Some tips on performance

[arth]

well I experience jerking but thought that was the SETA ( maybe it still is ) anyway the graphics are very "blocky" as I have a 17" TFT and its recommended is 1280X1024 I thought I would try this. However going to the OPTIONS screen the highest resolution I am offered is 1280X960?? is there a reason I cant get the 1280X1024.

800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960 and 1600x1200 are all 4:3 resolutions. 1280x1024 is a 5:4 resolution, and 4:3 doesn't scale to 5:4 without stretching the picture, making the aspect ration wrong. 1280x1024 is useful for business apps, where aspect ratio is less important than getting a few more lines of text on the screen, and for PAL video editing. Otherwise it's a horrible mode, compatibility-wise.
1280x1024 should never be used for gaming, unless the game is specifically designed for this resolution. A few 1280x1024 LCD monitors lets you run 1280x960 in "letterbox" with a small black border at the top and bottom -- if your LCD monitor can't do this, you're basically screwed for gaming, and will have to resort to either ugly scaling or running in a window.

Regards,
--
*Art

[jamiepeterhayes]

I have just registered the game on-line tonight and have sat down for an hour and read this whole thread. I recommend anyone with performance issues does the same as I found it very interesting. Well done to everyone who has taken the trouble to post help and advice.

I have an Athlon XP2400 and a new GEforce FX Ultra5950 with 256mb of ram.

I stupidly thought when I brought this card that every game I ran would have frame rates in the triple figures with all the eye candy turned up...

X2 and Halo have both shown me what a fool I was!

Yet strangley some games run phenomenelly well. Max Payne 2 is easily the best looking game I have ever played, and my system blows it away in hi res with absolutely everything turned up to Max.

What seems most troubling is that Egosoft has not bothered to make one contribution to this enormous and important thread. They surely are in the best position to comment on the many worrying problems people have reported.

[Rheinmetall]

Phew. I feel a lot better after reading these posts about choppy performance. I thought that there was something terribly wrong with my system. I have BM,AA,Shadows OFF and 1024x768x32 is unplayable in combat. In example I was fighting against one khaak ship and few borons joined me, every time boron M5's "bullets" hit the khaak the game totally froze.

Other performance drainers like Halo or Max Payne2 run just fine with some extra eye candy but not this game. In fact Max Payne2 ran perfectly with my old GF2.

I have P4 1.6 @ 2.133, R9800SEAIW, 512MB PC2700.

At first I didn't have any problems with performance I had 1280x1024x32 and BM and AA turned on. But when I got a few factories and few ships it got worse. Now that I have 3 factories and over a dozen ships it's horrible.

Now I have tried every possible tip here, installed latest drivers and 1.3 patch and it's still awfully slow. Even in 640x480x16 I'm getting fps below 25. and I haven't yet tried fighting with that resolution so it could get even worse.

[Andyf]

I left the whole performance issue for a while, but as my game progresses, things are getting slow.
Atreus clouds was always a hassle, but now Kingdom End is suffering and Argon Prime???? The AQC is such that until you are really close the really low quality models are used (cubes such for spheres)

This is making me think it is my processor that is letting me down.
Battles in the khaak sector can really get trying.
my specs are:

P4 2Ghz
512Mb RAM
Gigabyte Geforce FX 5900XT
XP home

Ive tweaked the services and turn off everything i can while running, although none of this seemed to do much. Settings are:
1024x768x32
AQC, Bmp, AA On
shadows off

On graphics card mipmap set to blend, overall quality set to performance both mid vlaues. checked, the bios is (correctly) set to AGP slot 128Mb,


the slow down as really set in more as the game progresses, but perhaps never as good as I thought the system should be able to handle.
checked through most of the performance threads, but most pointers dont seem to have affected the performance a great deal.
any suggestions?

[AngryAndroid]

Very very very strange, all of this seems to fly in the face of standard practices for tweaking and playing graphicaly intensive games. I hope not to erk anyone here but I'm going to copy a thread I started as a reference point.

