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

[BlackDeath66]

Hi,

I've just got the game today, and I am one of the people who get performance issues even with a decent machine (mine is an AMD 3500+, 1Gb, X800XL, Win XP Pro x64 edition). Mainly in that if I try flying the simulator mission, it runs ok until i start firing my lazers (or when the npc ships do the same).

Anyway, to cut a long story short I tried disabling my onboard AC97 (thus loaded the game with no sound as I have no seperate sound card) and it worked much much better - almost perfect. This is with all the other settings the same.

So there is definately a sound issue with the game. I've managed so far with onboard sound with various other games, so I expect something strange is happening with this one!?

Obviosuly disabling onboard sound is not a fix, but it will at least let you know if that is the problem.

I am tempted to buy a new sound card to hopefully solve the problem but we'll see...

[Graphil]

Reposting from another thread since I have now tested this and it works.
On the main menu I originally had 5 FPS but dropping the pixel shader to v1.3 means it has gone up to 20 FPS.
The increase when flying is less however it better and I can't really tell the difference in the quality.
Unfortunately it wouldn't allow me to drop the vertex shader to v1.3 as well.


This is an article on guru3d.

We all know that Geforce FX series cards are not very good at P.S 2.0 and we must accept this fact. But that shouldn’t stop you for enjoying games that make heavy use of Pixel shaders.
GF FX cards struggles when it comes to rendering scenes where there is heavy use of PS 2.0.
Now this is where rivatuner comes to help.
PS 2.0 sure looks nicer than say PS 1.4 and 1.1 but the difference is not very striking.
When you get a game where your card struggles to produce decent FPS due to heavy use of Pixel shaders force PS 1.4 using rivatuner. This improves performance a lot at IQ does not suffer much. This is much better option rather than turning down your resolution or IQ settings in drivers.
Specially on GF FX 5200/5600 you should permanently force PS 1.4 as these cards are really too weak to handle PS2.0.

[Dante05]

I have observed many problems with the Realtek AC97 chipsets in recent games and can only conclude that they are no longer sufficeient, or that they lack the nessecary DirectX 9 support

[Graphil]

OK, here is how to achieve 100 FPS in Argon Prime on a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra.

1. Use Rivatuner to change the pixel shader to v1.3.
2. Use Rivatuner to change the vertex shader to v1.1.
3. Turn off EAX from the main menu.
4. Turn off the post processing filter from the in game menu.
5. Turn off the HUD.

[Graphil]

Note that setting the shaders lower using the rivatuner has a similar effect to setting the texture and shader quality to low in the graphic resolution on the main menu. However I think the performance gain doing is this way is less and looks worse.

[Crypton]

Along with my settings I posted, on my wifes rig I followed the RivaTuna advice, set the card forced to 1.3 Pixel Shader

Check out my results... with hud on..

Athlon XP 1800+
1GB DDR PC2100
5900 SE 128MB card
SB Live 5.1

Advanced Settings, High Performance, then rest same as my other post, ingame Pixel Medium, Textures High + Post Processing ON. (though Post Process does not give as much "glow", but still ok)

[ external image ]

Note that setting the shaders lower using the rivatuner has a similar effect to setting the texture and shader quality to low in the graphic resolution on the main menu. However I think the performance gain doing is this way is less and looks worse.

Didn't touch Vertex Shader, mine does not look bad at all, might give Vertex Shader a try, but will switch back if it looks ugly as I am getting great fps atm.

(Oh, I switched to 81.87 Beta Drivers)

[Mad Ashy]

I just tried my VGA Bios setting at 128 mb instead of 256 and my FPS and response doubled I have only tried this once I got the tip from the AMD forum.

[Mad Ashy]

For some reason I get jerky fps starting from Argon if I dock and save in another system and quit the game then start from that location my fps are over 20 fps and the menus and hud bits and bobs are very fast and the menus are responsive and argon system is smooth but not perfect when I fly back to it. Changing my Bios AGP setting from 256mb to 128 mb and starting from other locations has worked well for my set up. Try it with fast writes on in the bios.

[hoofmaster]

Tried the RivaTuner tip, but no-joy.

It seems more like a cpu issue tho as it only jerks now and again even with the same scene in view.

Specs: P4 3ghz, 1gig ram, GeForce 6800.

Hope the patch fixes this as im looking forward to playing it

Cheers,
Andrew (hoofmaster)

[Graphil]

Please note the trick about lowering the shader to v1.3 will only have impact on the FX series cards not the 6xxx and above.

[Esraven]

X3 did me realize that my PC now is a low end PC.
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
Freq 1800 MHz
RAM 512 Mb
NVidia GeForce FX5200 128 Mb

Initially, X3 had a super low frame rate, not playable, after disabling McAfee,
and setting texture and shader to low, disabling antialias and anisotrpic texture filtering I still had a jerky framerate.

Reading thourgh this forum, I collected the tips and tried succesfully the following:

Installed a second 512 Mb Ram (so now 1Gig Ram)
Reset of Nvidia driver to Driver version 78.01
Found that driver at
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_78.01.html
Installed Rivatuner to force pixelshader 1.4 as it was said on GF FX 5200/5600 you should permanently force PS 1.4 asthese cards are really too weak to handle PS2.0
Rivatuner you find here
http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/
Ran ad-aware to check if any unwanted program was running. Found alexia, killed it.
made a batch file to run X3 in high mem prior
see
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=97699
and then did the kill explorer trick after starting the X3 startup screen.

