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Poor performance in the demo.
membrain Offline
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Posts: 40
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Joined: Sep 2010
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#11
Solved: 8 Years, 1 Month, 3 Weeks ago RE: Poor performance in the demo.

I suggest you do the following things additionaly:
1. Defrag your hard drives.
2. Disable file/folder indexing (Rightclick on hard drive > Properties).
3. Click start>run, type "msconfig.exe" and check the panel (don't know what its name is on an English Windows. I only have a German Windows) where the programs are which are beeing loaded whith Windows and disable unnecessary entries (for example "Acrobat Reader", "Quick Time" and so on). If you limit only to essential programs this should give you a few more Megs of free RAM.
4. Disable Antivirus while playing
5. Click start>run, type "cmd" and type "CHKDSK /f /r" to the black window that pops up. It will ask you for doing the error-check on the next start of windows. Type "Y" to confirm and restart. Then let the check run and maybe there are some file system errors which will get fixed.

If these tips won't help a bit I guess you have an incompatability of drivers and hardware or drivers and game.

membrain
09-06-2010, 07:29 PM
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Phoenix849 Offline
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Posts: 1
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Joined: Sep 2010
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#12
Solved: 8 Years, 1 Month, 3 Weeks ago RE: Poor performance in the demo.

I have Athlon 3000+ 1.8GHz, 2048 RAM, Radeon X1950. Yeah, I know, I know, I hate my video card, I had problems with sooo many games with it. But I've been waiting for Amnesia for a long time so I can't just let it go. I really trust in you, espesially after reading the blog.

The problem is the same: when I start the demo I have black screen and subtitles are late for one phrase, i.e. when Daniel says the second phrase, the first subtitles are appearing. Then I see some dark picture with walls and candle, but lag on moving mouse is nearly 5-10 seconds. Should I say I can't even walk?

In Troubleshooting Guide you wrote something about ATI X-series, but I'm hell of a noob, so I don't understand anything about these AGP and GART things, sorry(
09-06-2010, 09:25 PM
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knifee Offline
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Posts: 1
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Joined: Sep 2010
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#13
Solved: 8 Years, 1 Month, 3 Weeks ago RE: Poor performance in the demo.

(09-05-2010, 09:17 AM)Arvuti Wrote: When I first started Amnesia demo, I maxed everything out, only to be greeted by terrible lag. I finally managed to get some decent frames per seconds when turning line smoothing, paralax and SSAO off..I understand that they all are pretty performance heavy, but.. My computer can run mafia 2, crysis, metro 2033 on all high. Why cant I run this maxed out ? Undecided

Specs : Ati Radeon HD 5770, AMD athlon II X4 635, 2gb ddr3 ram.

I signed up here 'caus the Steam forums wont let me post Sad

Anyway I had really low FPS with the demo, turning everything down to low got me about 2fps which was quite strange as like yourself i normally don't struggle to play games with the settings turned up.

Anyway I really wanted to play the demo so i played around a bit, and ended up as a last throw of the dice setting the cpu affinity to a single core. After this the game ran fine for me.

I dont know if this will help you, but i notice that you like me have a quad core CPU (although i have an intel), also the OP in the thread i wanted to reply to on the steam forums mentions that he has a quad core so perhaps there is an issue there.

Anyway I hope that helps.
/K

Steam forum thread i mentioned:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/sh...?t=1423531
09-07-2010, 12:17 AM
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Cyborg34572 Offline
Junior Member

Posts: 30
Threads: 1
Joined: Sep 2010
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#14
Solved: 8 Years, 1 Month, 3 Weeks ago RE: Poor performance in the demo.

My methods to improve game performance.

A: Scan for viruses/malwares/adwares/spywares (After doing it in windows, do it again in safemode. Some viruses disguise themselvs as system files, and when thats the case anti-virus softwares cannot uninstall them because theyl be considered "important" system files. So always scan again inside safe mode. I personaly like Avast and kaspersky anti-viruses.