Ok, I like this game, I really do. Its the most fun I've had in a very long time in terms of computer games, I so often get bored and stack the game after a week or so. This I can tell is so different, working your way up into bigger ships, then one is never enough, killing off pirates by the dozen and eventualy turning on a friendly race. Yeah this game is just what I love, so if you will excuse the introduction I'll get down to business and the purpose of this thread.

Idealy, I'm looking for a response from a technology endowed gaming fan or someone who has a clue about the development of this game and/or its technologies.

I'm looking at buying a graphics card soley with the purpose of improving performce for this game ONLY, not games such as HL2 etc. I've found what I believe to be an ideal purchase: GF5 5700FX Ultra

http://uk.europe.creative.com/estore/pr ... 581&page=6

Specs are there, also minimum requirments are available from the menu top right.

A number of things concern me.


(a) I bought a 5200XT GF5 a few months back and it was horrible, I never want to make the same mistake twice especialy while buying online. My GF2 Ti seriously pawned it.

(b) Several system requirements for GF5 5700 cards and above require a 300MW power supply and spare power dongle. 300MW that I can't be sure about but I sure as heck dont have a spare power dongle in this system, is by anyones experiance it a fact that particular cards have different power requirements independant of chip type? I'm suspicious that Creative don't list any such power requirments.

(c) The specifications of this card appear to be 'impressive', to me at least. However, I want X-2 running in high res, decent features and a smooth framerate during combat. Is this type of card really up to the challange?


Now this is my current full spec to the best of my knowledge (for anyone that has stuck with me so far).

Quote:
Intel P4 1.6GHz Willamette L2 256kb Cache
FSB 4x100MHz
2 x 256MB DDR 2x133
WD 2500JB
ST3120026A
ASUSTeK P4B266LM
GeForce2 Ti DDR 64MB AGP 2.0 250MHz GPU 400MHz RAMDAC


Right, I think thats all the information I need to give other than I'm running XP with latest drivers, updates, patches for everything you can name. I want this game to run good with this system, it's a great game but with very limited cash I can't stretch to a new system. A new graphics card is what I'm willing to goto, can someone ease my little worried head on this issue?

After several days of tweaking, output from the benchmark test read as follows (needless to say I copied this one):

Quote:
X2 - The Threat

Executeable compiled Tue Mar 2 22:41:35 2004

Video Settings during test:
Screen Resolution: 1024*768*16
Bumpmapping: Off
Realtime Shadows: Off

System specific video settings:
Adapter name: NVIDIA GeForce2 Ti [NVIDIA GeForce2 Ti]
Vertex Shader: Software, version 1
Hardware T&L: Yes
Fog capabilities: W-fog Z-fog RangeFog Table(Pixel)Fog VertexFog
Caps: READ_SCANLINE
Caps2: CANRENDERWINDOWED DYNAMICTEXTURES FULLSCREENGAMMA
Caps3: ALPHA_FULLSCREEN_FLIP_OR_DISCARD
DevCaps: CANBLTSYSTONONLOCAL CANRENDERAFTERFLIP DRAWPRIMTLVERTEX EXECUTESYSTEMMEMORY EXECUTEVIDEOMEMORY HWRASTERIZATION HWTRANSFORMANDLIGHT PUREDEVICE TEXTURENONLOCALVIDMEM TEXTUREVIDEOMEMORY TLVERTEXSYSTEMMEMORY TLVERTEXVIDEOMEMORY
PrimitiveMiscCaps: BLENDOP CLIPTLVERTS COLORWRITEENABLE CULLCCW CULLCW CULLNONE MASKZ TSSARGTEMP
SrcBlendCaps: BOTHINVSRCALPHA BOTHSRCALPHA DESTALPHA DESTCOLOR INVDESTALPHA INVDESTCOLOR INVSRCALPHA INVSRCCOLOR ONE SRCALPHA SRCALPHASAT SRCCOLOR ZERO
DestBlendCaps: BOTHINVSRCALPHA BOTHSRCALPHA DESTALPHA DESTCOLOR INVDESTALPHA INVDESTCOLOR INVSRCALPHA INVSRCCOLOR ONE SRCALPHA SRCALPHASAT SRCCOLOR ZERO
RasterCaps: ANISOTROPY COLORPERSPECTIVE DITHER FOGRANGE FOGTABLE FOGVERTEX MIPMAPLODBIAS WBUFFER WFOG ZBIAS ZFOG
MaxTextureBlendStages: 8
MaxSimultaneousTextures: 2
VertexProcessingCaps: DIRECTIONALLIGHTS LOCALVIEWER POSITIONALLIGHTS TEXGEN
MaxActiveLights: 8
MaxUserClipPlanes: 0
MaxVertexBlendMatrices: 2
MaxVertexBlendMatrixIndex: 0
MaxPointSize: 64.000000
MaxPrimitiveCount: 65535
MaxVertexIndex: 65535
MaxStreams: 16
VertexShaderVersion: 0.0
MaxVertexShaderConst: 0
PixelShaderVersion: 0.0
MaxPixelShaderValue: 0.000000

