Massive FPS drop at Cathedral of St. Lucia

[Manio]

Hello there.

 

 

Well i have this issue . While i am at ouside area in the mission the Tears of St. Lucia , everything is okey and normal at ultra settings. At the time i step in the cathedral through the sewers steadily the game loses frames at the point its not playable anymore (i litterally see frames). I tried at various settings, even to the point i set everything to ultra low (remove ambient occlusion , low textures, 1x anisotropic etc) and at 800X600 resolution. Still nothing. Game is in 2.1.

 

My specs are : Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit , Intel Core Quad Q6600 2.4 , 4GB Ram , Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT, HDD WD 350 GB 5400 RPM

 

 

Yea the system isn't top notch but it manages many more games at higher settings. At this point i have to note that every time i load a quicksave it runs very well for 1 - 2 minutes, before starts losing frames. And only inside the Cathedral. Any chance that something causes memory leaks or a broken dll stacks something?

[Obsttorte]

I fairly doubt that you rig is causing the problem. The specs seem high enough to me. I also use an old pc and the game runs just fine. It is possible to tweak the game via the config, though, but I can't remember the settings. There is a topic where this was discussed, would have to search it.

 

Are your drivers up to date (graphics and audio)?

 

EDIT: I've just noticed that you have a quad core. TDM only uses one core. So it runs like on a single core with 2.4 GHz. Maybe that's a problem. I have a dual core running at 3.15GHz. Maybe overclocking the cpu a bit helps.

[Bikerdude]

Can you do a screen of task manager showing tasks by cpu useage when TDM is doing a go slow, i would like to see if there are any other apps running in the background.

[AluminumHaste]

Just make sure vsync is off, and yeah, having a fast processor will benefit you greatly.

[Bikerdude]

Just make sure vsync is off, and yeah, having a fast processor will benefit you greatly.

His system is well over the doom3 minimum, he should have no problems playing SL.

 

@Manio, also make sure AA is off, set ambient and interaction shader under the advanced menu are set to stand and normal.

 

And lasly can you come to my question above.

[Manio]

Okey the best way to describe it, is to show you

 

 

 

 

Again , nothing runs at backround, just the game. All drivers updated.

 

 

Halp!

[Lux]

Nearly looks as though the game is getting processed in segments as if the CPU pipe is congested with something else. Would be nice to have a background task % as Biker asked to help troubleshoot this.

 

@Manio, prior to starting the game, just sitting at your desktop, can you take a screenshot of the task manager and post it? Would be best to sort by clicking the CPU column header prior to taking the screen shot too.

Would also be nice to switch Task Manager to "always on top" and get a screen shot with the game running during this issue.

 

Thanks

Edited April 28, 2014 by Lux

[Obsttorte]

Sometimes windows takes up memory for no specific reason, causing the system to lag like hell. If you find something in the task manager that is called svocht or similar and it reserves alot of memory, cancel this process. This may help. (Just a wild guess, though).

[Manio]

 

 

There you go . Only Dark Mod is running. SetPointII is for my Logitech devices (Mouse and Keyboard, and Steam is...well...Steam)

 

Once again this PC runs Planetside 2 and RIFT games without problems. It happens only in Dark Mod and only inside the Cathedral after 1 - 2 minutes of a freshly load quicksave.

[Xarg]

I don't think anyone's mentioned it yet, but there is a memory leak in 2.01 that is being addressed in 2.02. Hopefully this fixes a lot of issues for a lot of people, myself included (crashing quick save with 8gb RAM for example)

[Obsttorte]

Are the auto-updates enabled in steam? Maybe it is updating something in the background while TDM is running. Try to close steam. And svchost.exe was what I've meant earlier. Order the processes by merory consumption and look if any of those are eating up a lot of memory.

[Bikerdude]

Try to close steam. And svchost.exe was what I've meant earlier. Order the processes by merory consumption and look if any of those are eating up a lot of memory.

There are a load of apps running in the background and we are only seeing half the list, @ Manio can you -

 

1. reorder the apps in alphabeticle order

2. do enough screenshot to show all the apps running.

 

So far the apps I can see you need to kill off are -

• Steam service (this does not to be running when not playing any steam games)
  
• steam app (see above)
  
• logitech service (does really need to be running, what LT keyboard do you have?)
  
• Adobe update service (disables this as its a wast of cpu time and memory)
  
• Punkbuster service (disable this as not many games use it anymore)
  
• Windows media player network service (disable this, it was and is pointless)
  
• SetpointII service - (something to do with youre mouse, is it reallky needed?)
  
• msseces.exe (Microsoft Security Essentials) - uninstall this, as an Anti-virus app its uselless and has been know to cause problems and/or brick windows installations. (I suggest Avast AV)
  

And thats just from the list I can see above.

[Lux]

In addition to what others have posted, Skype and all other non essential programs should be killed or closed prior to testing TDM for this issue. So TDM when testing for the issue should be isolated, in other words.

[Manio]

I finally fixed the problem by uninstalling the dark mod, re-installing it and starting a new game. I even managed to play it with ultra settings (getting around 60fps in dark areas and around 30-35 in areas with light which is more than enough for me). I have no idea if the save was corrupted in this point or some other file within the game , but everything works fine now.

 

Thanks everyone for trying help me, i really appreciate it.

 

 

P.S The mission is awesome. Gonna try for KO / stealing only, without any kill