Performance! Memory leak?

meanie · Post by **meanie** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 6:29 am

my computer specs..

Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz
512Mb Ram
Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 440 (64Mb GFX card)

playing the game with all specs set to low (800x600 res .. no shadows ect)

i get lagged out in City Hub areas .. FPS (net_graph 1 in console to check) get as low as 10-15 FPS .. this is due to my GFX card and RAM .. a better/newer GFX card and/or extra RAM will no doubt fix this lag in those areas .. in combat areas such as houses/buildings my FPS are fine 40-60 .. this lag isnt from the maps im finding but the amount of a Ai characters within the area .. while in one of the last areas, the Lacroix building at the end of the game .. with all the Ai enemies around shooting and what not i get a little lag at times

also after about 2-3 hours of play the lag becomes regular and noticable .. for a quick fix to this i just exit the game and restart it fresh .. empting the cache

Gauda · Post by **Gauda** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 6:44 am

Well, I for my part get excactly the same performance with lowest resolution, bump mapping off, and shadows off, and all other settings to lowest, as I get when I have highest resolution, bump mapping on, and all the setting set to its' highest. There seems to be very little difference between the settings too.

Alaphic · Post by **Alaphic** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 2:54 pm

one thing to try if it's being laggy and such is to force it to use a different version of directx. add -dxlevel7 or -dxlevel8 to the shortcut. it may make some of the textures look a little funky (some of the NPC's mouths light up in bright pink in the cutscenes, etc.) but you'll get better performance and there's no real perceptible graphical difference.

Intergalactic · Post by **Intergalactic** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 3:00 pm

It runs ok on my machine, only Downtown reminds me of Morrowind style laggyness sometimes. The resolution and the amount of Details didn't have a great influcence on the framerate for me (maybe ~5 frames.) But i did get a runtime error, when my pagefile was only 740mb. Seems like this game is memory crazy.

vesselle · Post by **vesselle** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 4:12 pm

don't forget, the ingame console code:
flush

it flushes out your memory immediately and clears your cache. next to rebooting, it's a big help.

V***V

ps: a pagefile of 740mb? no wonder you returned an error. that's waaaay too low.
i run mine at 4500mb.
and don't let windows manage it, either. make it constant.

p4 2.53
ati 9600 XT, 128mb
512mb RAM
120gb WD hdd, 7200rpm, 8 mb cache
WinXP, SP2
DX9.0c

Intergalactic · Post by **Intergalactic** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 4:33 pm

It was constant at 740 before i got Vampires...
Now it is 4Gbs on a 64k - Cluster partition.
That helped loading times a *lot*
btw you have a 8Mb cashe Harddisc? I'd kill for it

Nihilanth · Post by **Nihilanth** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 3:13 am

call me stupid, but what's "paging file" and is there any way to increase it? Is it determined by the hdd size or what?

Ruds · Post by **Ruds** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 3:52 pm

Paging file is your virtual memory. You can change it by going into you My Computer properties > advanced > performance settings > advanced > change virtual memory.

There seems to be a consensus that around 4000 virtual memory is a good setting. Don't set it to that much if you don't have more than that amount in extra hard drive space though. If you don't, clear some up if you can.

About those pink mouths. The bottom of my game box says that directx 9.0c is required to play this game, and so is a directx 9.0c compliant 64mb video card. Well, it then says that ALL nvidia geforce series chipsets are supported. I'm using an nvidia geforce 4, and I installed directx 9.0c from the CD when I installed Vampire, but I have pink mouths!

Is my video card not good enough and I'm being deferred to a lower directx setting? Any idea what the problem is? I DON'T have one of those -dxlevel settings in my shortcut either.

Intergalactic · Post by **Intergalactic** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 4:09 pm

What kind of Geforce 4 do you ahve exactly? I have an Geforce 4 Ti 4200
and it works without problems.
Have you tried downloading new drivers for your graphic card?

Ruds · Post by **Ruds** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 5:08 pm

geforce 4 mx 440

And I've got the most recent drivers.

meanie · Post by **meanie** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 5:28 pm

- i got the same video card Ruds

- an i get the same pink mouth inside .. not with all of the Ai conversations though ..

- GeForce 4 MX 440 is an old card .. you can buy it pretty cheap now days

Maxinion · Post by **Maxinion** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 6:26 pm

I think the problem with the pink mouths occurs when you run in directx 7 mode, as someone stated earlier that using the console switch to activate that mode does in fact create the pink mouths. The Geforce 4 MMX 440 is a DirectX 7 generation card, so it has to run that by default... hence your pink mouths. Yes, its a bug more than likely. But a patch is in the works, so don't despair!