System specific audio settings:
SecondarySampleRate (Min/Max): 8000/96000
PrimaryBuffers: 1
MaxHwMixingBuffers (Static/Stream/All): 64/64/64
FreeHwMixingBuffers (Static/Stream/All): 55/55/55
MaxHw3DBuffers (Static/Stream/All): 64/64/64
FreeHw3DBuffers (Static/Stream/All): 55/55/55
HwMemBytes (Free/Total/MaxContigFree): 0/0/0
UnlockTransferRateHwBuffers: 0
PlayCpuOverheadSwBuffers: 0
Flags: CERTIFIED CONTINUOUSRATE PRIMARY16BIT PRIMARY8BIT PRIMARYMOMO PRIMARYSTEREO SECONDARY16BIT SECONDARY8BIT SECONDARYMONO SECONDARYSTEREO

Framerates
Scene 00 68.119 fps
Scene 01 50.507 fps
Scene 02 8.142 fps
Scene 03 59.311 fps
Scene 04 47.491 fps
Scene 05 33.845 fps
Scene 06 48.146 fps
Scene 07 68.757 fps
Scene 08 81.650 fps
Scene 09 27.885 fps
Scene 10 31.840 fps
Scene 11 24.356 fps
Scene 12 37.799 fps
Scene 13 110.387 fps
Scene 14 47.116 fps
Scene 15 55.934 fps
Scene 16 72.204 fps
Scene 17 57.659 fps
Scene 18 17.780 fps
Scene 19 60.755 fps
Scene 20 37.418 fps
Scene 21 46.866 fps
Scene 22 58.008 fps
Scene 23 45.221 fps

Overall average framerate: 49.883 fps

(c)2003 EGOSOFT
For more information http://www.egosoft.com



Thanks in advance for anyone brave enough to tackle this one.

Ok, sorry for the copy and paste but it just had to be done. With around 14 or so (if not more now) ships doing buy/sell missions for me and 7 factories churning a huge profit, a small fleet of ships and with the set up described above (poor set up compared to most here), I get a decent playable frame rate of 25fps in moderate sectors and far less when lots of big ships are flying around.

The most interesting thing I noticed with my test results was that vertix and pixle shading is being done by the processor. Leaving the game on SETA for 2 minutes makes the huge fan inside my PC go ape, a lot of processing being done no doubt.

I find it strange though that no one has mentioned the latest drivers for Nvidia cards at http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_56.64. Now why on earth has no one mentioned performance with these new drivers?

With the huge amount of graphical processing going on, I'm certain that its a software issue thats not allowing the hardware functions that this game is designed for work properly. The idea that a system running at 1.60GHz can't cope with calculating a few hundred tragectories is rediculous! Some of you guys have twice the base processing power I do and have the same problem if not worse, ergo it cant be the processor!

I've been researching my system and this game for a good while now, its hurting my brain but I can see a trend and isn't hardware based. Despite the best advice given to me, I'm going for a nice 5700 ultra, lots of added features and will be getting a kick ass server and gaming network built up over the comming months/year. These issues are being resolved by people tweaking their system (using a variety of strange methods), the lack of logical sense dictates it is infact a game enginge issuethat will be fixed. That's not to say the game needs a new patch, but somthing software related will be fixed, trust me.

