Is this performance normal for Ultra Mode?
By
Chad Gulzow-Man,
Posted on: 2012-03-03 23:13 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
For starters, I know you mentioned that you're on the drivers the manufacturer packed in with the card, but those almost always suck. Ask around and see which recent version of the drivers people find to be the most stable and install those as soon as is convenient--I can't help with that, unfortunately, as I'm using an ATI card. Also, use something like Driver Sweeper to get rid of the existing driver installation before installing the new drivers.
Given your processor, I'm assuming your motherboard uses PCIe 1.0 graphics slot--it doesn't support the full bus speed of your graphics card, so your card has to slow down its speed to match that of your system. It's like a world class sprinter tied to a normal high school gym student for a three-legged race. (Your system isn't so bad off that I'd say it's tied to a fat asthmatic, though. 
)
Your hard drive is very, VERY full. This can negatively impact the rate at which the game loads and can impact your frame rate as you move around and your system has to load new objects. Personally, I put multiple hard drives in my computers... one small-ish one for the operating system, one mid-size one for games and applications, and one large one for storage... but that may be a bit more advanced than you're looking to go at the moment. Just clearing some space off the hard drive--try to get it down under 50% full--should give you a noticeable improvement in load times if nothing else. (And for the love of Pete, remember to defrag the hard drive.)
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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First of all, please run the most current version of CoH Helper, not a version that was made before Ultra Mode. The output you listed shows none of the Ultra Mode settings, so we can't tell if that is causing a performance problem. The old non-UM compatible versions of CoH Helper are of limited use.
Second, Windows XP 64-bit has never been a supported OS for the game. I know some have run CoH on XP64, but it still isn't supported and, due to the smaller installation base, not all of the performance issues with that OS may be known to the general public. Someone that has run it on XP64 may be able to chime in with other information specific to that OS version.
Third, the following line from the CoH Helper report could be a contributing factor:
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Windows, of any flavor, doesn't perform well with that little free space percentage. Optimally, keep the drive at 20% - 25% Free Space or higher to avoid those performance problems.|
C Drive: (WDC WD3200AAKS-00L9A0) 11334MB out of 305234MB (3%) free |
Lastly, a HiJackThis log would be helpful in determining if there are other issues at work than what the CoH Helper report shows.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
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Actually, not to double post, but I wanted to give a little more info on your board; I googled the specs and found that it DOES support PCIe 2.0, but only in the black card slot, not the blue one.|
Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
Given your processor, I'm assuming your motherboard uses PCIe 1.0 graphics slot--it doesn't support the full bus speed of your graphics card, so your card has to slow down its speed to match that of your system.
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So if the card's in the blue slot, move it down to the black slot and you should hopefully see a performance increase.
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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I was wondering if CoH Helper was even supported nowadays, because I noticed some of the data came back reported as "Unknown," but when I tried to visit the developer's site to check for updates, it came up blank.|
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
First of all, please run the most current version of CoH Helper, not a version that was made before Ultra Mode. The output you listed shows none of the Ultra Mode settings, so we can't tell if that is causing a performance problem. The old non-UM compatible versions of CoH Helper are of limited use.
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Not sure what's going on. Is there a mirror somewhere?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
Actually, not to double post, but I wanted to give a little more info on your board; I googled the specs and found that it DOES support PCIe 2.0, but only in the black card slot, not the blue one.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
Your hard drive is very, VERY full. This can negatively impact the rate at which the game loads and can impact your frame rate as you move around and your system has to load new objects. Personally, I put multiple hard drives in my computers... one small-ish one for the operating system, one mid-size one for games and applications, and one large one for storage...
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EDIT: Oh! You had mentioned the processor in your first post. Is it possible that, even putting aside the PCIe 2.0 bit, this could be a CPU bottleneck?
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If the data is coming back as Unknown, it generally indicates that CoH Helper isn't able to read the registry entries for some reason. Often that is due to another program blocking access to the registry. |
Originally Posted by LittleDavid
I was wondering if CoH Helper was even supported nowadays, because I noticed some of the data came back reported as "Unknown," but when I tried to visit the developer's site to check for updates, it came up blank.
Not sure what's going on. Is there a mirror somewhere? |
The link I gave in my post for the current version of CoH Helper works. I've gone to the site twice now since I read your first post, and downloaded the program to my desktop and then run it with no problems.
EDIT: The link is even in your own first post. It's the link for CoH Helper above the output right before the version number.
