Normal FPS when I initial enter the game.....BUT then .....

When I enter the game I initially have normal Frames Per Second

But, when I try to edit a mission in AE or if I exit to desktop and then relaunch and enter the game my Frames Per Second drop to 2 or 3 FPS.

I have to reboot my PC just to get to playing normally again.

I have the latestest drivers as well as all windows updates

Here are my PC Details

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 [Display adapter]
ViewSonic VX2433wm [Monitor] (23.4"vis, s/n R4F100901983, February 2010)

Operating System System Model
Windows 7 Enterprise (x64) (build 7600)
Install Language: English (United States)
System Locale: English (United States) No details available
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
2.40 gigahertz Intel Xeon
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
4096 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Not hyper-threaded Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. P5BV-C/4L Rev 1.xx
Serial Number: 101494190000018
Bus Clock: 266 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 0311 08/27/2008
Drives Memory Modules c,d
1240.23 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
947.23 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

DTSoftBusCd00 [Optical drive]
GPMPWD K9Y3WTA38 SCSI CdRom Device [Optical drive]
GPMPWD K9Y3WTA38 SCSI CdRom Device [Optical drive]
HL-DT-ST BD-RE GGW-H20L ATA Device [Optical drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

Hitachi HDS721616PLA380 ATA Device [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) -- drive 2, s/n PVE901ZHS2HUAZ, SMART Status: Healthy
WDC WD10EADS-00M2B0 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 1, s/n WD-WMAV50227358, rev 01.00A01, SMART Status: Healthy
WDC WD800JD-75MSA3 [Hard drive] (80.00 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD-WMAM9CDD2334, rev 10.01E04, SMART Status: Healthy 2048 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM2' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM3' has 1024 MB
Local Drive Volumes


c: (NTFS on drive 1) 160.47 GB 58.39 GB free
d: (NTFS on drive 0) 79.99 GB 61.56 GB free
e: (NTFS on drive 2) 160.04 GB 159.90 GB free
f: (NTFS on drive 1) 839.73 GB 667.38 GB free

Anyone able to help with this issue?

It appears that *somehow* the CoX process isnt closing properly.

Also, after how long does this crop up? Or can you literally "log in, start editing, log out" inside a minute and reproduce it?

If its the NVsvc that is hogging processor, then it looks like your driver install got screwed somewhere along the line.

Uninstall them, REBOOT.

Let windows do its thing (ie resort to using generic drivers)

Install new drivers.

Reboot

Profit (hopefully).

Apart from that, I am actually at bit of a loss as to what it could be, then again i dont do mission editing (looked at it, but that is it)... and even with the same card as you on my backup machine, i cannot see what would be causing the problem.

Although my PC's symptoms were different to Fellivaril's, I have an FPS issue after a Windows re-install which was caused by my antivirus software. Adding my games folder to its exclusions resolved matters for me. It may be worth a try if installing new drivers doesn't work

None of these steps resolved my issue

This happens to me from time to time as well when editing/creating AE missions. AE causes a severe memory leak in CoH. If you pay attention to the cityofheroes.exe process while playing with AE stuff, you'll notice it shoots up well above 1.6 and even 1.7gigs of memory being used. After which my FPS drops to next to nothing.

That is where the issue lies. At least for me it did. I haven't found a way around it. Sometimes it doesn't happen so I suspect there is either a map, texture or something within the AE creation system that causes the memory usage to spike, and stay there.

We'll see....

does /unloadgfx do nothing?

turning down settings change anything?

/unloadgfx does lower the memory usage, but by a stupidly small amount. The FPS stays the same at next to nothing as well. Within seconds the memory creeps back up again.

There are times when I've been in the AE creator for a long time and nothing has happened. That's why I think it's someone specific in there that's causing it. Especially if I go sifting through the maps, it's only a matter of time before the memory is eaten.

We'll see....

If you lower your graphics settings and the problem still occurs, then the problem may not be related to the game.

If you lower your graphics settings and the problem goes away, then the problem is probably something in the game.

Reading though your details again I am seeing 2 gigs of ram? It looks like the dimms are in separate banks too. Putting them in the same bank will give a slight increase to your system speed due to better memory interleaving.

Just to check on a clean slate I unleaded steam, folding at home, everything that might eat ram and started up the game. I played though 1 tip and I am at 3.41 gigs of ram in use, not counting what windows has stuffed in virtual memory. You would gain a lot by adding two gigs of ram or even more would help you quite a bit.

As long as you put the slowest dimm in slot 0 mixing brands/speeds shouldn't be a hassle.

www.pricewatch.com or wherever you like to shop, except maybe Best Buy they have high prices and low service.

As a side note, I have 4gigs of RAM and still experience this from time to time. This FPS hit only happens when I'm working in the AE mission creation part of the system. This is not a computer issue, there is a leak in the game. Each time it's happened, the game has gone from 1.3-1.4GB ram usage to 1.7 or more. It spans across 2 different video cards, and it also happened after I freshly installed Windows recently.

We'll see....

Sounds like a memory leak to me.

Best thing to do now is to start pruning things out of your AE mission to find out where the problem element or interaction is.

It could be a damaged save file or preference causing the leak, or if it isn't, seeing if other people here can replicate it will be a big help in letting a red name know so it can be fixed.

Thanks for all the info I am running COH on a clean Window 7 install.

Literally nothing installed nothing in the background, MSCONFIG nothing on startup.

All unnessary services are stopped.

Yet the issue still happens everytime I exit the game, to desktop, and then try to play again.

Only way to fix it is with a reboot.

Lowering graphics does not help at all and this issue is ot present in any of my other games.