Performance Issues

Hello all. I'm not sure if this is the right section to post this in but I couldn't find one suitable. Basically, I get really low FPS. Feels somewhere between 15-30 most of the time. I had this problem this last time I played it a couple of years ago, still haven't upgraded my pc

Here are my specs:

Windows XP SP3
AMD Sempron 3000+ 1.8GHz
1GB ram
GeForce 7600 GS 256MB

Even on absolute minimum settings I get poor FPS, which is weird because even though my PC is so old I can run newer games better than CoH. I can run LOTRO pretty well on medium settings which is a newer game and the graphics are superior, to me atleast. Yeah I realise my PC sucks, is there anything I can do? I checked the system requirements and I seem to be above those, so what is it? Is it the graphical updates the game has recieved over the years making the requirements far higher and they havne't been updated, or is there some problem somewhere?

Thanks.


*EDIT*

I just checked the updated system requirements for Going Rogue and I seem to match them. So shouldn't I atleast be able to run it decently on low?

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ive found that even with 4gig ddram and such, that the draw distances have a huge impact on the game, I tend to run lowest graphics settings for heavy fights/groups, and better settings for solo stuff.

Dunno if this helps....

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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt

The first thing I'd suggest would be upgrading your RAM, especially if those FPS drops come with sudden frantic disk activity - adding another gig {or even more; RAM is pretty cheap compared to effect it has to computer performance} would solve that, not to mention massively improving load times as well.

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• AMD Sempron 3000+ 1.8GHz

The Sempron 64 3000+ is a budget processor. In terms of gaming performance it was down anywhere from 70%~30% compared to Socket 754 Athlon64 3000+, largely caused by having an L2 cache that was literally only a 4th of the size of the A64 3000.

Next: you can't compare City of Heroes to any other game, at least not right now. City of Heroes leverages the OpenGL API. Lord of the Rings leverages the DirectX API.

I'm going to try to explain why you can "run" newer games at perceivably better quality settings than CoH. The City of Heroes engine, as of the Issue 17 Ultra Mode update, has largely been re-written to make use of OpenGL fallbacks written into the OpenGL 3.x specification for support on OpenGL 2.x and OpenGL 1.x hardware. Many of the proprietary API calls used to maintain performance on Intel Integrated graphics chips and increase performance on Nvidia graphics chips are no longer in the actual engine. They've been taken out in favor of graphics code that adhears to the OpenGL specifications. (no, no developer has actually said this. This is my conclusion based on the behavior of the graphics engine against different graphics drivers and different graphics cards)

This can be a problem when using products whose OpenGL drivers may not be optimized for performance on the specification calls, or the driver just doesn't support ratified specification calls at all... like Intel. It can also be a problem for vendors who are pulling away from OpenGL support... like Nvidia. Many of these "newer" games that you probably cited are using a straight DirectX 9 level renderer on Windows Xp, rather than trying to execute the graphics code natively.

The advantage to using real-time fall-backs in rendering flags is that your actual code-size is kept small, and it's easier for the developers to keep track of how the engine actually performs. The disadvantage is that such an approach leaves you at the mercy of the guys who actually make the graphics driver to begin with.

The advantage to including a separate rendering engine, which is what many DirectX games do, is that you can better optimize for performance based on rendering targets. You only have to worry about what the vendor "supported back then" rather than "what does the driver vendor support now". The disadvantage to this approach is that it can massively increase the file-size of the binary code, and there is more raw code to have to check over and maintain.

I hope this lays down the foundation of why you can't compare City of Heroes to any other game. It does not render, nor process data, like any other commercial game on the market. That being said, it's not the only software application to make use of real-time fallbacks in OpenGL. Unigine can, and does, such real-time fallbacks as well. So, if you are looking for a comparison point, one is available. There's also more OpenGL 3.x / 4.x software coming down the pipelines that can leverage the real-time fallbacks, such as Valve's Source Engine which does this now on Source Engine games running natively on Apple OSX, and ID's Rage Engine which just did this fall-back natively on the Iphone's OpenGL 2.0 ES graphics chip.

Now, getting back to your specific problem, there is one other obvious critical error in your system.

• 1GB Ram

City of Heroes will chew through a fair bit more than 1gb of memory. There's a reason the Recommended Memory amount has been raised to 2gb.

Simply increasing your memory to 2gb alone will likely make CoH run much smoother.

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OK, single core, Athlon 64 core but with only 128K L2 cache, single channel DDR-400 memory.
1GB of RAM
AGP 7600GS, slightly better than a 6600GT, Dx9 hardware (no universal shader cluster).

I would say 15-30fps is very good with that hardware.

/showfps 1 will display the current framerate along the top right side of the screen.
/showfps 0 will turn it off

CoHHelper is a utility that will create a report that can be pasted into a post that includes a list of major hardware, driver info and game settings. No more twenty questions and with knowledge of your game settings, may be able to recommend changes to improve performance. The utility requires Microsoft .Net 2.0 framework to be installed. If you don't already have it, there is a link of the CoHHelper page to download it from Microsoft.

HiJackThis is a utility that will list all software and services running on your computer. Post a copy of it's output as well because with only 1GB of memory, you should halt as much miscellaneous programs as possible so the memory they use can be used by the game.

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Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
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Tempus unum hominem manet

Thanks for the replys everyone, I guess COH is harder to run than I thought. I can't upgrade for a while and I can't run it on very low, so I guess I wont be playing until I can upgrade. Thanks again!

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