(RESOLVED) Penumbra Performance Problems?

[MercenaryForHire]

RESOLVED
Installing the older NVIDIA 80-series drivers fixed the performance issues. Other users of the 90-series should try downgrading to see if this resolves their problems.

Penumbra's performance seems to be schizophrenic at times.

http://frictionalgames.com/forum/attachment.php?aid=214
This is at 640x480, all graphical options off, Very Low shaders. Basically Quake 1, and that's being generous. I'm getting a whopping 4fps in this screenshot.

Now, you might think that my system is just hosed. Well, check this one out.

http://frictionalgames.com/forum/attachment.php?aid=216
1280x1024, everything on except Motion Blur, AA, and AF. And this is getting 30fps. With the flashlight on, which is an extra demand on the graphics card.

Now, take a look at this.

[attachment=220]
Same high detail, but lowered to 800x600. (I was experimenting.)

If I look at that map directly, I get 60fps.
If I turn to the left about 45 degrees, I get about 40fps.
However, if I turn 90 degrees to the left, and look into a dead end, I get less than 10fps. There is nothing to render. Why is performance so horrid?

I'm reinstalling the tech demo to see if that runs horribly too.

[MercenaryForHire]

[attachment=221]

The tech demo ran like butter. All the eyecandy, including Motion Blur and 4xAF, and the lowest I ever saw was 18fps or so (not counting the sequence in the elevator) - most of the time was north of 30fps, and plenty of times at 60.

[Dark]

this is indeed strange
what are your system specs?
are you running vista?(since alot of performance problems ocure when tunning vista)

[Thaliur]

This could be connected to Anisotropic filtering.
When you look into that "dead end", you'll have a lot of textures at a steep angle to your point of view, and AF has a lot of work to do.

[MercenaryForHire]

this is indeed strange
what are your system specs?
are you running vista?(since alot of performance problems ocure when tunning vista)

Celeron 2.13GHz, 1GB DDR, 6600GT on 93.71s, XP SP2.

It's not a scorcher, but it has no problems with other OpenGL based games (Doom 3, Quake 4, PREY) and it's defintely head and shoulders above the "minimum requirements" for Penumbra.

[MercenaryForHire]

This could be connected to Anisotropic filtering.
When you look into that "dead end", you'll have a lot of textures at a steep angle to your point of view, and AF has a lot of work to do.

AF has never been enabled in anything but the tech demo; but good thought process.

Still looking for another explanation of that one, because I refuse to believe that the HPL engine doesn't understand visibility culling.

[Thaliur]

I can't see any reason for the tech demo -> Overture performance decrease, but the Framerate differences in Overture seem to be caused by what you could see if it was bright enough.
Maybe a texture pipeline issue, or something about the physics calculations (though these would also occur when you're not looking at them, so I guess it's not their fault).

This is weird.

Maybe it isn't a problem with your graphics, but with your sound chip. Some sound chip have a hard time handling directional audio or environmental effects (especially OnBoard-Chips).
The old mine has a lot of natural sounds, at least I got that impression, and maybe when you turn towards that dead end, some of them have to be processed intensely.

[SirRaven]

Scrap your video drivers. 93.71 is so freaking buggy it is pathetic. I have a 7600GT-CO and I had to revert back to 84.21 drivers cuz the 93.71 would lower my performance in some games and had problems moderating my gpu fan speed. I could almost guarantee your problem is driver related....I haven't seen such a bad batch come out of nvidia in a long time.

[MercenaryForHire]

Scrap your video drivers. 93.71 is so freaking buggy it is pathetic. I have a 7600GT-CO and I had to revert back to 84.21 drivers cuz the 93.71 would lower my performance in some games and had problems moderating my gpu fan speed. I could almost guarantee your problem is driver related....I haven't seen such a bad batch come out of nvidia in a long time.

Now here's what I wanted to see. I was suspecting wonky drivers, but no one else had complained that the newest ones were giving them ass-poor results.

I'll try this when I get home and report back ASAP.

[tedy]

raven i have 93.71: you think i should change drivers?