Performance Problems

08-30-2009, 03:12 AM

Hi!

I've bought the Collection when it came out, but have only now started playing Overture, which is awesome. The problem I have is basically lousy performance whenever "something" happens.

For example, while walking around and solving puzzles is all fine (there's no FPS counter, but I'd guess something between 20 and 30), whenever I get close to a dog or a spider the game becomes unplayable for all intents and purposes. Frame rate drops to something like one frame every one or two seconds and similar things happen to the sound. That makes it very frustrating to fight a dog or a spider, let alone sneak around them or outwit them (the problems practically start once you *hear* an animal and become worse once fight music sets in or you try to use the stealth mode).

Now, my PC will probably be pretty close to the minimum requirements (AMD Duron 1.7GHz, GeForce 6600LE w/256MB memory, 1GB RAM), but I'm running at 640x480 with all settings turned to their minimum, except for the shader, which is only set to "Low" instead of "Very Low" to keep at least a little bit of the game atmosphere intact.

On the software-side, I'm running a freshly installed Linux Mint 7 with no compositor enabled as suggested in http://frictionalgames.com/forum/showthr...p?tid=3049. Performance in other 3D-accelerated games is "normal". It should be mentioned that I'm not using the onboard soundcard at all, but instead play with USB headphones. The suggestion in http://frictionalgames.com/forum/showthr...p?tid=2837 only manages to disable sound, even though that does make the game feel faster during enemy encounters.

Is there anything I can do to improve performance, or is my PC just too bad?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Regards,
Raphael

**Urkle** · 08-30-2009, 02:25 PM

Well I see two performance hindering issues with your system..

One the Duron.

Durons are the Celerons of AMD. Very little to No CPU cache which makes them horrible for Gaming. What you are probably encountering is when there are enemies going on you are dealing with the AI, physics, graphics, and sound systems all at once and the CPU cache (or lack of) can't handle pumping the instructions fast enough. Switching to a different CPU (a non duron AMD for example) would improve things considerably. My "development" linux machine is very comparable to your system, (geforce 6600 w/ 256MB, and 1.5GB of ram), but I have a full AMD Athlon 2100+ (which is a 1.7GHz CPU). I also run things at either 640x480 or 800x600.

The other USB sound.

This just adds extra load on your CPU. USB is "host driven" so the CPU is doing all of the work, where as *most* on-board cards, yes are slightly host driven, at least they benefit from DMA transfers so there is less work to be done.. A real card would offer even more sound offloading.

Basically.. You need something faster and with more Cache in the CPU.

08-30-2009, 03:22 PM

Hi Urkle,

thanks for the specific suggestions! I'll see what the September budget can find me on eBay CPU-wise. WRT to the sound, I'll have to ponder that a bit since the headphones (Speedlink Medusa 5.1 Surround) are quite good and comfortable. I do have an old soundcard on the attic that can be used, but no speakers or other headphones. Do you know if it would be possible to convert the 3.5mm output to USB somehow, are there any devices for that?

Cheers,
Raphael

**Fredagsmys** · 08-30-2009, 07:04 PM

I've also got an amd athlon xp 2100+ but with 700 something ram and a geforce 6600gt 128mb.

I'm currently running overture at 1680 * 1024. And so far I it's working fine for me, it stutters a little when I'm fighting dogs. But I have to have a window open to let some cold air in, otherwise the computer overheats and it stutters like h*ll.

And an other thing if the sound is choppy/stutters, then the whole game stutters like mad. I guess it has to do with pulseaudio not being finished yet. When I'm starting a game, I have to restart it until the intro music isn't stuttering, then the game will function just fine (if I haven't forgot to open a window).

**Urkle** · 08-30-2009, 10:44 PM

(08-30-2009, 03:22 PM)sixtyfive Wrote: Do you know if it would be possible to convert the 3.5mm output to USB somehow, are there any devices for that?

I do not thinks so, since the USB is actually a sound device, (ie.. the full DAC and all) not just an output device. In theory once you get a faster CPU the USB should be less of a problem.

(08-30-2009, 07:04 PM)Fredagsmys Wrote: And an other thing if the sound is choppy/stutters, then the whole game stutters like mad. I guess it has to do with pulseaudio not being finished yet. When I'm starting a game, I have to restart it until the intro music isn't stuttering, then the game will function just fine (if I haven't forgot to open a window).

Oh, don't get me started on pulse audio... It's what I've been fighting with for a while..

Sound was GREAT on my box until I enabled pulse audio to test issues people were reporting with it.. Now it stutters like mad. One reason why I still keep My SB Live card. It does HARDWARE mixing :-D. So I can point all of my apps directly to the sound devices. I wish pulseaudio would take advantage of that.

Right now I'm actually using the "Big Mac" in Fedora 11 to test the upcoming linux patch. On that machine pulse audio isn't as much of a problem (mainly because of the multiple cores). And I can even run the game while keeping compiz running :-D.