Tips'n'tricks to get more FPS - research for a sticky!

[Ithoqua]

Everything looks the same as in any other resolution... 800x600 is what I play a lot of FPS games in just because it's faster than 1024x768, and honestly, it's harder to make out smaller objects at large distances at higher resolutions anyway. I made a .reg file and put it on my desktop so I can restore my changes at will. I'll post the keys for the reg changes when I get home tonight.

[stl]

Cmon Ppl! Someone try this out and post back! Disabling write combining was like a miracle cure for me! I got major chug when it was on

I feel like an idiot, but I can't figure out where to do that.

[Ithoqua]

Ok - obviously, the reg keys for X3 are in HKEY_USERS\...\SOFTWARE\EGOSOFT\X3

The two keys for resolution are
VideoHeight & VideoWidth, just change them to 600 & 800 respectively... make sure you select decimal before putting in decimal values, otherwise, the hex values for 800x600 are 320x258

I also ran the game at 640x480 for kicks, but for me there was no noticable performance increase and it began to look a wee bit pixelated, but not bad.

[mattstint]

Cmon Ppl! Someone try this out and post back! Disabling write combining was like a miracle cure for me! I got major chug when it was on

I feel like an idiot, but I can't figure out where to do that.

Ah no worries! All you have to do is:

1) Right click your desktop

2) Select properties

3) In the next box select the "Settings" tab (top right)

4) Hit the "advanced" button near the bottom right next to "troubleshoot"

5) In this next box select the "Troubleshoot" tab (not the troubleshoot from the last box)

6) You should see the option "Enable write combining" if the checkbox has a tick in it clear it. If it not... bugger!

7) click OK, windows will ask you to restart your computer yada yada you know the rest!

Thats it! Hopefully when windows rears its ugly head again you start X3 and itll run like shit off a shovel!

Hope none of this was insulting, I'm not normally good at explaining things and I just wanted to be clear. Apologies for the length of the post also!

[UncaPathy]

@mattstint: Yes, that gave a big boost in performance for me too! Thanks for the tip!

[Spare-Flair]

Will the next patch allow you to turn on/off all the additional graphic options that are printed in the older version of the manual that never made it to the actual released game?

That might help a lot of people to deactivate things like particles, bump mapping, cache3D, etc.

[CBJ]

Will the next patch allow you to turn on/off all the additional graphic options that are printed in the older version of the manual that never made it to the actual released game?

That might help a lot of people to deactivate things like particles, bump mapping, cache3D, etc.

No. Most of those options have no relevance whatsoever to the game, and those that do would make little or no difference because of the use of shaders. The in-game options for shader quality provide the equivalent functionality, and you have the additional option to use something like RivaTuner or CoolBits to force your graphics card to pretend to have fewer capabilities than it does if you want the game to use older shader models.

[Frq]

@mattstint, Thanks for that great tip, on a p4 3.2 ghz, x800 PE XT PE, 2ghz low latency RAM I went from 8-9fps in combat 18-20 fps out of combat (average) to 25-30 in combat and 40-60 average. Great stuff

[Dr.Sid]

Changing screen size in registry did not help me .. in full screen game still runs 1024, in window it runs in the specified window size, but it crashes in the menu.

[Dingo69]

Sorry if I have miss something but how do I get the game to show me what FPS I running out?

[CBJ]

You use a third party tool such as Fraps.

[mattstint]

@mattstint, Thanks for that great tip, on a p4 3.2 ghz, x800 PE XT PE, 2ghz low latency RAM I went from 8-9fps in combat 18-20 fps out of combat (average) to 25-30 in combat and 40-60 average. Great stuff

That's awesome! What an improvement! Im so happy it helped! Hope more people will try this out!

[SparkyMahn]

@mattstint, Thanks for that great tip, on a p4 3.2 ghz, x800 PE XT PE, 2ghz low latency RAM I went from 8-9fps in combat 18-20 fps out of combat (average) to 25-30 in combat and 40-60 average. Great stuff

That's awesome! What an improvement! Im so happy it helped! Hope more people will try this out!

YES!!!! I can now get through

Spoiler

Show

the second wave of pirates in the second mission (YES!! I'm FINALLY past them!!! YES!! YES!! WOOHOO!!! . . . eagerly plays further into the mission . . . gets to hear dogan hurl . . . gets to feal like hurling when flying in the city . . . gets to die in the spacesuit because the controls locked up . . . er . . . no! no! nooooo!! ... well, at least it gave me a good time to stop playing so I could write this )

with a whopping 5-8 fps with combat chatter and 10-12 without chatter

I was getting upwards of 1-4 fps previously at the same point... and that was with all the other recommended speed enhancements from in place.

even just flying around in a semi-populated non-combat area I'm now getting 15-20 fps (previously with all the other enhancements except for this in place I was getting 8-10 fps).

