2-3 seconds freezing/stutter

[Corpse_Maker]

Decided to make this thread because from reading most of the threads in X³TC - Technical Support page I could not find similar topic.


Most of the time my frame rate stays above 30-40FPS, q6600 @3.0, 4GB Crucial RAM, ATI HD4850, Creative X-Fi (64MB) Everything on Water, high end pc, latest drivers Vista x64 Ultimate.


But the thing that gets me most is the 2, 3 second freezing/stutter. It happens especially in crowded sector on a Assassination Mission.

When the fight get's intense the game will freeze for few seconds (usually 2-3), left side bar (command/menu bar... w/e it's called) disappears for a second, after those two three seconds passes game goes to normal. Sometimes when it freezes side bar and all of the hud disappears (extreme cases, freezing takes up to 4 seconds). Also i noticed this happens exactly in the same moment when an enemy ship is about to explode.

This happens to me quiet often so i decided to run a Taskmanager in a background... What i noticed during those "freezes", RAM indication line takes a huge dip, most of the time it's at 2.5 but that dip brings it to 1.5GB... to say it in simple words. Some people would say I have a faulty ram, nah i don't i can run a Memtest without a problem, so is Orthos, etc...

I hope one of the moderators will read this, this issue has to do something with caching... might be the sound might be textures. (And yes i tried disabling the ffdshow... makes no difference except the background music sounds like crap)

[nitromethane]

i have the same problem my system is
e6600 @3.439
4 gig supertalent ram
8800 gts 640 0c
32 bit win xp service pack 3

not the fastest but it should sure as h@ll play a 3 year old game engine

[cucher]

Many, many people have the same problem with performance, despite hardware. Here is my configuration, for example:

motherboard Asus Maximus Extreme,
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo 3.33G/1333MHz/6M,
HDD Western Digital WD3000HLFS VelociRaptor,
video Asus GeForce GTX 280 1024M DDR3,
memory DDR3 8 Gb 1333Mhz
sound Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion,
MS Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

And I'm not happy at all playing with medium textures.

[Kapakio]

Same problem here man, already reported and no solution yet. I'm mostly avoiding all high end combat situations, which is very frustrating. I'm checking every single thread about performance and the problem seems to be a bottleneck on the processor.

[cucher]

Seems the solution lies with 1.3 patch. At least I hope so...

[CBJ]

I hope one of the moderators will read this, this issue has to do something with caching...

Yes, it's a cache thing. Basically the pause you are seeing is the game running out of memory and performing a major flush of the cache to enable it to load something new. It should be a pretty rare thing on a PC with plenty of available memory, and if you hunt around in the performance-related threads in this forum, you should find discussion of how to set your system up to allow the game to use 3GB instead of the usual 2GB maximum for a single application. It's not 100% guaranteed to work, but it might tip the balance and give the game enough extra space to make the flushes even more rare.

[cucher]

I do have plenty of memory, but no result on high quality!

By the way, does your post mean players should find the solution by themselves making some "hocus-phocus" with rigs? Sounds horrifying. Hope I'm wrong...

[CBJ]

My post means that very occasional pauses of this kind may be unavoidable, but that doesn't mean we won't investigate the issue. If they are happening frequently than that then more investigation is definitely needed. Meanwhile, if even very occasional pauses are annoying someone and they are prepared to try a system tweak then they may be able to prevent them.

[cucher]

VERY OCCASIONAL pauses are not a problem. But turning FPS into SPF is killing. And this issue still doesn't have medicine. Hope you understand me correct. I'm not pushing anybody, but be sure, a lot of X3 fans are waiting for help. And they sure Ego will not leave them.

[CBJ]

The original poster in this thread was talking about 2-3 second pauses in a game that is otherwise working OK for them. That is what my reply was referring to, quite specifically. Responses on other issues, when we have them, will be posted in the appropriate threads.

[cucher]

OK, but 2-3 sec (and upto 4 sec) freezes IMHO are not too short ones. Especially then it goes frequently. But OK, we'll wait anyway.

In Ego we trust.
Pls, don't dissapoint us.

