Another thread with performance issues (GTX 280)

[eladan]

It seems to be a relative minority who are still experiencing performance problems post-1.3. I know that doesn't help those who are having problems, but I wanted to point out that it's not an optimisation problem as you suggest, or everyone would be having the same problems.

It looks more likely that certain combinations of hardware are causing something strange to happen. The Egosoft guys will be looking into it, I'm sure - hopefully they'll be able to find a solution soon.

[tim997]

It seems to be a relative minority who are still experiencing performance problems post-1.3. I know that doesn't help those who are having problems, but I wanted to point out that it's not an optimisation problem as you suggest, or everyone would be having the same problems.

It looks more likely that certain combinations of hardware are causing something strange to happen. The Egosoft guys will be looking into it, I'm sure - hopefully they'll be able to find a solution soon.

Eladan - What statistics are you basing these statements on? Looking at the Rolling Demo thread it looks to me like most people are experiencing performance issues! 90% of people are seeing min frame rates of less than 20FPS in "Trade" scene (and that's the example several of us have been talking about) and many of them are even below 10FPS!!! The average FPS for that scene doesn't look particularly great either, with plenty of people barely managing ~30FPS on rigs that are above the recommended spec!

I do realize that I'm only talking about one of the benchmark scenes - the game runs ok a lot of the time. However, if it were actually optimized then those numbers should look very different in most cases. Sure, there'd still be some people experiencing issues - there always are in the PC market given the vast number of possible hardware combinations. Unfortunately, I don't think you can use that argument in this case because the statistics appear to tell a very different story!

Frankly I'm a little tired of having our cries for assistance ignored, being told that we're supposedly "a minority". There are 12+ pages now of benchmarks that say otherwise! I know that X3:TC is more CPU intensive than a lot of games, but when people with rigs that run Crysis and Fallout at >60fps without batting an eyelid are having trouble getting 30fps in X3:TC, then that screams to me that something is wrong!

Now I've been a fan of the X series since the beginning and Egosoft has always been, in my eyes, a five-star games company when it comes to quality & support. However, this release has really tarnished that image now. X3:TC was released with MANY gameplay bugs (which have thankfully be largely addressed now) and a performance level far below par! That's really not on. I'd much rather have waited an extra 6 months for a polished game, instead of something that clearly wasn't ready to hit shelves.

I know I've gone a bit off topic now, but I'm not happy and I know I'm not the only one. Eladan, I'm sure you made that post with the best of intentions, so I apologize if I've gone a bit overboard. However, Egosoft really needs to understand that many of us are unhappy and we don't feel that we're "a minority" of users. I think many of us have simply given up at this point, which is such a shame. I hate seeing Egosoft losing customers and getting a bad rep, but the ball really was dropped on this one. If someone would at least admit that and tell us what's being done I'm sure many of us would feel better. At the very least, acknowledge that there are clearly performance issues and address them!!

</rant off>

Cheers!

[eladan]

I'm not quite sure why you're attacking me - I didn't mean the 'minority' statement to be any sort of insult, and I made no suggestion that you're being ignored - quite the opposite in fact.

My evidence on people with performance problems is based on my observation of the forums, especially this forum. There appear to be plenty of people playing the game without issue, by my observation (you can include me amongst those people.) Remember that the rolling demo is not based on the latest patch, so given the performance issues of previous versions, it's not surprising that it might show a large proportion being slower than expected. As for this forum, the traffic regarding slowdown was considerably heavier before the more recent patches. Ergo, there are fewer people having issues now.

However, it was never my intention to make any suggestion that the numbers are too small to be bothered with, and in my humble opinion, if even one person is having such issues then an attempt should be made to resolve the issue. My intention was to show that your statement that the game isn't optimised cannot be the issue in this case. For that to be true, then everyone would need to be experiencing exactly the same problem of slowdowns that you are. Clearly, that is not the case, and so optimisation is not the cause of the slowdowns you are experiencing.

[tim997]

I'm not quite sure why you're attacking me - I didn't mean the 'minority' statement to be any sort of insult, and I made no suggestion that you're being ignored - quite the opposite in fact.