B: Delete all temp files ( Right click a partition - properties - Run disc cleanup, Dont worry it wont erase any important files, just junk temp files)

C: Do disk checks to search for damage

D: Do HDD Defrag . I dont use the windows integrated defragging software because its slow and not very good. I use a defragging software called "defraggler", its fast and arranges files much better.

E:After the partitions are defragged and cleaned its time to takecare of the softwares eating up resources. Open up msconfig (Start - type msconfig), In "Startup tab" Disable all useless startup programs that eat up memory.

Another way to gain little performance boost is to disable some uneeded services. Start - services.msc . To disable a service, right click on the service you wish to disable - properties - startyp type - disabled or manual. Be very careful in what services you disable, some control the sound/internet and many other important things so research what service does before disabling it, ALso disabling one service can disable other services that has a dependancy on the service you just disabled.

When all that is done and you have restarted your pc after making changes. Open up task manager (Ctrl- alt delete) - processes , Disable any unneeded process that is running. Antiviruses/auto updates/ auto scans, etc.

F: If you are not sure which processes or services are safe to disable , then download a program called "gamebooster". With one click of a button this program will disable background processes and services for you to free up cpuspeed and ram.

G: Another thing i do to avoid stuttering in games is to disable Partition indexing (indexing makes your harddrive work full power everytime , resulting in stutter gameplays), To disabled indexing just right click a partition - properties - uncheck "allow this drive to have contents indexed".

Another way to make the harddrive faster is to enable write-caching. Open up device manager ( Start -control panel - hardware and sound - device manager) - Inside device manager - disc drives - right click your HDD - properties - Check "Enable write cache buffer this device " - Also Check "turn off windows write-caching in this device". But before doing those, please read the warnings said , Checking both options will make your harddrive work better but you will get dataloss if ever the power to your cpu just cuts off so use at your own risk.

H: WARNING: ONLY FOR PEOPLE WITH 4GB AND HIGHER . I Game on a 32 bit system so i can only use 3.25 GB maximum memory. WHen im gaming my system doesnt really allocate alot of memory to the games i play, but theres a way around this. Open up command prompt ( My computer - system drive - Windows - system32 - search for CMD) And type in this command
"BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva 3072" (without quotes)

This will make your system allocate that ammount of memory to heavy programs you use. Remember it might cause problems for some games but it can also increase performance in others. Its safe to try because you can always revert it back to default ammount "2048". To make sure thats the default ammount in your system just typed in "BCDEDIT" and hit enter, scroll down and see what increaseuserva is set to, thatl be the default u need to remember.


I: WARNING: IDK IF THIS PROGRAM IS FOR XP ALSO: . For 32 bit OS users like me, we can only use 3.25 gb of our system memory even if we have 4gb or more installed. This can be a problem for people like me who dont wanna upgrade to a 64bit just to get more memory. The solution to this is to download a program called "readyfor4GB", its a simple program that modifies the kernel memory capacity. It wont corrupt your system or anything, infact itl add in a second boot option , and the onlyway to activate it is to boot up in that with the new kernel it creates. This program allows 32bit users to have full use of up to 128gb of Ram. Its is very usefull for people with 4gb and can only use 3.25, itl give u some performance boost and definitly faster loading times. But again, use at your own risk. It works for me just fine tho.

Note: After using the program itl add in a second boot options. U must boot up and select this boot option to load up windows, to enable the use of more than 4gb memory.

To confirm it worked , just right click my computer and in the performance test itl tell u that you have 4GB ( or more if you have more lol)

J: For people with alot of memory to use, like say 10+GB, there is a program out there called "RAMDISK" basicaly what it does is it uses your ram as a storage device, this enables you to install your game directly into ram, resulting in almost non existent loading times because the whole game is already in ram it doesnt have to load up the files from the harddisk. This will also take away stuttering. This is very handy if you have 10+gb ram, but make sure you have 3gb left for windows to use.

