Re: Auto Assault Performance Not Good on Current Machine
- From: "Vanguard" <vanguard.news@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 19:04:06 -0500
"John Bailo" <jabailo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:MZudncz-R-11kNHZnZ2dnUVZ_vadnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I just bought and installed Auto Assault on my Windows XP machine and find that the performance is unusable, even though I'm beyond the mimimum specs:
2400 Athlon XP 2Ghz processor
512M RAM (2x 256)
100MB HD
GeForce FX 5250 video card
I'm thinking of buying some or all of the following:
GeForce 6350 GS
AMD 64 Motherboard and Chip ( AGP slot is only 4x, I think my 5250 can go up to 8x)
1G RAM
Do you think I need to, or can I make any smaller changes to my original config to run such a beast?
I don't play that game. Could be you need more memory. If you have lots of programs loaded when you start the game, there is less system memory for the game. Disable the anti-virus program, unload any e-mail program or monitor utility, and kill or unload any other non-essential programs. You might even decide to disable the firewall and then also disable the LAN connectoid (if you are using cable or DSL) if the game doesn't need Internet access while playing it (i.e., you aren't playing online games with other players located elsewhere). Virtual memory is very, very, VERY slow "memory" because it is actually a file on the super slow hard drive. Use the tray icons to unload, disable, or exit some of the programs, use Task Manager to kill those that don't provide the option to kill them, and maybe even use msconfig.exe to disable the startup items so they don't load in the first place. If you have any events defined in Task Scheduler, check if they have the option to wait until the host is idle before running and waiting for awhile until the host becomes busy so they don't run while you are playing the game. You might also check which NT services can be stopped while playing the game. Alternatively, you could define a different hardware profile (see http://www.tweakxp.com/article37021.aspx) to eliminate some stuff from loading when selecting that profile on rebooting Windows to play the game under a less busy environment. While using a different hardware profile lets you configure which NT service is running when using that profile, that only applies to services so all other programs that load using the Run registry keys or in the Startup menu will still load.
You may simply want to add more memory to your existing host. 512MB isn't a big amount anymore. Every time Microsoft comes out with another OS, it sucks up LOTS more memory. Vista will need 2GB! Geez. Sure makes me think of looking more at the Unix solutions (Linux, etc.). Get more memory, or replace your old modules with bigger ones, so more processes run in real system memory rather than in super slow virtual memory. I'm playing Far Cry at the moment and I've noticed in Task Manager that my peak memory usage was 1.4GB but I only have 512MB of real memory so the rest was from slow virtual memory. Rather than just double up to 1GB, I'll be going to 2GB because there are some games that really need that much (I think Fear is one of them).
I'm not familiar with your particular video card (and too lazy to bother going to their site to look up its specs). Maybe it only has 128MB of video RAM so a video card with more memory might work better, like getting the frame rate up. Some video cards can be overclocked. I have the ATI 9600 Pro and can use a couple different utilities to overclock the video card's GPU and memory. However, the speed change (in frame rate) is so small that I gave up on overclocking and overheating the video card for what was an imperceptible or imagined gain. If upping the system memory doesn't help, you might just try going with a better video card rather than spend the more money building a whole new system.
You neglect to mention WHAT you regard as not performing well. Could be the frame rate is too low in the game. Try using a lower video resolution and setting other controls in the game's configuration that use less CPU or other resources, like lowering anti-aliasing or configuring your video driver to let the application select it or tell the game not to use it. Or lower the complexity of objects. Or play with the games options.
A 100MB hard drive is rather puny. Windows XP Pro itself will consume over 2GB after awhile (after you use it for several months and continue installing software that Microsoft promotes developers to pollute the OS paths). Maybe you meant that it is a 100GB hard drive. That still doesn't say how much free space was left on the disk after installing the game and it may require large temp or save files. Also, if space it tight then maybe you don't have a large enough pagefile (aka virtual memory) that the game needs.
Thinking you need new and faster and more expensive hardware may not be a solution if the real problem is that you have too much sh.., er, stuff loaded and consuming memory and CPU cycles. No matter how fantastic the hardware you get, if you consume most of its resources running background processes then your game will still perform poorly.
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