Vista Problems?

[Tunes_Steele]

I recently purchased a new computer. I'm really happy with it. It's alot faster than my old computer. I now have 3 gigs of ram and a quad core processor. It does have an average video card (ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT), but it's equal to my old one (ATI VisionTek X1550). My fps is about 5-10 fps better than before. I know niether of them are the best video cards, but they do the job.

My question is:

My game experience is very "jerky". I have no loss% and I still zone in before everyone else. My Loading times are pretty quick, usually within 5 seconds or so. My loading times seem to be 1/2 as long or less than they were with my old computer.

I'm assuming this is due to Vista. But I'm obviously not 100% sure.

My old computer is slower but seems to run the game alot smoother except for the loading times.

Any suggestions or ideas?

[Riorik]

More or less you can view this as a guide to video card effectiveness.


http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03/...ics/page8.html

Personally, while I'm sure it's possible to tweak the system for better performance - with only 3GB of RAM, going with 32bit XP would give you a noticeable performance improvement.

[Tunes_Steele]

uhhhhh...... huh?

That link tells me that my old card and my new card are ranked in the same category.

BTW, While run ddo, I'm only using 65% of my ram, according to the ram monitor I have.

If my video card is basically the same as the old card and my computer now has more ram and a much better processor, then would it be the video card?

[Altumus]

What exactly do you mean jerky? Can you describe it more?

[Tunes_Steele]

What exactly do you mean jerky? Can you describe it more?

Like every 1/2 to 1 second, I get a mini lag spike. Sometimes the game apears to go back 1-2 seconds.

Example:

When I'm running somewhere, I may pass an object and 1 second later pass the same object. That is the extreme end however. But that does happen several times while I'm logged on.

Most of the time it seems that the game freezes for a fraction of a second. It wouldnt be noticible if it happened every few minutes, but this happens the entire time I'm logged on. And it happens every 1/2 to 1 second.


I've been playing this game for over two years and I know what typical lag is, but this particular problem has only happened since I started playing on this new pc.

[Altumus]

Can you please post a full dxdiag please.

[Riorik]

uhhhhh...... huh?

That link tells me that my old card and my new card are ranked in the same category.

That'd be precisely one of the points I intended to make- you shot pretty low on the chart. Yeah, I understand budgets.
I just upgraded my own pc to an 8600GTS -- but mostly because I didn't feel like kicking out another $100 to upgrade my PSU at the same time.

BTW, While run ddo, I'm only using 65% of my ram, according to the ram monitor I have.

If my video card is basically the same as the old card and my computer now has more ram and a much better processor, then would it be the video card?

If I'm remembering correctly, there are some differences between the ATI & nVidea cards - I believe ATI (and your cards specifically) tend to be more dependent on system performance than some others...aka, your additional FPS is really due to your CPU/RAM upgrade.

On Vista however, there's a long story. An identical system running XP Pro is highly likely to run faster than one running Vista.

[Tunes_Steele]

Thanks Riorik, that link was actually pretty useful. That would've been great if my system came with a much better video card than it did, but this is the one it came with.

From what your saying, it would appear that the issue really is Vista. Thats what I was worried about.

So if the problem is Vista, is there anything I can do to "adjust" or fix my problem?

[Altumus]

One thing you need to do on vista, is religiously check for driver updates (and make sure you got sp1) - your video drivers are several months old.

[Tunes_Steele]

Still having the same problems.

I have updated every driver I can think of. I've installed SP1.

I guess I'll just have to live with this poor game quality.