KBig Grinisable all fancy aero effects that take up memory and tax the video card. Start - right click my computer - properties - Advanced system settings - advanced settings - advanced - visual effects - In here turn off every single effect, itl look like good old windows 98 but wil give u a nice performance boost.

L: Disable pagefile/virtual memory if you have more than 4gb. Its pointless , it just taxes your HDD while your playing games causing stuttering.To disable this just got to start - right click my computer - properties - advanced system settings - advanced - virtual memory - change - Set virtual memory to 0 for all partitions, yeah itl give you a warning that its not recommended and will cause blue screens or crashing, but that only occurs if you have less than 4gb system ram. So i dont recomment if for people with less than 4gb.

M: If Your on a laptop like me, disable your laptops power saving mode and put it to full performance. This way your VC/HDD/etc wont be trying to save battery power, theyl run at full power.

N:If your using readyboost service, disable it , its pointless itl likely cause u to stutter more.

O: Disable superfetch and prefetch if you dont need em. To do this you have to open up regedit and do some editing there. Do at your own risk again, any wrong thing u do there will mess up your windows os.

-Disable superfetch - go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters - Find "Enablesuperfetch" and change its value from 3 to 0

-Disable prefetch - go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters -
fine "EnablePrefetcher" and change its value from 3 to 0

P: In gaming it can help to change its priority to "High" most of the time. To do this just hit ctrl-alt-delete while ingame to oopen up the task manager - right click the game process- change priority - set to high. Note, some games wont let you do this, they wont let you back in the game after changing priority, Also some games dont really benefit from doing this, infact it might actualy cause them to run worst. So just test on some games and see what happens.

Q:While gaming , make sure you use the highest monitor Hz you can use in the resolution your playing the game in. For example if im playing a game in 640x40(yeah i still play games at that res lol) but my monitor hz is only 60, everything will look stuttery and choppy even with vsync disabled, So to make your game even more smoother just use the max hz you can use with theresolution u wanna play your game in.

R: IF you have a low end video card make sure you disable any forced settings from CCC(if you have ATI, or Nvidiaforceware ( IF you have nvidia). Forced settings like AA/AF/Adaptive-AA/ should be disabled if you have a low end video card.

Another cool way to get a performance boost is you set "MIPMAP" TO High instead of High quality in CCC- 3D. (IMsorry i dont have an nvidia card so i dont know how to change it in nvidia forceware). Mipmap set to high doesnt really look differently at all to High quality, there is no visible change so go ahead and put that to High instead of high quality, itl give u a bit of performance gain.

Tips on which graphical settings tax alot ad should be disabled if you have a low end video card.

When trying to find a good combination of video settings, try to disable the most taxing ones first.

-lower your resolution to 1024-768 for now
-Disable AA
If performance is still bad
-Disable SSAO
if performance is still bad
-Disable reflections
if performance is still bad
-Disable shadows
If performance is still bad
-Lower AF
If performance is still bad
-lower texture quality
etc.

Thats just the order i do when im trying to find a good combination of settings. When ive finaly disabled the setting thats causing the lag, i then put up the other settings i lowered earlier and see if i still get nice framerates.

S:Update your video card/sound drivers to the latest ones. But when doing so, do not just install over your old driver, this is not recommended at all. Uninstall the driver within windows first, then download a program called "drivercleaner". Boot up into safemode and use drivercleaner to erase all traces of your old vc driver. After that you can boot up back in normal windows and finaly install the new drivers.

Well im mental blocked now, i cant think of anymore tweaks, i got other tweaks but they have nothing to do with performance so ill leave those out.

WARNING: Some of these tweaks are only available for vista/windows 7. AND USE ARE YOUR OWN RISK, I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE IF YOUR SYSTEM MESSED UP AFTER DOING THE SOME OF THE TWEAKS I MENTIOND. I HAVE DONE ALL TWEAKS MENTIONd IN MY LAPTOP AND ITS STILL RUNNING GOOD.

But sorry for this VERY VERY long reply. Im bored lol
peace.
09-07-2010, 04:07 AM
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