Anyway, you guys with the uber systems can surely turn off EAX, your network and check basic settings such as AGP apature size (among other tips). If that dosn't work, why not use the latest drivers instead of 53.03, I know I noticed a large jump in performance. I'm hoping that changing to a hardware pixel and vertex renderer will free up more CPU resources.

Don't give up hope, I've seen worse problems than this eventualy fixed.

Still, I can't help but feel perplexed at the strange way in which people have improved performance. Certainly a cunundrum.

[Andyf]

I think one problem is, that while graphically very demanding, X2 requires a lot from the rest of your computer as well. all the ships and trade calculations, there is so much going on. I reckon it is easy to think: i have poor performance, my graphics arent up to scratch, when half the trouble is the fact that the rest of the computer cant keep up. This I think is the problem with mine.
since i upgraded, changing graphics options has much less of an effect than I had expected (except perhaps shadows, but not even that much). My computer just seems to have a lot of problems dealing with lots of objects at once, no matter what graphics settings I use. AQC has minimal effect, it just makes things look worse.

E.g there is always slowdown in xenon sectors, esp when i attack the Js and they start spewing out fighters.
or sectors with large asteroid belts.
ot that scene in the rolling demo when a fleet of novas and centaurs flies right past the camera (dunno if anyone can remember).

I can have my graphics on next to nothing for these and the framerate always suffers horribly, whereas otherparts everything can be on full and not a jolt.

[Kitch]

Re new Nvidia drivers...

I downloaded 56.whatever the other day and found that the features I had on my Nvidia set up had changed and weren't as comprehensive.

I am running a gf4 MX440, and occasionally a Ti4200 - both cards performed better with the older 53.03 driver. I think the new driver might be optimised for FX cards - so users of these might get better results.

You can no longer turn on the Blend (detailed in page 2) function - which gives an fps boost.

After much playing with new settings, I couldn't match the frame rate I got from playing with the settings in the 53.03 driver.

I'm managing an X2 benchmark average of 90 fps on my lowly Athlon2000 512mb 128MX440 in 800x600x16 with all goodies off.

I found the best improvements came from matching desktop to X2 resolution and from adjusting GPU settings more to performance than quality... Also, when benchmarking, check scene02 (the boron underwater one) as this is a fair measure of in game performance during something really busy - like a big fight. (my best is 13fps)

[Andyf]

90fps with an MX440? good going. before i upgraded from my MX460 i could never get the average above about 50. funny, that scene with the underwater orca at the beginning always seemed a massive problem with the MX, but never now. scene 19, however with the fleet moving by the camera has caused problems even after the upgrade.

[Kitch]

sorry... got my res confused... 90 from 600x480

Only 75 from 800x600x16, which is still good enough so that I find zero slowdown in my game even in paranid prime with loads of fighting going on.

[Reddemon]

well im having a bit of a problem here and was wondering if anyone can suggest somemore ideals. i have tried most of all the tips on this forum to get better frame rate but damn im still stuck in the low 40's and high 30's fps but even with the 40's i can get into a good combat mode with a few other ships and i dont get that much lag or hangups.

system specs;

P4 1.7 gig
125 gig HD
Ti 4600 Gforce video card with 128 M AGP (with the latest drivers from nvidia website)
Ausu motherboard (agp set on 256)
512 ram
Dvd/cdrw
OS is 98SE running it completely clean and my system resources are at 94% free

I have gotten 46 FPS on the benchtest with the graphics set on 640x480@16 with bumpmap and auto on. Now i do a test at 1024x768@32 with everything on and i get the max of 37 FPS. Now from those ranges i cant go higher then 46 or lower then 37. Now i have tried to use the last video drives that was 53 something and i have seen a few FPS increase but nothing really that great. So im just wondering now if maybe i should let 98SE go and get XP (which im really hoping that isnt the case) and or start overclocking my CPU which is one of the items i havent done yet due to all the negative feed back i have read on other website about overclocking but as i can see many are doing it on here and no one is saying anything negative about it.