X3 run now fine for me, not perfect but fine for me.
Disabling the hud now let it run really smooth.

There are still things I can do to make it run better like running Game XP but I don't like mocking around in the registry.
I also think to upgrade my card, but I only want to spend max 200 € on it. So that will be Nvidia 6600 probably

BTW: I noted that with this settins starting up X3, the framerate in the game starts rather jerky but stabilises after a few minutes to pretty smoothly

[Darth Ratty]

I tried the pixel/vertex shader trick here and it did make quite a big difference even though I have a GF 6600GT card. Pixel shader to 1.3 and vertex shader to 1.1

The Xtreme-G (81.87) drivers also gave a better FPS. On the negative side using this driver does give occaisional, but very big stutters. Smoother and faster for the most part though.

Disabling v-sync also helped on my PC.

X3 is now more or less playable even with the HUD on and I only have a lowly Athlon XP2200+. I haven't been back to Argon Prime recently though so not sure what the performance will be like there. I did make it through a Xenon sector alive, but FPS there was absolutely terrible. That was before some of the changes. All I did was go from gate to gate as fast as possible with the HUD off and straffing/spiralling all the time. FPS was about 7.

All the changes above have increased the FPS by about 10 FPS from what it was originally. In average sector FPS is now 20+ with HUD on. I did try changing various AGP BIOS settings from their defaults, but that didn't really help. I also had a look at the PCI latency, but that seemed to be set fairly sensibly already.

My system is:

ASUS A7V333
AMD Athlon XP2200+ (1.8 MHz)
1GB RAM (2 x Corsair 512MB XMS 2700 DDR 333MHz)
GF 6600GT
SB Audigy LS (this makes a big difference in some games compared to the onboard sound)
Windows XP Pro SP2

Game settings are:
1024x768
Textures: Low
Shaders: Low
Anisotropic Filtering: Off
EAX: Off

GFX card sttings are whatever they are se to by default by the Xtreme- drivers apart from pixel/vertex shader settings which I tweaked as above using RivaTuner. V-sync is also off.

BTW, has anyone else noticed that the ecliptic projector is invisible in most sectors? And yes it was invisible before I did all the tweaking, even with textures (and I think shaders) set to high

[Bobby Joe]

I have a Gf Fx 5600 and i'm trying to use rivatuner to change the pixel shader, the option to change the pixel shader is grayed out and i dont know what to do could anyone help please

[Graphil]

it might be your driver version. check it is the latest first.

[Baleur]

I have absolutely NO IDEA about what have happened, but all of the sudden i have playable framerates with the HUD (20 and above).
I'm so happy i could cry, i just killed my first innocent boron

I tried the "High Preformance, High Quality" thing in my driver settings, if that was affecting it, but nope same playable fps on either settings..
The first thing i did before starting the game, just to check if it affected the fps, was to turn off the nvidia desktop blaha, lol dont remember the name of it, the activate/deactivate button which opens up a wide range of screen/desktop customizations such as "snap to within 5 pixels" which i always have had on.
BUT NOPE, with it back on, still playable..


There is one big potential reason for this, something i did before checking the game again if it would run smooth, involves SF. But i aint posting it here in case it gets me into trouble, any admin can feel free to pm me.

[Captain Kremen]

I have an AMD XP3200 Athlon AMD
Asus A7N8X-X Mobo
1GB Memory (Corsair XMS Pro)
AGP Geforce 6800GT (256Mb)

The game ran very jerky on this in standard setup and crashed repeatedly

Set Texture setting to medium
Set Pixel Shaders to Meduim

Great performance increase but still crashed

Bought A sound blaster Audigy for £17

Disabled the on board sound card and installed the audigy - Game now slightly faster only crashed occasionally (this game does not like on board sound cards on any of the ystems I have tried it on)

Tweaked the memory settings as recommended by corsair for this board to 2.7volts and 5-2-2-2 timings

Game has not crashed to date been playing for 38 hours now

I may try dropping ansiotropic filtering and post process filters now & disabling monitors before I go back & try high detail textures & Shaders

Currently playing at 1024 × 768 32bit textures

Considering my system it looks like it is the minimum spec to play this game reasonably smoothly

[ammath]

Love your tips about the game Graphil! BUT any idea how to do it with a ATI X800 card??

[The Space Pope]

Also note that all programs in the bottom-right of the desktop (in the taskbar) that can be closed really should be closed, it gave me a 15% FPS increase, putting it up to a just-playable 10FPS in Ceo's Buckzoid.
Thank god it doesn't drop in combat.
I personally am forcing my 5900XT to run Pixel Shader 1.4 rather than 1.1 or 1.3 (no shaders obviously doesn't work, but I tried anyway) I got slightly better results, but the changes were so small it could have been down to random little things taking up resources.
All I need now is a 'minimal' HUD option in 1.3 rather that on/off and I'll be very happy.
Will try the vertex shaders and v-sync, thanks for those.


Edit: Thanks a lot for the vertex shader tip, Graphil! It's just smooth as hell now!

[ammath]

Has anyone tried Omega drivers? Sorry if someone has said something about this already...

[Crypton]

Has anyone tried Omega drivers? Sorry if someone has said something about this already...

I have, but the tweakrus versions seemed to work better for me. I used to use Omega's all the time But does not mean you cannot see if any of them work better for you.