Eladan - Firstly, I'm sorry that my post appeared to be an attack against you personally. It certainly wasn't intended that way. It's just that it's very frustrating when we're constantly told that those of us with performance issues are a minority. What we want to hear is that these issues are being addressed, and so far I've heard nothing solid to back that up. You say "The Egosoft guys will be looking into it, I'm sure" but has anyone at Egosoft told you specifically that these performance issues are being addressed? Again, I'm not attacking you personally. I've seen many of your posts across the forums and I know you're a good guy just trying to help us out. My frustration is actually aimed at the quality of this game and Egosoft. Unfortunately, you're the messenger so.... *bang*

My evidence on people with performance problems is based on my observation of the forums, especially this forum. There appear to be plenty of people playing the game without issue, by my observation (you can include me amongst those people.) Remember that the rolling demo is not based on the latest patch, so given the performance issues of previous versions, it's not surprising that it might show a large proportion being slower than expected. As for this forum, the traffic regarding slowdown was considerably heavier before the more recent patches. Ergo, there are fewer people having issues now.

The rolling demo may not be based on the latest patch, but 1.3 was not a performance patch but rather largely a gameplay patch. I've polled a few of the threads to see who got improved performance after 1.3 and many of us did not. An unfortunate few even saw reduced performance.

I also don't believe that you can claim that their are fewer people having issues now based on the fact that "traffic regarding slowdown" is now reduced. It's reduced because we've already posted our issues and are waiting for them to be resolved. Should I open new threads for all my issues just because a new patch is released and it didn't fix my problems? The performance threads are open and we've all detailed our problems - Now we're still awaiting a resolution. One of the busiest threads in tech support is a performance thread (150+ replies). It's been open since October and is still receiving new posts with the same problems. It also includes several people stating that 1.3 made little or no difference.

I also unfortunately believe that many people have simply given up. I love the X series though, so I'm going to keep complaining until the issues are resolved. I'll do my best to be as civil as possible, but you know probably better than anyone that sometimes users get frustrated when there are serious issues.

However, it was never my intention to make any suggestion that the numbers are too small to be bothered with, and in my humble opinion, if even one person is having such issues then an attempt should be made to resolve the issue. My intention was to show that your statement that the game isn't optimised cannot be the issue in this case. For that to be true, then everyone would need to be experiencing exactly the same problem of slowdowns that you are. Clearly, that is not the case, and so optimisation is not the cause of the slowdowns you are experiencing.

I'm right with on the first half of this paragraph, but I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the optimization issue. Pre-1.3 or not, the benchmark issues clearly show me a game that is poorly optimized. The numbers also show that everyone IS suffering from the same issue, IMO. Frankly, I'd consider those frame rates embarrassing if it were a game I'd released. Just because not everyone's making a fuss like me doesn't mean that everyones game is running well. The standard of game quality isn't what it used to be, and many people will put up with low performance. That doesn't mean it's acceptable though.

Cheers!

[AkrionXxarr]

I'm right with on the first half of this paragraph, but I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the optimization issue. Pre-1.3 or not, the benchmark issues clearly show me a game that is poorly optimized.

This still doesn't explain why there are people out there who are having no problem what so ever.

The numbers also show that everyone IS suffering from the same issue, IMO.

But that's just it, not everyone is suffering from this issue. At "Prime time" there are around 140 or so people on at any one given time. If everybody is suffering from the same issue you would see way more posts about it then you currently do.

The standard of game quality isn't what it used to be, and many people will put up with low performance.

The standard of game cost isn't what it used to be either. Designing a game nowadays is far riskier then it was in the past and I think expectations are growing faster then small companies can keep up with. In the past small independant game companies that made good games did really well for themselves, it was easy to impress people in the 90's.

But now people expect so many big things, big graphics, big physics, big AI, and no bugs. Unless your company is worth billions you can't really keep up to peoples expectations anymore.

If it wern't for there still being companies like Egosoft, there wouldn't be any games like the X series. Period.

I think given the circumstances, Egosoft did reasonably well with their quality. I just think they should rely a whole lot more on the community. XD

[eladan]

What we want to hear is that these issues are being addressed, and so far I've heard nothing solid to back that up. You say "The Egosoft guys will be looking into it, I'm sure" but has anyone at Egosoft told you specifically that these performance issues are being addressed?

I haven't heard anything specific, no. However, the reason I said what I did is that I know the Egosoft work ethic. As a challenge for you to illustrate what I mean: Go through as many pages of threads as you want in the tech support forums for both X2 and X3:R. I very much doubt that you will find any post specifying an issue in either game which hasn't been addressed by a subsequent patch. I have no reason to believe that the same won't be true for TC - that a few months down the track, any major issues will have been addressed.