By the way the 2nd biggest fps increase was from switching from on-board audio to an old dusty sound card I had laying around

and the 3rd biggest was adjusting the codec priorities...

and yes, just like some of the others, I get almost the same fps in 1024x768 as I do with 1280x1024 . . . weird . . . . er . . . wait a minute . . . I can play in 1280x1024 without a noticable bog-down now??? COOL!!!! j/k

ATI 9600
512MB (do I hear laughing?)
1.6 Ghz P4 CPU (yes, I definately hear laughing . . . )

[BaronDeKalb]

Not sure if anybody has suggested this, but try turning off "Write Combining" (requires restart) in ur display properties. I get very smooth gameplay from disabling this.

Thanks mattstint, not only did i get some fps, but more importantly i think
the freezing bug for me is cured.........

doing this and killing all non-nessassary processes and turning off aa and
af im over 30fps with no HUD and close to 30 with HUD and the cockpit
mod :ph34r: at 1280x960. high high... (i unplug the internet also when
playing)

sys
p4 2.8 ghz
1.5 gig mem
ATI 9500 PRO O/C 364 core 310.5 mem
ac97 onboard sound.
more fans than kmart....

[mattstint]

This is terrific! I think there is definitely some issue with write combining and X3. Can any devs confirm this?

Happy to have helped your framerates!

I wish everybody would try this, C'mon you can do it peeps!

Edit: My first new page, yay!

[f1l1pp0]

This is terrific! I think there is definitely some issue with write combining and X3. Can any devs confirm this?

Happy to have helped your framerates!

I wish everybody would try this, C'mon you can do it peeps!

Edit: My first new page, yay!

Hi to all,
i 'd like to know from a dev or thec admin if:

- it's safe?
- it's "compatible" with lcd monitors (samsung sync 913N 19")
- it is only for aticard and Pentium or it works well for nvidia cards (6600 256 agp)? and amd cpu...
- what about other software (games or other) .... can i let it deactivated or everytime switch and reboot
- this is (write combining) a sort of command for monitor cache to improve performance, if this issue work can it will put as code for next patch?, so we can leave it chekked in xp?

i didn't try it but if it work it is a good improvement and so ..... tnx to mattstint

bb

[CBJ]

Let me first make it clear that I'm not an expert on this, but this is what I have been able to determine so far.

Write combining is a method of handling memory which combines several write operations into one to reduce the number of times memory is accessed and thereby improve performance. It has been implemented by both Intel and AMD processors for several years now, and from what I've been able to determine both ATI and nVidia also support it in their graphics hardware.

The general advice seems to be that if it doesn't appear to cause stability problems on your system then you can safely leave it enabled for improved performance.

I'm not aware of any way in which the game explicitly uses, or does not use, write combining, and it could well be that the benefit being seen by some people is at the driver or codec level rather than directly in the game itself. At a guess, it probably helps with streamed data since the processed data will be able to be written to memory in blocks rather than a single value at a time.

As far as I am aware, the type of monitor you are using should have no bearing on this.

[shadowfawx]

That is exactly right.

I also tried this and noticed a very good increase in frame rates.

The logic behind this is actually backwards, which still leads me to believe that our #1 problem still lies in the lap of the X3 devs.

[mattstint]

Let me first make it clear that I'm not an expert on this, but this is what I have been able to determine so far.

Write combining is a method of handling memory which combines several write operations into one to reduce the number of times memory is accessed and thereby improve performance. It has been implemented by both Intel and AMD processors for several years now, and from what I've been able to determine both ATI and nVidia also support it in their graphics hardware.

The general advice seems to be that if it doesn't appear to cause stability problems on your system then you can safely leave it enabled for improved performance.

I'm not aware of any way in which the game explicitly uses, or does not use, write combining, and it could well be that the benefit being seen by some people is at the driver or codec level rather than directly in the game itself. At a guess, it probably helps with streamed data since the processed data will be able to be written to memory in blocks rather than a single value at a time.

As far as I am aware, the type of monitor you are using should have no bearing on this.

Hey thanks for the info on what write combining does CBJ! I can add however that if you right click the checkbox that enables/disables WC you can get a "what's this?" tooltip that also explains that it might cause screen corruption when enabled due to the increased speed of the information written to the screen.

I can confirm that X3 performs phenomenonally better with it off in X3 for me at least and a few other ppl have reported similar improvements and I aint no expert either! In this case the screen corruption is crap performance. What does it do for you CBJ? Have you tried it?

And to answer the earlier question, yes it is completely safe to disable this option and I am using a LCD monitor. A Sony SDM-HS75P to be exact. Also see my sig for sytem spec.

I leave write combining off all the time and all my games run smooth as silk eg doom 3, fear, pro evo 5, half life 2.

Give it a try and see how it works for you

[SparkyMahn]

There is information on 'write combining' on the various manufactures sites (er ... at least on ATI's, AMD's and Intels web sites - I'm sure Nvidia has some too - just haven't found it yet) - some of the information appears also explains 'write combining stalling'...