Some tips on performance

brianwillis · Post by **brianwillis** » Mon, 18. Sep 06, 00:07

I probably have the lowliest pocket calculator of a pc here but i'm getting

71+ fps at 960x600x16 with all graphics switched off.

On an
Athlon 64 3200 2 Ghz.
512Mb DDR2 ram.
Nvidia GeForce 6100 256 Mb (onboard).
Sound Blaster Audigy 4.
Direct X 9c.
Win XP Home.

And everything is running smoother than Camron Diaz with a bottle of baby oil.

Have just built my own system but its not complete yet. Next I will soon Have a decent GPU and some RAM. Later, I will be striping 2 Western Digital 150Gb 10,000Rpm Raptors (just need to learn how to do that).

P.S. If you partition your drive and just put X2 or X3 on the D drive it loads a bit faster. (Jumping between sectors etc.)

SH3rules · Post by **SH3rules** » Fri, 13. Oct 06, 14:06

My PC slows down to a slide show (like 2 FPS or something) during Xenon invasions, but other than that it runs the game pretty good. I get 84 when I run the benchmark. Is this game CPU bound? I think my graphics card should be able to handle the Xenons, but I don’t know the first thing about the game engine.

Athlon 64 3000+ Newcastle
1 GB PC3200
Gainward 6800 GT (256 MB)
Epox 8HDA3+

Post by **CBJ** » Sat, 14. Oct 06, 00:02

Yes, the game is generally CPU bound, except on very slow graphics cards. The Xenon Invasion missions can sometimes be enough to slow down pretty much any PC.

xguy23 · Post by **xguy23** » Sun, 15. Oct 06, 11:54

Hi need help. the cutscenes are wierd, the people are jet black???????
tried latest drivers and DX 9.0c still no colour on people in cutscenes.
running a p4 3 ghz, 512mb ram, win xp media centre edition all updates, 113gb free hd space, intel 82915G/GV/910GL card

game runs well apart from this odd cutscene problem

any tips?

Player. · Post by **Player.** » Sun, 15. Oct 06, 11:55

Wait what is your graphic card?

This?: 82915G/GV/910GL card

xguy23 · Post by **xguy23** » Sun, 15. Oct 06, 11:57

thats the one. its got 128mb graphics memory on it. came with the pc

Player. · Post by **Player.** » Sun, 15. Oct 06, 12:11

Can you please make a seprate topic and post your Dxdiag there?

esd · Post by **esd** » Sun, 15. Oct 06, 12:36

That's an onboard graphics card, and most likely doesn't have the features required to run the game properly.

BoomAM · Post by **BoomAM** » Sun, 14. Jan 07, 18:30

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but i just wanted to ask: Do the latest patches benefit in anyway from dual core processors? ie; is the game multi-threaded? Im kinda hoping that the dual core will make up a bit for my gfx card (X800XL).

Thanks in advance all.

##EDIT##
NM all. Just realise i posted in X2, when i needed to do it in X3!

Post by **CBJ** » Sun, 14. Jan 07, 20:01

Neither X² nor X³ are multi-threaded, and multi-threading is something much too fundamental to be added in a patch.

BoomAM · Post by **BoomAM** » Tue, 16. Jan 07, 00:56

CBJ wrote:Neither X² nor X³ are multi-threaded, and multi-threading is something much too fundamental to be added in a patch.

Thanks.
Well i installed X3, then the patch, then the bonus pack, and suprisingly, it runs smooth. And i mean really smooth. On release i was lucky to get anywhere near 5fps. Now im getting 45fps+ in ArgonPrime!

Excellent work on the patches guys/gals.

geoi · Post by **geoi** » Tue, 23. Jan 07, 15:51

What sound card would work with X2? Not too pricey just so it will work my current one crashes windows whenb x2 is being started.

Prof. P · Post by **Prof. P** » Wed, 29. Oct 08, 21:47

Hello.
This is my first post on these forums, but the third time I've written it (I decided the other two were too long-winded, and by the look of it, this one's going the same way).

The long and short of my porblem is that I am getting very low frame rates during the one of the early missions (in cloudbase SW, after you've left the goner tample, fighting waves of pirates). I am finding the mission impossible to complete, due to my bad shooting combined with a frame rate of 6fps.

Theese are the system specs of my pc:
> 2Gb DDR RAM (2x 1Gb DIMM)
> ATI Radeon 9550 (256Mb)
> 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 Processor
> not sure about the sound card, but I think it is really bad. (may be the root of my problems)

I have been running the game at the lowest graphics settings, with AQC turned on, and have ended all background processes before running it, yet it still has very low frame rates. When I am not playing the missions, I seem to get an average of about 18fps, and I think this has gone down (and loading times gone up) since I first brought the game, a month or two ago, despite the fact that when I installed it, I had less RAM (1.25Gb)

As I mentioned, I suspect the bad sound card could be causing the problems, but, knowing little about computer hardware, I would not expect it to have such a large impact. I would like to be certain of what is causing the problem, before I spend money on anything. Please, could someone who knows more about this than me give me some advice.

If you need a DxDiag report, I will post one, but I thought I'd try and keep things simple for the moment, at least.

KoshZdryh · Post by **KoshZdryh** » Wed, 29. Oct 08, 22:46

The super game called X2 The Threat runs quite smoothly on 128 MB + 4 MB VRAM on win98.
Please be sure you are talking about X2 -- post a dxdiag and maybe someone can help.

Prof. P · Post by **Prof. P** » Thu, 30. Oct 08, 09:33

sorry - seems like I've made a stupid mistake. I was talking about X3: Reunion. I'll go and find the right thread....

The_Lost_Marauder · Post by **The_Lost_Marauder** » Sat, 5. Sep 09, 11:25

Since my main pc is out of order I had to recover my second-line pc, which is 8 y.o. and cannot run X³R. But since I have X² I was thinking about installing it, but I'm not sure if it will properly run or not.

Here are the specs:
AMD Athlon 1800+
256MB Ram
Direct X 9.0c
NVIDIA GeForce MX440 128MB
2 HDD (one divided in two halves): 24GB (11 free), 7.8GB (5.7 free) and 19GB all free.

Where should I eventually put the game files?

thanks

Post by **CBJ** » Sun, 6. Sep 09, 01:19

It should run, but probably not all that well. From my experience of a PC with similar specifications when the game first came out, you can probably expect 15fps or less with bumpmapping and shadows both turned off.

The_Lost_Marauder · Post by **The_Lost_Marauder** » Sun, 6. Sep 09, 10:07

what should I do to run it smoother?
thanks for answering

Lord Dakier · Post by **Lord Dakier** » Sun, 6. Sep 09, 21:22

Read the technical threads for X3:R and X3:TC... they give some good information.

Disconnect your internet and delete the explorer task in the process menu of the task manager. You can reopen it later via start new task under the tasks menu and then typing in "explorer" without the (""). If you still have bad frames try lowering the res to a small 16-bit.

Post by **CBJ** » Mon, 7. Sep 09, 10:29

There is a limit to what you can do to make it run smoothly on your system. The processor, memory and graphics card are all limiting factors in your case. Setting the graphics settings as I suggested will reduce the load on the graphics card but there's nothing you can do about the others.

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Some tips on performance

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