the default difficulty.

I had two cases over Double XP weekend where my character would get enough XP to get to the next level. But at that transition there would be no level-up animation, and I would not get the large set of inspirations cast on my character. I would get the green level-up arrow in the round XP meter, and my level XP bar would return to zero like it should. And if I went to a trainer, I could train to the next level. I didn't lose any XP. Just no animation and no inspirations.

Unfortunately, one of those times was on a Brute that hit level 50. I was disappointed to not get the "special" level 50 animation.

Both times, I noticed I was playing a mission that was lower level than myself, so I was auto-exemplared down a couple levels. Not sure if that was the cause of this problem or not.

Anyone else experience this?

Location: San Diego, CA
Server: Infinity
ISP: Time-Warner Cable

Update: Much better for me tonight. The netgraph shows it's still not perfect. A couple red lines, but it's much more playable. Thank goodness.

Lag is awful for me on Infinity today. Constant red spikes in the netgraph. Almost unplayable.

Location: San Diego, CA
ISP: Time-Warner cable
Problems: animations missing, powers not firing, rubberbanding for both me and the bad guys.

The count of "Lost" packets on one mission was well over 700 according to the netgraph.

Did you crank up your resolution when you changed video cards? The bottleneck might have moved to your CPU once you upgraded the video card.

Also, have you installed the newest NVidia drivers? If you were using old drivers on the previous card, maybe those older drivers don't support the new card.