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---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.8--- |
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
I'd been visiting the site via the link generated by the output, as well as the program's own link to the site to check for updates. But it was still coming up as a blank page.
I got the updated version now; turns out that, for some weird reason, Opera (my default browser) doesn't like that site. Internet Explorer displayed it just fine, though. Dunno why Opera wasn't ...
Here's what the current version of CoH Helper says:
---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---
DxDiag gathered at March 4, 2012 01:41 (-06:00)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (5.2, Build 3790) Service Pack 2 (3790.srv03_sp2_gdr.101019-0340)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 4094MB
.Net Memory Report: 600MB out of 4094MB available
Page File: 2288MB (3603MB currently in use)
C Drive: (WDC WD3200AAKS-00L9A0) 11019MB out of 305234MB (3%) free
D Drive: (_NEC DVD_RW ND-1300A SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
E Drive: (HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH12LS35) zero-size drive
L Drive: (QRYPMZ STMNCDIN8 SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DirectX Diag version: 5.03.3790.3959 (64-bit version)
Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor's Max Resolution: 1600,1200
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Video Memory: 1024.0 MB
Driver Version: 6.14.0012.6760
Driver Date: 3/10/2011 7:00:22 AM
Driver Language: English
Sound Device Description: HD Audio rear output
Driver File: viahduaa.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.1560
Driver Date: 12/18/2008 9:43:30 PM
WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: P5Q PRO TURBO
Motherboard Version: Rev 1.xx
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: Default System BIOS
BIOS Version: UNKNOWN
BIOS Release: 20090220******.******+***
Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1024x768
3D Resolution: 1024x768 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes
Physics Quality: High
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No
Anti-aliasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: 2x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: Ultra quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High
World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 2.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Shadow Mode: Shadow maps
Shadow Map Shader: Low quality
Environmental Reflections: Ultra quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: High performance
Occlusion Strength: Slight
Blur: Fast
Ambient Resolution: High performance
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes
Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 1.000
Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.750
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 303660 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 2010.201105030029.1
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes
Try turning off Ambient Occlusion completely. AO is a resource hog and framerate killer.
It's possible that the 8800 ignored that setting since it likely wasn't capable of using AO as it is implemented in CoH.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
to the op new egg and other online stores sell usb to ide and usb to sata cables for data recovery. the cables have data and power for the drive on one end and plug into a usb 2.0 port. you wont have to open the case. unlesss you need to steal power plug. if the old drive not making a clicking sound but is spinning up aand then down it going to be the logic board or spindel. most drive with that type of failure will have few boots left into them before they hard fail.
City of Heroes does benefit from a better processor. Load times and CPU framerates (at least with ATI cards) were much better with a 2500K vs Q9550 vs E6600. I used a 5750 for testing with all 3 CPUs and framerates were higher with the 2500K and the trials with lots of people (24 player BAFs for example) were lag free with the 2500K, a little lag with Q9550 and more with the E6600.
I can't speak for Nvidia users, but maybe a few of them have spare stuff to test this.
The Q6600 was a nice CPU 5 years ago and is still pretty good, but the SB intels were a nice speed bump.
H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD
I agree about turning off Ambient Occlusion.
It's a massive framerate killer for something that doesn't really bring a lot of "wow" to game's visuals.
Also, update your drivers.
Here's the link to the latest version of the GeForce drivers for your OS:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...glish-whql.exe
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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It wasn't ignoring it; I was definitely seeing a change in graphics with it on, it helped refine the way light and shadow fell on in-game geometry.|
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
Try turning off Ambient Occlusion completely. AO is a resource hog and framerate killer.
It's possible that the 8800 ignored that setting since it likely wasn't capable of using AO as it is implemented in CoH. |
I did try turning AO off now, though, and there's been no difference in frame rate. Same if I turn it all the way up to max. Should I try turning AO off and restarting City of Heroes?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by newchemicals
The Q6600 was a nice CPU 5 years ago and is still pretty good, but the SB intels were a nice speed bump.
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I figured quadcore would have been a great way to proof against the future. But we've got, what, octacores out now?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by microc
if the old drive not making a clicking sound but is spinning up aand then down it going to be the logic board or spindel. most drive with that type of failure will have few boots left into them before they hard fail.
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Once I get that and the replacement drive in, I'll see about moving stuff on my main drive there to free up space, and then defragment it. I'll also move my video card down to the PCIe 2.0 slot like Chad Gulzow-Man suggested ... If that doesn't cause an increase in performance then I'll look for the most recent stable driver for my card.
