City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Intense lag on Win7 64-bit

Arcanaville

By Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2012-01-25 10:07 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vishalicious View Post
o, its probably my machine, since his didn't exhibit any of the problems that mine has, over the same connection. We tested separately, and together. At no time did he lag. I lagged with each test.
Well, any New information is good new in its own way. :-/

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vishalicious View Post
Hi JR,

I haven't defragged, but I'll do that right now (as I'm about to run off, shower and get ready to go to work). This build is relatively new (I reinstalled Windows on Wednesday, last week) so I don't think its overly cluttered yet. I just moved files over from my old HD on Monday, and recently ran Windows Update, so I'll see if it helps.
One thing to note with defrag, if you haven't done it in a while and it gets Bad enough, then it can cause all sorts of hell. I would see what percentage of fragmentation you have and if it's over 5-10% you may wanna do what I call a 'deep' defrag. Disable the swap & hibernation files, go into safe mode, shut down everything non-essential, defrag, reactivate your swap/hiber files. If this doesn't fix it, then your registry's probably fragged itself and that tends to be more problematic as registry cleaners have a bad habit of making things Worse. Worst case, backup your files and do a clean reinstall of the laptop(?).

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingAries View Post
Disable the swap & hibernation files, go into safe mode, shut down everything non-essential, defrag, reactivate your swap/hiber files.
Won't work. Even if you tell it to turn everything off and agree to the screen, you'll find that Windows 7 STILL maintains a paging file (if your defragger gives you a graphical representation, it'll show up as unmovable sectors).

Quote:
If this doesn't fix it, then your registry's probably fragged itself and that tends to be more problematic as registry cleaners have a bad habit of making things Worse. Worst case, backup your files and do a clean reinstall of the laptop(?).
Thing is, this IS a clean install.


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Posted

Actually, somewhere on the MSFT site there is a support page that has links to two files. One to disable the hiber and one to enable the hiber. Otherwise you have to go into the settings pretty deep.

It just came to mind that this info is rather useless if one uses an SSD drive though.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingAries View Post
Actually, somewhere on the MSFT site there is a support page that has links to two files. One to disable the hiber and one to enable the hiber. Otherwise you have to go into the settings pretty deep.

It just came to mind that this info is rather useless if one uses an SSD drive though.
Yep.

The best you can do on an SSD is a freespace consolidation.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
Yep.

The best you can do on an SSD is a freespace consolidation.
Yes but why bother?

What you see in a defrag map isn't reality when it comes to an SSD. Sectors are remapped as files are marked deleted as a means to equalize the number of write and erase cycles across flash memory. Some SSD controllers do data compression to use fewer flash memory sectors yet report the uncompressed number of sectors to the file system, again to conserve write/erase cycles. Then you have varying allocation strategies that can later help with garbage collection, etc. The long and the short of it is what the file system thinks files are arranged on the SSD isn't.

And the whole point about defragging a conventional hard drive is to reduce the number of head seeks which significantly impact read speeds. In an SSD, seek times are 1000 times faster (it's just the controller overhead instead of a mechanical movement of the read/write head).

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Father Xmas View Post
Yes but why bother?
Well:
  1. Re-imaging to another drive or image or
  2. An older drive that doesn't support TRIM or
  3. A drive set that doesn't support TRIM in RAID

Quote:
And the whole point about defragging a conventional hard drive is to reduce the number of head seeks which significantly impact read speeds. In an SSD, seek times are 1000 times faster (it's just the controller overhead instead of a mechanical movement of the read/write head).
Agreed. Defrag strategies on SSDs are only for very specific corner cases. None of which have much to do with real performance gains.

I only mention it because I'm "retentive" and wax didactic at the drop of a hat.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
I only mention it because I'm "retentive" and wax didactic at the drop of a hat.
And quite enjoys keeping people in line technologically speaking.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingAries View Post
And quite enjoys keeping people in line technologically speaking.
DAMN STRAIGHT!

Hehehehe. =)


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Posted

I just shot off a support e-mail to AMD customer care. If it actually went through. The stupid page timed out.

Asking for information on obtaining older mobility driversets.


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Posted

Lots of good stuff in this thread...

Just wanted to toss out the idea of downloading something like HW Monitor to monitor your CPU/GPU temps (as well as NB/SB/etc). I wonder if you're having some sort of thermal throttling. I would monitor my clock speeds on those in CPU-Z/GPU-Z just for redundancy since it's already on a fresh install.

On the SSD topic - I always turn off page file (with sufficient RAM), hibernate and sys restore to save 12-15GB of HD space on a Win7 64 install.

Edit: You are using the latest and greatest drivers for all of your components, right? Not the stuff on that motherboard CD from way back when the rig was first built...

 

Posted

So I ran your specs through one of my black boxes and found a couple of sources you need to fix.

For optimized performance (PC not game)
* Patch all Registry Files
* Hardwire, or upgrade Wireless Card to best on Market (Best Router will help also)
* Put in Windows CD and recover
* Ditch computer altogether, or gut it and start from scratch building your own super computer.

For optimized performance (game wise)
* Best Video Card on Market
* Best Motherboard on Market
* Best Monitor on Market

And build from there, hopefully your box can handle it.

