[mitsubishi]

If there's no problem (i.e. bug) with affinity being on the default of course it's better that way since the OS scheduler is left free to do its job. If there's no bug to overcome, forcing 1 particular core makes the OS being confined in a way of scheduling that is not necessarily ideal.

One could argue that the OS scheduler sucks but one forcing an app to 1 CPU is rarely better than the advanced schedulers of OSes nowadays.

[[DSG]Durandal]

I've had this issue Myself and wondered where the problem was.

As first I had 125 solid... never dropped more than 1 or 2 fps. Now I see exactly what you're describing. I have an older machine but it's more than enough to deal with UrT. (Athalon64 3800, 4gb ram, vista home premium, 512mb nvidia 9500GT).

I had the freezes... and turning off the stupid hard drive indexing fixed that.

Two things that have helped SOME with this have been:

1. I disabled the compositing and effects in windows in the shortcut for UrT... so basically when I start UrT My windows turns off the aero glass stuff and goes into the "basic" visual format. I also have it set to xp sp2 compatibility mode which seems to smooth things out a little.

2. I have been messing with changing the app priority. Setting the priority of the app up one notch actually smoothed out My fps a bit. I can't alt-tab as easily after I've been playing a while (takes a while for the rest of the apps to catch up and be usable) but it does seem to help a bit with this.

What I don't understand fully is why it started doing it. It was perfect for a while then suddenly stopped working well just like you describe. All I can think of is windows sucks.... and the build up of crap that happens after a while is just slowing it down.

[|it|Tizz]

God sake, its good to hear someone that knows what im getting trough. :)

I use Windows XP SP3 so i don't have Aero (in fact im even using an unattended version which turns a lot of useless windows things off).
I turned the files indexation off, even if i don't experience freezes, we'll see what improvement we'll get.

I already changed the priority for iourbanterror.exe, in fact im using a processus manager (Bill2's Process Manager) which allows me to set the priority for urt at high when im playing, and automatically set it up to low when the game is minimized. And indeed, it seems to improve things a little bit.

Your theory about windows crapping is interesting, but to my mind the issue seemed to appear too suddendly to confirm that.


Anyway, thanks a lot for all this help and advices.

This post has been edited by Tizz: 21 March 2010 - 11:29 PM

[[DSG]Durandal]

Don't overlook things like basic maintenance in this process. Windows still requires a lot compared to every other operating system unfortunately. It probably isn't the cause of the problem, but it will help regardless.

Some stuff to try:

1. Make sure to scan for viruses. I've been pretty happy with avast! for My windows machine. Seems to catch most stuff and use the least amount of resources of the freebies.

1.5 turn off the virus scanner while you're playing so it's not sitting in memory doing stuff and see if that helps. Every so often I'll have UrT drop to a crawl for 10 seconds... and then in the background I'll hear the stupid virus scanner telling Me it just updated itself.

2. Defrag. Unfortunately windows up through vista required that the disk be defragged (not sure if win7 eliminated that but since you're on XP... you need to do it fairly regularly). Internal windows defrag is ok... but I've had this recommended by My IT friends and I've been pretty happy with it: http://www.auslogics...re/disk-defrag/

3. Make sure you're video drivers are decently up to date.

4. Make sure you don't have any "bangs" in your device manager. If a piece of hardware does something stupid... it can generate duplicate versions of itself in the device manager which can cause windows to get confused... wasting processor cycles.

5. Run in native resolution on a flat panel. If you have an LCD monitor... as most people do these days... run in the "native" resolution for the panel if you aren't already. Conventional logic with CRT monitors was to run in lower resolution to increase performance... but with LCDs since they have a specific "native" resolution... if you run in anything else you have to perform scaling operations... this can slow you down. Worth a shot.

6. Mess with your video settings in your video driver preferences. If you open the nVidia control panel you can set all sorts of "per application" tweaks. Start off with setting it to "single panel performance" and see if that helps. I've had mixed luck with these things, but worth a shot. Unfortunately, UrT 4.1 is mostly CPU cycle dependent... hopefully 4.2 is changing this to make it more GPU dependent.

[|it|Tizz]

Thanks for all these advices, even if I already implement most of them. :)

I scan for viruses and adwares about every 2 weeks, I defrag my hard drive too (and the registry at the same time, using different softwares), my drivers are up to date (even if I downgraded my graphic driver since i was using the last beta version), I run in the native resolution like always and I already changed my nvidia setting like explained in the official faq (threaded optimization...) since a while.

Last night I was playing and I noticed an enhancement like still drops but minor ones, even on uptown with a lot of moron smokers.
So we'll see, but what's disquiets me is it's seem to depends on a lot of things (server im playing on, time of play...).


And about next version, FPS drops 'should' be fixed since VBO will be included, thanks to TwentySeven (it allows to transfer some of the CPU work to the GPU), and maybe the next version will deal with multiple cores a lil bit better.

This post has been edited by Tizz: 22 March 2010 - 08:21 AM

[Shinigami]

I just upgraded my video card from an 8800 gts to a gts 250 1 gig w/ twin frozr and now I have fps drops

The 8800 never had drops. So strange.

[Shinigami]

Optimized .exe; builds of ioq3 engine

Fixed it all

[|it|Tizz]

Shinigami, on 02 April 2010 - 10:44 PM, said:

Optimized .exe; builds of ioq3 engine

Fixed it all

Not for me. :(
I reinstalled Windows (now I use Windows Seven), still the same (maybe even worse than before). The Mitsu's rebuild doesn't change anything, no matter the version I use (64 bits or not, gcc...).
I checked my hardware temperature : my GPU is about at 37° (celcius) and my CPU at 55° (what I found is pretty normal).

Even with very very low settings, it's still the same (I'm pretty sure that playing' with top graphisms gives the same than playin' in 800x600 with everything off).


So I'm a nervous wreck, I really don't see what else I could try. :(

[mitsubishi]

See if the GPU has underclocked accidentally. There is an NVIDIA tool to overclock ('nvtune' probably) the NVIDIA GPUs, so install it and see if using on it the 'correct' settings fixes it. I'm not saying to overclock it, but to see if it was underclocked. If it's fixed with it overclocked ok, it could be that too.

[|it|Tizz]

Ok I tried this, but my GPY seemed to be already on the normal settings.

Does this kind of software exist for CPU as well?