game stuttering because of fps

[zarkon0007]

hello all. this is pretty much my last attempt at trying to fix this game. i have been playing this game for over a year now. my lap top has never had a problem running the game other than an occasional stutter in a graphics intensive situation. i left the country for a couple of months and after returnig the game did all its updates. now when i play it stutters all the time, in town, in dungeons, pretty much every where. i think i have narrowed it down to a fps problem. watching the fps it goes from an average of 22 fps down to as low as 2 on the reccomended settings. this usually happens when in a dungeon with a group and there are a lot of affects going off and some times just when the monsters have discoverd us.this is so bad that i can not play. if i am in a dungeon by myself then it is no where as bad but still noticable. i have updated or reinstalled all my drivers. i returned the machine to its pristine state by doing a full reisntallation and it has made no differance. i have run the game on every conceivable combination of settings in the vidio menu from lowest to highest and every thing in between. had the frame rates up to 60 at one time but still the same sutuation, down to 2 or so.. my wife and my brother in law play on machines that are at least three years or more older and they have issues with this but no where near what i have. if i cant get this straightened out then i will not be able to play a game that i truly do love. here is my laptops hardware settings from the windows system information tabs. ok i just found out i cant copy and paste my machne information into this thread. hear are the basics

windows 7 64 bit
gateway nv52 laptop
amd turion x2 duel core mobile
ram 4 gig
total physical memmory 3.75 gb
available physical memmory 2.75 gb
totall virutual memmory 9.37 gb
available virtuall memmory 8.19 gb
page file space 5.62 gb

video information
ati radeon hd 3200
driver version 8.632.0.0
adaptor ram 256 mg
i am sorry this post is so long but if dont get this fixed then i cant play and this makes me very sad. any help would be greatly appreciated
thanks

[Smitey]

Hi zarkon,

Please post a dxdiag from your machine following the instructions in the sticky:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=199719

How quickly does the FPS decrease after logging in?

Are you playing wirelessly?

If you open task manager is another process causing CPU activity?

Did anything new get installed during the months you were not playing DDO?

[sirgog]

I find dropping my graphics settings to one level lower than the game recommends noticeably improves performance.

Two levels lower, if mobs (or players) are spamming Ice Storm in the dungeons you are running.

[Lord_WC]

I would try the following, probably in this order:

-defragment
-switch draw stencil shadows off (bleh, switch shadows off altogether)
-force it to use dx9 (i think youre better off doing it in the ini, for me at least the in game selector does not seem to work properly)
-switch off FSAA, Anis
-tone down draw distances
-set texture resolution lower
-set screen resolution lower

If its still bad, I really would reinstall you op to winxp. While w7 is nice and all that but you don't have enough hardware to compensate for its higher resource use.

[p3n1x0r]

goto options in game, and goto troubleshooting i think it is

set max fps to 60, and then try changing engine speed to maybe medium or so.

try all ingame settings at medium. and adjust from there to get it smoother

and run in dx9, no sense in using 10

[zarkon0007]

i ran the dxdiag and have the information but am unable to copy and paste it into the reply i changed the settings in my user cp to what you told me to but am unable to post it and it is far too much information for me to type in. i can at least answer the questions
with in seconds to minuets the mahcine slow down after logging in
i am playing on a wire less network but have never had a problem with this in the past. i will run it wired just to rule out this possability
i have wiped out my machine and done a totally new reinstall of the os. i have not installed any other programs so ddo is the only thing installed
i run a program called game booster that shuts down all the back ground programs that normally run. i have tried running ddo with and with out this running and it makese no differance
if there is an email address i can send my dxdiag information to let me know
thanks again for trying to help me out with this . getting the prompt help actually means more to me than fisxing the game. although fixing the game would be awfull nice
thanks again

[AZgreentea]

The ATI HD 3200 only supports DX 10, so make sure you do not have any DX 11 enabled. As suggested above, you may want to slip back to DX 9 to see if that helps. Just because something runs DX 10, dosent mean it does a good job.

[zarkon0007]

according to the dxdiag my os has dx 11 installed in it. could this be what is screwing things up? if so any idea how to change it back to an earlier version. i will look into this just if you know off hand it would simplify my far too complicated life (sorry just having a bad day and its early yet)
i have tried setting the game options on ds9 and dx 10 with now change at all.

thanks again for all the help

[Smitey]

if there is an email address i can send my dxdiag information to let me know
thanks again for trying to help me out with this . getting the prompt help actually means more to me than fisxing the game. although fixing the game would be awfull nice
thanks again

You have a PM from me offering my email address so I can post both the dxdiag and your userpreferences on your behalf.

[p3n1x0r]

then give this a shot.

set all game graphics options to low. and see how it performs

then increase settings from there

[zarkon0007]

hello all. i think i have finally straightened this out. i set the game to run in windows xp mode by clicking on the shortcut and going to properties. this has it running arouund 15 to 20 fps which is smooth enough for me to play. this is at the recomended settings also so i could probably squeak out a few more by lowering some of the settings. i want to thank all who attempted to help me with this. it reafirms my faith in the human race as a whole.
again thanks and happy slaying