Can't get the best of at least those three? Or a little less quality wise but still high ranged? Then don't play COH at the highest settings, hun. Least until you strike it rich with the lottery, get a job in a high-tech lab and sneak out their equipment, or manage to convince your Government that playing COH is crucial in completing your thesis that will be presented to the Global Science Community and without their funding for a Bill Gates special - there is no way world peace can be achieved.

Good luck.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lulipop View Post
So I ran your specs through one of my black boxes and found a couple of sources you need to fix.

For optimized performance (PC not game)
* Patch all Registry Files
* Hardwire, or upgrade Wireless Card to best on Market (Best Router will help also)
* Put in Windows CD and recover
* Ditch computer altogether, or gut it and start from scratch building your own super computer.

For optimized performance (game wise)
* Best Video Card on Market
* Best Motherboard on Market
* Best Monitor on Market

And build from there, hopefully your box can handle it.

Can't get the best of at least those three? Or a little less quality wise but still high ranged? Then don't play COH at the highest settings, hun. Least until you strike it rich with the lottery, get a job in a high-tech lab and sneak out their equipment, or manage to convince your Government that playing COH is crucial in completing your thesis that will be presented to the Global Science Community and without their funding for a Bill Gates special - there is no way world peace can be achieved.

Good luck.
O.o to about 85% of that.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lulipop View Post
So I ran your specs through one of my black boxes and found a couple of sources you need to fix.

For optimized performance (PC not game)
* Patch all Registry Files
* Hardwire, or upgrade Wireless Card to best on Market (Best Router will help also)
* Put in Windows CD and recover
* Ditch computer altogether, or gut it and start from scratch building your own super computer.

For optimized performance (game wise)
* Best Video Card on Market
* Best Motherboard on Market
* Best Monitor on Market

And build from there, hopefully your box can handle it.

Can't get the best of at least those three? Or a little less quality wise but still high ranged? Then don't play COH at the highest settings, hun. Least until you strike it rich with the lottery, get a job in a high-tech lab and sneak out their equipment, or manage to convince your Government that playing COH is crucial in completing your thesis that will be presented to the Global Science Community and without their funding for a Bill Gates special - there is no way world peace can be achieved.

Good luck.
That's a bit overkill, even for City of Heroes. My system was a pretty powerful system when I bought it a while ago, but an I7-860 and 5850 are pretty average today, and it plays CoH at the highest settings fine.

Above a certain critical threshold of CPU and video performance, the single thing I've found that impairs CoH performance in general is lack of RAM. CoH sucks up a lot of RAM, and its difficult to get consistently good performance on a system that isn't either 64 bit with 4 gigs of RAM or more, or a system specifically tuned to run CoH that isn't running anything else on a system with 2 or less. 3 gig 32-bit systems are iffy; sometimes they sacrifice other resources to manage ram above 2 gigs, and its hit or miss if they end up with better performance.

Honestly, the jump from my Athlon 4200 to the i7-860 was a quantum leap improvement in performance overall, but since then, I haven't seen a similar jump in performance arrive or see one on the horizon. It may be another CPU generation before we see another such jump, and its unclear if we're likely to see CPU speeds significantly above 3 ghz in standard parts any time soon, so if future generations of CPUs continue to scale cores moreso than deliver speedier cores overall, there's going to be far less need to be on the cutting edge of CPU or motherboard performance for gaming. Its down to the latest hotrod video card, and only for the latest graphically intensive games.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheXor View Post
O.o to about 85% of that.
Yeah, that made my head spin about like walking into H.H. Greg just to see what kinda store it was.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingAries View Post
Yeah, that made my head spin about like walking into H.H. Greg just to see what kinda store it was.
Hehe...No I got the point of what they were attempting to convey, it just wasn't sound advice.

If you have a decently clocked Intel quad, a new motherboard is pointless. Advising someone to get a new monitor (unless they're shrinking/lowering resolution) will not do anything to add frames per second.

The only sound advice there was to clean up the registry (which I doubt will help beyond anything marginal in this case) and bump the video settings down - or upgrade the GPU.

All of this is assuming you're not losing wireless connectivity, etc..etc..

When you do an internet speed test are you saturated for your bandwidth from your ISP? If so going to 802.11n will not do anything unless you're doing LAN transfers or moving stuff around on your personal network.

Still would advise you to keep an eye on those GPU/CPU temps as you play...

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheXor View Post
The only sound advice there was to clean up the registry (which I doubt will help beyond anything marginal in this case) and bump the video settings down - or upgrade the GPU.
I have found random registry cleaning to rarely improve system performance except by side effect: doing so can eliminate background processes or non-useful handlers you could also just remove directly.

Under Windows 7, the other thing I've noticed that can improve CoH performance if you believe your graphics card is underpowered is to disable Aero if its enabled. You disable Aero by changing desktop theme to a non-Aero theme (there's no "switch" to disable Aero per se).

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
I have found random registry cleaning to rarely improve system performance except by side effect: doing so can eliminate background processes or non-useful handlers you could also just remove directly.

Under Windows 7, the other thing I've noticed that can improve CoH performance if you believe your graphics card is underpowered is to disable Aero if its enabled. You disable Aero by changing desktop theme to a non-Aero theme (there's no "switch" to disable Aero per se).
Not being on my W7 drive atm I forget where it is, but I do recall such a type of setting(s). It's related to visual settings, but not obvious.