[CBJ]

I didn't say they were short, I said they should be occasional; that means not frequently. I also said that if they were frequent then there must be something happening that shouldn't be.

[cucher]

OK again. But seems both issues have the same roots. Or even may be there is the one and the only problem, which causes similar, but not 100% identical troubles. Let's say 90%.

[RegisterMe]

I didn't say they were short, I said they should be occasional; that means not frequently. I also said that if they were frequent then there must be something happening that shouldn't be.

I think this is an issue for me as well. I thought originally that removing the HDMI drivers fixed my combat pauses, but it hasn't. It does seem to be related to specific sounds / weapons fire, but I still get frequent pauses in combat.

For me tt does not occur in "regular game play". Only combat.

I think it is always accompanied by a frantic thrashing of the hard drive. The reason I think it rather than know it is because I wear headphones....

[CBJ]

OK again. But seems both issues have the same roots. Or even may be there is the one and the only problem, which causes similar, but not 100% identical troubles. Let's say 90%.

No, the issues are not the same and there is not only one problem. The reason for pauses of the type described is well known and understood, and as long as it is only very occasional then it is by design and may or may not be unavoidable. In fact even the more general performance issues that some people are experiencing do not have just a single cause, with different symptoms indicating different issues in different cases. Not all of them are even game-related.

Now, do you think we could possibly get this particular thread back on course, dealing with the original poster's specific issue?

I think this is an issue for me as well.

If your symptoms are exactly the same as those described by the original poster then possibly, otherwise it is unlikely. Intensive disk access would certainly be likely in the case of a flush as the game would need to re-load certain things as part of that process. Knowing how often this happens would go a long way to helping work out whether the game was working within the expected parameters or not.

[cucher]

Sounds optimistic... Or not?... I'm not sure any more.
Going to other threads.

[RegisterMe]

I think this is an issue for me as well.

If your symptoms are exactly the same as those described by the original poster then possibly, otherwise it is unlikely. Intensive disk access would certainly be likely in the case of a flush as the game would need to re-load certain things as part of that process. Knowing how often this happens would go a long way to helping work out whether the game was working within the expected parameters or not.

Only assassination missions? No. Some / most combat missions? Yes. Both factory defense missions and patrol missions. I rarely take assassination missions.

"When the fight get's intense the game will freeze for few seconds (usually 2-3), left side bar (command/menu bar... w/e it's called) disappears for a second, after those two three seconds passes game goes to normal. Sometimes when it freezes side bar and all of the hud disappears (extreme cases, freezing takes up to 4 seconds). Also i noticed this happens exactly in the same moment when an enemy ship is about to explode."

This precisely describes what I experence, apart from the "enemy ship about to explode" comment. The GUI vanishing is something I've noticed, but not reported before (my bad).

[Ahdinko]

When the fight get's intense the game will freeze for few seconds (usually 2-3), left side bar (command/menu bar... w/e it's called) disappears for a second, after those two three seconds passes game goes to normal. Sometimes when it freezes side bar and all of the hud disappears (extreme cases, freezing takes up to 4 seconds). Also i noticed this happens exactly in the same moment when an enemy ship is about to explode.

Exactly my issue aswell.

System specs:
Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.85
4GB DDR2-800 RAM.
Nvidia 7900GT.

[CBJ]

Only assassination missions? No. Some / most combat missions? Yes. Both factory defense missions and patrol missions. I rarely take assassination missions.

Eh? I didn't mention assassination missions, and even the OP only said "especially" in that case. I'm talking about lengthy pauses in which various HUD elements disappear. What I'm trying to find out is how frequently these occur. If it's every couple of minutes then there's something wrong. If it's a lot less than that then it's not entirely unexpected.

[cucher]

I'm here again for a second... Just to add my vote to 2 last post. Yep, it's 100% my case.
Vanishing now...

Added later: Yes, GUI disappears several times per min in "problem" sectors or during any battle and 1-0,5 time per min in "usual" sectors. Despite well known issue they game becomes unplayable at all. All pauses are sinchronised with HDD access.

P.S. All problems appear with max quality only. Don't have any bad issues on medium at all. Except just one: don't want to play with medium quality settings.