You won't see many posts from the devs, as their job is to fix bugs, not answer forum posts. While you may disagree, it's simply a waste of time to post in every thread "this is being looked into". And yes, I say every thread, as invariably if someone's thread is missed, they will take it as clear evidence that their particular issue isn't being addressed, and it would be very hard to argue against it.

The rolling demo may not be based on the latest patch, but 1.3 was not a performance patch but rather largely a gameplay patch. I've polled a few of the threads to see who got improved performance after 1.3 and many of us did not. An unfortunate few even saw reduced performance.

The rolling demo was based on 1.2. One of the patches since was specifically to address performance issues. I have also seen a number of posts from people saying that 1.3 improved their performance. I agree, there are others for whom it did nothing, or apparently made their symptoms worse, but to say that everyone has bad performance is simply not true!

Another point is that people who are experiencing poor performance will be actively looking for threads where they can post about it. It's far more likely that people whose performance is fine won't bother. That, or they're too busy playing the game.

I'm right with on the first half of this paragraph, but I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the optimization issue. Pre-1.3 or not, the benchmark issues clearly show me a game that is poorly optimized.

Once again, all I would need to do is to produce one person who wasn't experiencing slowdown to refute your claim that it's due to lack of optimisation. Fine. I produce me. I'm not experiencing the issues in this thread.

Again, it is not an optimisation issue. That is not to say that there is no optimisation that could be done, but the specifics of your issue, I am absolutely confident are nothing to do with bad optimisation.

[Neofit]

I can say that I have no issues with performance anymore. I'm the OP btw. I haven't played before 1.3 so I don't know how it used to be, and I don't want to waste any time to re-install then re-re-install for the sake of an argument on the internet, sorry .

Now, in order not to have any issues, I had to purchase a new CPU (an E8500 to replace my E6600) and then learn to overclock it. And also learn to mess around with my RAM in the BIOS. This was actually 'harder' (as in more scary, messing around with voltages, temperatures and all that) and more expensive to do than what we used to do back in the DOS days, fiddling with himem and stuff to squeeze and extra 10K out of our 640K machines.

I believe quite a bit of my performance increase came from me overriding the default FSB setup that my Asus motherboard absolutely wanted to use, and make my RAM work at the rated 400MHz. So maybe those who don't have any problems have a combination of CPU/RAM/MB/BIOS that makes it so their FSB is at 400+ by default, who knows? (CPU-Z is best to check that just in case)

Users shouldn't have to learn rocket surgery in order to play a game at 25+ fps, they shouldn't even know what an FSB is. Hadn't I managed to properly overclock my rig I'd have quit, and would have probably fallen into the statistic of people who don't have any problems since they are not reporting any, but they can't and won't because they are not playing. Also some people don't care that they are playing at 15fps, others are more picky, maybe they just haven't seen beautiful stuff go fast, I am not one to judge. I know I didn't care in X3R when I was below 10 in SETA. Now that I've seriously messed with my rig and got a side benefit to be able to run at 30+ fps in *SETA* wherever I am in X3TC, I'd rather uninstall than go back.

[tim997]

I haven't heard anything specific, no. However, the reason I said what I did is that I know the Egosoft work ethic. As a challenge for you to illustrate what I mean: Go through as many pages of threads as you want in the tech support forums for both X2 and X3:R. I very much doubt that you will find any post specifying an issue in either game which hasn't been addressed by a subsequent patch. I have no reason to believe that the same won't be true for TC - that a few months down the track, any major issues will have been addressed.

Agreed, but one of my points has been that the game really wasn't ready for release. 1.3 may have made things better for many people, but surely you must agree that at release there were many serious issues. I continue to believe that there are still many issues, but if you're able to play then good for you! Many of us are not able to play still though

You won't see many posts from the devs, as their job is to fix bugs, not answer forum posts. While you may disagree, it's simply a waste of time to post in every thread "this is being looked into". And yes, I say every thread, as invariably if someone's thread is missed, they will take it as clear evidence that their particular issue isn't being addressed, and it would be very hard to argue against it.

That's true, but doesn't make it any less frustrating that these issues exist in the first place.

Another point is that people who are experiencing poor performance will be actively looking for threads where they can post about it. It's far more likely that people whose performance is fine won't bother. That, or they're too busy playing the game.

...and we have posted - the issues are on the board. There are literally hundreds of posts! I'm not sure what your point is here?

Once again, all I would need to do is to produce one person who wasn't experiencing slowdown to refute your claim that it's due to lack of optimisation. Fine. I produce me. I'm not experiencing the issues in this thread.

