[ATacoGuy]

Looked for more info on this and couldn't find it. It's a pretty system-specific question anyway, so it'd help to have your guys' take on it. My system specs are as follows:

Athlon XP 2800
Radeon 9700 Pro
NForce2 Motherboard
1GB PC3200 RAM
Win XP Pro
Catalyst Drivers version 4.something (4.9, I think)

Now the question. I've been playing 3.6.5 beta at 1280x1024 with pretty much all the graphical bells and whistles turned on, and I'm getting some serious choppiness at certain points in the game, usually when I have a large object like a capital ship in view. Is this just something to be expected because my system doesn't have the horsepower to handle all the purty stuff, or is there something I can tinker with or download to make it a bit smoother?

Also, if it's just b/c my system isn't powerful enough, what settings offer the best opportunities to increase performance but preserve general graphical goodness by turning them off?

[mitac]

I would guess it's the glowmaps. Have you installed lightspeed's low-res or high-res glowmaps?

Apart from that, try the usual stuff, like checking the settings in the catalyst control center, reducing screen resolution to standard 1024*768 (as far as I know, the non-standard resolutions are rather "beta") and check any background processes on your system. Turning off the virus scanner helped a lot for me.

[ATacoGuy]

Actually, it's the mipmaps, I found out. I turned them off and presto! Problem solved.

[ATacoGuy]

Hey, I'm bumping this b/c it turns out that turning off mipmaps and glowmaps and pretty much everything else doesn't help this. Basically, it seems like at some point in the mission the game just decides its going to be choppy, and from that point on it's choppy, no matter what's on screen. It runs smooth as butter the rest of the time. I have no idea what's going on here, although I'm inclined to believe it's something more to do with the game itself rather than my hardware, just because of the way that the choppiness sets in.

[Grimloq]

try using the 'preload audio' flag. it helps.

[Hippo]

having a catylist over 4.4 isn't exactly helping either... There seems to be more problems than specular stuff not showing up... Mostly crash related though...

[MatthewPapa]

That used to happen to me until I recently BEASTIFIED my system.

[ATacoGuy]

The preload audio thing was already turned on.

I'm going to try racheting down my catalyst version and see if that helps.

I'm starting to suspect that this is capital-ship related, as it doesn't seem to happen unless there's two or more large ships in the area.

[ATacoGuy]

Installed Catalyst 4.3, and all of my graphical problems are a thing of the past. Thanks Hippo!

[Hippo]

I wish it was that easy for me... I can't even get the catylist panel to INSTALL for me... It says drivers not found or something...

[Taristin]

Anyone, besides mitac, notice he's running at 1280 x 1024? That'd be a major slowdown for most systems... Lower it to a standard resolution, and It'll be better for you... Or wait until they are officially supported before complaining about them.

[Hippo]

Thats what i run, seeing as its the native res of my screen... No slowdown experienced here...

[Taristin]

No?

[Hippo]

Barring the amount of time that the drivers freeze, and i do a cold boot... I hit 60fps regularly, and thats only from VSync...

[Taristin]

Hm... Well, since my aim is usually off anyways, maybe I should up the resolution on mine, too...