A quick search on Newegg turns up several 5200 series cards for 50 bucks. Any of the Geforce 5200 cards there should increase performance substantially, and MIGHT get rid of the pink mouths. They're 50 bucks, pretty reasonable, IMO. I'm not 100% sure about the directx7 bug, so don't quote me.

Can anyone back me up on this claim? I can't check my game right now, but does throwing the directx 7 switch cause pink mouths?

RugeR · Post by **RugeR** » Mon Nov 29, 2004 7:01 pm

Can't wait till a patch comes! i got:
p4 2.8
512ram
6800gt

with new drivers, bios, etc. This studdering, crashing, texture bugs, sound, quest bugs, etc is killing me. Sorry, but this would have to be the most bugged game I've ever had. This is a lot worse than HL2 for me, but at least there I could change enough video settings to make it playable. I don't want to tweak stuff in the console for fear that a patch is in the works. If I see "check to make sure your computer meets minimum specs" one more time on Activision's support site - i'll scream.

a00krido · Post by **a00krido** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:30 pm

Will RAM boost my performance ?

I wonder if there is some way of turning on a FPS text displaying the frames per second in the game ?

I have pretty bad performance in the game. I have this system:

P4 2,53 GHz
512 MB RAM 333MHz
GeForce 6800GT 128MB DDR1

From what I take I have above 30fps indoors but only about 15-20 fps in the streets. I wonder if RAM upgrade to 1024MB would help, and if so how much in terms of fps ?

I ordered an extra 512MB today... it shoúld be installed by the end of the week... fingers crossed that it will booost my fps

I've also problems with "stutters" that usually happens when you look at an area or direction that you havn't looked at for awhile... I'm that the RAM upgrade willl fix this but I wonder if the FPS will increase as well ?

Ruds · Post by **Ruds** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 6:24 pm

I've posted on several boards and talked with many people. It seems that just about anyone meeting minimum requirements with 512mb of RAM has terrible frame rate and stuttering problems, while those with 768 or 1024 have virtually no problems.

Now, there are some slight fixes for those with low frate rate and stuttering, but nothing that will make the game fluid or make the load times bearable. For that, I'm almost 100% positive that you simply NEED 1024mb of RAM.

If you're stuck with 512 but insistant on playing anyway (like me), you can do the following to get by (either until a patch comes along or until you can get more RAM):

-Increase virtual memory
-End all processes that aren't vital to your computer and run VtmB on "low priority" for some ungodly reason
-Restart your computer regularly after the memory leaks (45 minutes - two hours if you're lucky)
-TURN OFF HIGH QUALITY SOUND

If anyone knows of any NON HARDWARE fixes other than these, please let me know!

Sheallaidh · Post by **Sheallaidh** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:12 pm

Seriously... I cannot recommend upgrading to 1gb of ram enough.. for the sake of the $30-40 it will cost you, it is well, well worth it.

Sheallaidh · Post by **Sheallaidh** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:14 pm

[QUOTE=a00krido]I wonder if there is some way of turning on a FPS text displaying the frames per second in the game ?[/QUOTE]

In console type net_graph 1

[QUOTE=a00krido]I've also problems with "stutters" that usually happens when you look at an area or direction that you havn't looked at for awhile... I'm that the RAM upgrade willl fix this but I wonder if the FPS will increase as well ?[/QUOTE]

It fixes the stuttering even with all settings on high, and it also increases your FPS on ALL GAMES. For example, before upgrading from 512mb to 1gb my FPS in counter-strike was usually around 120-150 FPS. Now it's 180-250 on almost every map/situation.

RugeR · Post by **RugeR** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 8:32 pm

Well, whatever patch came out for HL2 via Steam fixed that game. I now have all the vid settings maxed at 1024. It barely stutters. I suppose it was a Source fix? They claim it has something to do with the Steam cache files, but I don't know. Vampires has no Steam cache files, and it has the same problems. Has everyone else's stutter problem on HL2 been fixed?

Westwood · Post by **Westwood** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 2:12 pm

I got 512mb more ram for this game, and guess what difference it made? Hardly any. It ran just the same in the streets, 15-20 fps. Why would they release such a buggy game.

OuterParadise · Post by **OuterParadise** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 2:38 pm

This link provides some stuff that might help performance(I didnt try out all of these tweaks):
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampire/topic.asp?fid=9643&tid=1543474

Use those at ur own risk!