I'm not sure what you think "optimization" is then? Optimization in its purest form for the PC platform would be 100% efficiency on 100% of hardware configurations. Of course, that's not possible but 90% of 90% could be called well optimized code. 90% efficiency on 0.1% of configs (you being the 0.1, as per your example) is certainly not what I'd consider optimized code!!! I don't claim that X3:TC is only running well on 0.1% of machines, I'm just saying that your argument doesn't hold any water. I work in the games industry in Vancouver, and if we ever tried to tell a DD that game code was considered optimized because it ran perfectly on only a single hardware configuration then I think we'd be set on fire.... then shot!

[tim997]

I can say that I have no issues with performance anymore. I'm the OP btw. I haven't played before 1.3 so I don't know how it used to be, and I don't want to waste any time to re-install then re-re-install for the sake of an argument on the internet, sorry .

Now, in order not to have any issues, I had to purchase a new CPU (an E8500 to replace my E6600) and then learn to overclock it. And also learn to mess around with my RAM in the BIOS. This was actually 'harder' (as in more scary, messing around with voltages, temperatures and all that) and more expensive to do than what we used to do back in the DOS days, fiddling with himem and stuff to squeeze and extra 10K out of our 640K machines.

I believe quite a bit of my performance increase came from me overriding the default FSB setup that my Asus motherboard absolutely wanted to use, and make my RAM work at the rated 400MHz. So maybe those who don't have any problems have a combination of CPU/RAM/MB/BIOS that makes it so their FSB is at 400+ by default, who knows? (CPU-Z is best to check that just in case)

Users shouldn't have to learn rocket surgery in order to play a game at 25+ fps, they shouldn't even know what an FSB is. Hadn't I managed to properly overclock my rig I'd have quit, and would have probably fallen into the statistic of people who don't have any problems since they are not reporting any, but they can't and won't because they are not playing. Also some people don't care that they are playing at 15fps, others are more picky, maybe they just haven't seen beautiful stuff go fast, I am not one to judge. I know I didn't care in X3R when I was below 10 in SETA. Now that I've seriously messed with my rig and got a side benefit to be able to run at 30+ fps in *SETA* wherever I am in X3TC, I'd rather uninstall than go back.

Thanks, Neofit! I too was able to squeeze better performance out of X by OCing. However, performance was still far from optimal and I didn't like the temps my CPU was reaching. Everything else runs really well so I opted to revert to my factory clock speeds and voltages (well, mostly...). Seriously, I can get >60fps on Fallout 3 on the high settings in 1920x1200. I'd expect the same from X given the much lower polygon count. Am I asking too much?

As you say though, none of that should be necessary to get a game to run. Especially when your system specs are well above the recommended settings!

I also agree with you that many people have given up at this point and are hence not posting. I've come very close myself. I do also realize that I may be pickier than some in expecting my game to run at >30fps. I see no reason why X3:TC shouldn't be able to provide that kind of performance though.

Cheers!

[wrangler708]

There are more people than you think with this problem.

I am another one with a system WAY beyond the reccommended spec and can chew up Crysis and spit it out but with X3:TC getting frames in the teens in the rolling demo no matter what resolution or quality setting I choose. Literally from 1024x768 up to 1920x1200 the performance is identical. When it gets to those certain scenes, the frames plummet into the teens for seemingly no reason. Now there are certain parts where I get almost 200 fps but those other parts make it unplayable.

I check this forum every day waiting to see if this problem has been solved so I can play the game. I don't post every day but I will if it helps.

I recognize that there are people playing and enjoying this game with absolutely no problems whatsoever. If by certain combinations of hardware you mean an Intel chipset and an Nvidia graphics card.......well, that would sure mean a lot more people should be having the problem cause that is exactly what I have. X48 and GTX 260. Fresh install of Vista Ultimate 64 and latest drivers only. Realtek onboard audio with latest drivers from Realtek. Thats it. No 3rd party software like Nero or Diskkeeper etc. etc. Totally pristine. Can't OC anymore. This is a Q9450 @ 3.6 Ghz. (tried at stock also and it was worse)

Chews up Stalker Clear Sky in DX10, Crysis DX10 all high, UT3 runs like a dream and finally.........I installed all 30 CD's (joking) for X3:R and it runs that great.