I'll let you guys know how it goes. If it turns out to be a CPU bottleneck ... I'll grin and bear it, I guess. My CPU and motherboard are both holding up for now, and I don't wanna have to go buy whole new replacement parts for them just yet.
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In the computer world there is no such thing as "future proofing" things simply evolve too fast. Its hard to give up on stuff that works, I know, I still have a working E6600 that pretty much collects dust. Heck my dad is still using a 486 DX 25 which has not died yet. Apparently he won't give it up until it does. (Although I had to replace the printer which died)|
Originally Posted by LittleDavid
Yeah ... When I overhauled my rig back in 2008 I got the Q6600 as future-proofing in hopes that I wouldn't have to buy new everything-else just to replace one part (my pre-2008 setup had a dying AGP video card, and by that point it was all PCI-E). I figured quadcore would have been a great way to proof against the future. But we've got, what, octacores out now? I'll let you guys know how it goes. If it turns out to be a CPU bottleneck ... I'll grin and bear it, I guess. My CPU and motherboard are both holding up for now, and I don't wanna have to go buy whole new replacement parts for them just yet. |
The AMD Bulldozer octocore was a "disappointment" and is not even price competitive with AMD's K10 Phenom II.
They rolled the dice, and after lots of delays they rolled snake eyes.Intel is still using a quad core and the Sandy Bridge is just plain nice. I'm waiting to see how Ivy Bridge turns out. If you have $1000 you can get a hex-core Sandy Bridge-E chip which is about as fast in games as the $225 2500K chip.
H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD
Hey gang,
Yesterday I finally replaced my nVidia GeForce 8800GT for an N560GTX-Ti.
Now the deal is, I play City of Heroes with Ultra Mode on, with a lot of bells and whistles set to get the most from Ultra Mode, as well as maximum draw distance for the game world, without taking an unplayable hit in frame rate. With my 8800GT I was seeing average frame rates of around 20~15/sec in most outdoors areas, and around 15~10/sec in Praetoria (especially Imperial City).
I was expecting that this upgrade would have a positive impact on my frame rates in City of Heroes, considering how much more powerful a 560GTX is compared to the 8800GT, but ... it hasn't. I'm still getting the same frame rates I had when I was running with the 8800GT; the only difference is, the 560GTX isn't nearly as taxed as the 8800GT is, with CoH only putting 50% load on it, and causing it to heat up only a little bit.
I'm wondering if this is typical of the cards within the ballpark of the 560's performance in City of Heroes. If it isn't, what can I do to improve the frame rate yet still keep the same (or better) graphics quality settings? Or is there some issue that's preventing the full potential of the 560 from being used in CoH?
Here's what CoHHelper had to say. Mind you, I haven't installed the latest drivers from nVidia; I've been hearing their newest drivers are giving people problems, so right now my card is rolling with what came on the installation disc.
---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.8---
DxDiag gathered at March 3, 2012 21:10 (-06:00)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (5.2, Build 3790) Service Pack 2 (3790.srv03_sp2_gdr.101019-0340)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 4094MB
.Net Memory Report: 2491MB out of 4094MB available
Page File: 4045MB (1846MB currently in use)
C Drive: (WDC WD3200AAKS-00L9A0) 11334MB out of 305234MB (3%) free
D Drive: (_NEC DVD_RW ND-1300A SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
E Drive: (HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH12LS35) zero-size drive
L Drive: (QRYPMZ STMNCDIN8 SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DirectX Diag version: 5.03.3790.3959 (64-bit version)
Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor's Max Resolution: 1600,1200
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Video Memory: 1024.0 MB
Driver Version: 6.14.0012.6760
Driver Date: 3/10/2011 7:00:22 AM
Driver Language: English
Sound Device Description: HD Audio rear output
Driver File: viahduaa.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.1560
Driver Date: 12/18/2008 9:43:30 PM
WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: P5Q PRO TURBO
Motherboard Version: Rev 1.xx
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: Default System BIOS
BIOS Version: UNKNOWN
BIOS Release: 20090220******.******+***
Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1024x768
3D Resolution: 1024x768 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes
Physics Quality: High
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No
Anti-aliasing: None
Anisotropic Filtering: 2x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: Unknown (4)
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: Unknown (3)
World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 2.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of Extra Player FX Enabled: No
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes
Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 1.000
Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.750
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 303660 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 2010.201105030029.1
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes
Thanks for the help in advance!