Well i figure if i cant get any better fps then its time to do a new upgrade to my system with all new parts sorry if i posted it in the wrong topic.

[Knight Hood]

lmao, well i dont even know how to get the frame rate to display, someone care to enlighten me?

Im on a Radeon 9800 -SE-

[Gnavpot]

lmao, well i dont even know how to get the frame rate to display, someone care to enlighten me?

If you run the game in benchmark mode (there is a checkbox in the startup dialog) the game will run as a non-interactive demo with a framerate counter in the upper left corner.

For some very strange reason, Egosoft have not enabled this counter in the game, so here you will have to use a third-party program like Fraps, http://www.fraps.com.

[The_Abyss]

The fps counter was available in earlier beta versions - I'm not sure why it was taken out of the final version, but I suspect it can probably activated - probably something silly and obvious like adding "-benchmark" at the end of the .exe or similar.

[Gnavpot]

probably something silly and obvious like adding "-benchmark" at the end of the .exe or similar.

No luck.

[Reddemon]

Finally figured out my main problem with my FPS. I was using the latest Nvidia drivers for my video card which is 56. Well i decided to go back to the last driver i was using that was 53 and guess what? I got a 27 FPS increase on benchtest. im running now at 62 + frames but I couldnt believe this so i try to reload my 56 version drivers and it dropped back down to 37-44 FPS at the res of 1024x768@32. So i reloaded again my 53 version drivers on my video card and again i benchtest in the 60's+ at the same res. So i figured that i will keep my old version drivers to keep up the FPS for now until i can send a email to Nvidia to tell them what i have found out. Hopefully someone has already warned them of this so it wont be no great news.

[EventHorizon]

Well, I said I would let you guys know if I managed to improve performance any...and I have!!!

I have just got myself an AMD Barton 2500+, much nicer than my AMD Palomino 1900+.

It's only 400 MHz faster, but the extra FSB speed (333 MHz DDR as opposed to 266 MHz DDR) has really helped. Atresus Clouds used to crawl, but now it is really smooth. I am waiting for my new memory to arrive, at which point I can pish to a 200 MHz FSB. If it gets any better I'll let you know.

BTW, I always suspected that this was being CPU limited. If dissabling Bump Mapping makes no difference it is kind of a giveaway.

[EventHorizon]

Just to follow up, my new RAM arrived.

1 Gig of 400 MHz DDR. Even smoother now!

BTW this also fixed a diferent problem...

I use the Cache 3D Data option. But when I exited X2 Windows was soooo slow! Virtual Memory useage went through the roof. Moving from 512 to 1024 Mb RAM has stopped this. Perhaps some notes about this option should be added to the FAQ???

[comradesniper]

sorry, just had to do that.
reading about you people with your falshy specs and ATI cards having all these problems... then theres me with my ole GeForce 4 MX440/64mb running the game fine in 1280x960@32 with Bumpmapping. plays fine too.

full spec:
Win XP Home
1.8ghz P4
256mb DDR ram
GeForce 4 MX440/64mb 53.03 drivers
SiS 7012 onboard Sound card

not exactly a whoop arse system, but it seems to be more stable than some of the higher spec systems...

apart from 1 thing.
With bump mapping, i see black patches or little flashes on some ships and stations at distance. this dosent happen with Bump mapping off. any halp would be appreciated!

[CBJ]

The flashing seems to be the result of drivers trying to squeeze the last drop of performance out of the hardware. It happens more in newer drivers than older ones and also seems to occur more with bumpmapping on than off.

I have a card very similar to yours (it is the laptop version of the same model) and I actually get the best performance and the fewest glitches running much older drivers, in my case the default 28.53 drivers that come with WinXP. That said, I do run with bumpmapping off as the performance is only barely adequate with it on.

You may find that the price of finding a driver that cures the flashing is that you can't run bumpmapping at a decent speed, and that switching it off with the drivers you already have is a better option.

[comradesniper]

ok.
how annoying the game actually performs well with bump mapping on... as long as it isnt a cutscene.
i notice that the effect happens on some types of stations at a certain range with bump mapping off too. this usually stops at close range.