(shrugs)

[eladan]

Users shouldn't have to learn rocket surgery in order to play a game at 25+ fps, they shouldn't even know what an FSB is. Hadn't I managed to properly overclock my rig I'd have quit, and would have probably fallen into the statistic of people who don't have any problems since they are not reporting any, but they can't and won't because they are not playing. Also some people don't care that they are playing at 15fps, others are more picky, maybe they just haven't seen beautiful stuff go fast, I am not one to judge. I know I didn't care in X3R when I was below 10 in SETA. Now that I've seriously messed with my rig and got a side benefit to be able to run at 30+ fps in *SETA* wherever I am in X3TC, I'd rather uninstall than go back.

I don't know how many times I have to say this, but not everyone is experiencing the issues that you have. I know this for fact, as I am one of those people. And I have not needed to tweak my system to achieve optimal performance. I assure you, my framerates are well above 15FPS, even in combat, so it's not simply that I have low standards.

Once again, I'm sure that the devs will find the reason for those of you are experiencing slowdowns, and will issue a fix that will not require you to learn rocket science to play the game. Give them time - it's clearly not a simple fix, or it would have been released by now.

Another point is that people who are experiencing poor performance will be actively looking for threads where they can post about it. It's far more likely that people whose performance is fine won't bother. That, or they're too busy playing the game.

...and we have posted - the issues are on the board. There are literally hundreds of posts! I'm not sure what your point is here?

You mentioned that you had requested posts from people regarding performance post-1.3. I was giving potential reasons why there would be more posts reporting negative performance than positive performance. It's a fact that when there are problems, people complain. When there are no problems, people tend to remain silent.

I'm not sure what you think "optimization" is then? Optimization in its purest form for the PC platform would be 100% efficiency on 100% of hardware configurations. Of course, that's not possible but 90% of 90% could be called well optimized code. 90% efficiency on 0.1% of configs (you being the 0.1, as per your example) is certainly not what I'd consider optimized code!!!

You clearly completely missed the following sentence

Again, it is not an optimisation issue. That is not to say that there is no optimisation that could be done, but the specifics of your issue, I am absolutely confident are nothing to do with bad optimisation.

... I stand by what I said.

[Tycow]

Unfortunately, I am one of the sufferers of the appalling performance problem. It's really, odd. On the main menu, I get 60fps.

As soon as the game loads, it drops to 20 and fluctuates between 5-30fps. Doesn't matter what setting the game is on texture or shader wise, the fps is always around these numbers.

I've posted a DXdiag elsewhere to no avail... I await a fix via patching (as do the rest of us no doubt! )

[tim997]

I don't know how many times I have to say this, but not everyone is experiencing the issues that you have. I know this for fact, as I am one of those people. And I have not needed to tweak my system to achieve optimal performance. I assure you, my framerates are well above 15FPS, even in combat, so it's not simply that I have low standards.

We never claimed that everyone was experiencing this problem. We're stating that many people still have serious performance issues. Also, how "well above" 15fps are your framerates? That doesn't sound acceptable by my standards, so maybe you are having the same issues as the rest of us Now if you can say "well in excess of 30fps, at all times" then that's reasonable performance. Of course, I have no idea how powerful your rig is, so that's kind of moot!

I was giving potential reasons why there would be more posts reporting negative performance than positive performance. It's a fact that when there are problems, people complain. When there are no problems, people tend to remain silent.

...I can't argue with that, but my point is that I think more people are suffering than you think. I'm not disputing that things have improved somewhat since the original release. Nor am I disputing that many people are playing the game quite happily.

You clearly completely missed the following sentence

Again, it is not an optimisation issue. That is not to say that there is no optimisation that could be done, but the specifics of your issue, I am absolutely confident are nothing to do with bad optimisation.

... I stand by what I said.

No, I read the sentence. You appear to be contradicting yourself though by saying it's not an optimization issue but that there is optimization to be done. At his point I think there may even be some confusion as to which issue I'm referring to!! Under very specific and reproducible circumstances the graphics pipe is clearly causing the CPU to bottleneck. If it were a bug then everyone would experience it. Since, as you've pointed out many times, not everyone experiences it then it's proabbly an optimization issue Admittedly I could never be 100% sure without seeing the code, but then neither can you. Since we both know that'll never happen, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree!

Cheers!

[eladan]

We never claimed that everyone was experiencing this problem.

I think you might want to reread some of your posts.

The numbers also show that everyone IS suffering from the same issue, IMO.

Also, how "well above" 15fps are your framerates? That doesn't sound acceptable by my standards, so maybe you are having the same issues as the rest of us Now if you can say "well in excess of 30fps, at all times" then that's reasonable performance. Of course, I have no idea how powerful your rig is, so that's kind of moot!

I haven't tested it, to be quite honest, but I get smooth gameplay most of the time - by my reckoning of when I notice such things, I'd say that means >30fps, but I can't say how far in excess of that it would be without using fraps. Exception being SETA (x10) where it can get noticable - estimate can go down to ~20fps. My PC is well above spec though.

No, I read the sentence. You appear to be contradicting yourself though by saying it's not an optimization issue but that there is optimization to be done.

Not at all. What I'm saying is that while there would be optimisation which could be done, it's not the primary reason for the problems you're experiencing.

[tim997]

Can any non-Steam users confirm whether or not the 1.4 patch addresses the performance issues in this thread, please?

Being a Steam user I'll have to wait a few days for the patch

Thanks!

[universalcrusader]

no it dosent same here there got my dxdiag allready on a seperate issue but wont link it here as it may confuse the cause of the problem maby if all those having a problem and read this there culd say so instead of being in silence i love this game but performance or not its also the only game that has the issue and its getting wore's the "1.4 patch" dident help me its mak9ng it worse

i have a amd64x2 whit a asus crosshair 8gb ddr2 800 vista ultimate64bit 320 hdd and a bfg gtx 280 oc and crysis, tombraider, underworld, mass effect even xr3 runs like a charm on it so why not x3tc?

[lupoluke]

Can any non-Steam users confirm whether or not the 1.4 patch addresses the performance issues in this thread, please?

Being a Steam user I'll have to wait a few days for the patch

Thanks!

I had a performance drop with 1.4.
Quite disappointed.
If I can give you a suggetsion, don't patch to 1.4.

[Bapsilon]

I got the game for Christmas (non-Steam) and patched to 1.4 before playing for the first time...

I have the same stuttering and frame dropping issue as many of the ppl here...

Stuttering seems to get worse over time, after a couple of hours play I don't sign up for anymore battles because it becomes impossible to target a bad guy when the target box is stuttering all over the place.

IMO, judging by the fact that it gets worse over time, It's a memory leakage/fragmentation problem causing the stuttering.

As for the other problems along similar lines (frame drops when looking at large objects, long pauses...etc) who knows... they could all be related.

All I know is that X3-R had none of these problems for me, and it's disappointing that such a great game has issues

Also... I've been a member of the forum since I got X2 and I didn't really want my first post on the forum to be negative...

...I wonder if these problems are more widespread than they seem... are there other ppl with the problems who can't be arsed to post?

Edit: just noticed that this is not my first post... I wonder what my other one was

[EphemeralDeception]

I can confirm that i have the exact same problems and have checked the sound drivers being used etc etc etc.

I even got a new Graphics card (not because of the game but because my HDMI output on my old card broke) which is much better than the old one yet the performance and issues are about the same in the game.
I went from an Nvidia to an ATi.

Given all the posts this is not a rare problem, it is maybe a minority problem but it is a substantial minority. The beta news for TC 2.0 without any current patch resolving these issues is just adding insult to injury from my perspective. I can play Crises on high settings which on paper should be far more demanding in the graphics department.

Also slow downs when changing the view to a complex or station cannot be related to a sound driver. Bad sound driver would lead to general perf issues at all times sounds are played or when specific sounds are played eg voice, not when pointing to a video object.

What is it about a video object coming on screen that kills the fps?
Complex video processing perhaps? yet effect is silmilar on all video settings.
Is it loading stuff from disk? Not noticable, plus if you put the object in and out of view at the screen edge the effect is the same all the time.
Extra processing? This seems possible but what is it processing that is especially bad on complexes even when just a blob in the distance (also proving it is not video processing related but object related). So it could be related to calculations oin objects when in view and new objects out of view.


I did see an AMD fix for timing/clock issues on dual systems for single core games but it is in place and made no difference. Using affinity to force one proicessor mad little difference either, 1 or 2 FPS slower, same old slowdowns to 1 FPS from time toe time and major slowdowns when looking at certain objects.

Drastically turning off or down the graphics options and resolution for a few FPS gain is a sure sign that something not related to pure graphics processing is the problem and if its not bad drivers it is probably the game code.
It goes from a beautiful slideshow at times on high settings to a low-res, jaggy object slide show instead on low settings. might as well stay on high!

My conclusion is that while people have certainly had sound driver issues and video driver issues (the usual kind of stuff that has been identified) this is not OUR problem. For me it is either a Game issue or an esoteric Hardware/Software issue that nobody has found yet. I know which option I would put my money on!