Unbearably Slow!

I made my computer in August of 2005 so it's relatively new with some good parts in it and has been able to run HL2 among other things online and fast. Connecting to a server also doesn't take long. However, when I play Empires, it can take up to 10 minutes to connect to a server and even then, the game can be very slow for me. My ping or that of the server's isn't an issue either. My ping can be as low as 23 and I still run across these problems. Seeing how it only happens in Empires, I'm very curious to see if someone can help me with this problem. Thanks to anyone who can.

 

It's a known issue. Even high end rigs have trouble playing this game at times. I believe both performance and loading is still being worked on =o

 

Have you tried turning off bloom or turning down your texture detail?

 

Not sure if you were talking to anyone in particular but I have bloom off and I only get a few extra fps with everything low.

It's usually when there are a alot of buildings in certain areas that the fps drops below 20 and below 10 on district (only map it really gets that low)

 

When I first started Empires. I had like 1 frame all 5 seconds.
I am running Empires now with most of the Shaders turned off.

The console commands are

mat_bumpmap 0
mat_fastbump 0
// entirely deactivating Bumpmapping

mat_specular 0
mat_fastspecular 0
// entirely deactivating Specularity

It actually still looks almost as good as with Shaders on ..
except for a boost of 35 fps.

I however have all water reflections on and mat_picmip set to 1.. highest texture detail.

It runs pretty good on my GF4 Ti4600, but i encounter stuttering sometimes.. worse then playing HL2 SP on maximum settings.
(The stuttering when fps drop to 0 and sound repeats - heavy loading)

I think most problems arise because the maps are pretty much wide open spaces and / or are built in a VIS unfriendly manner (VIS is the part of the compiler that determines visibility).

 

I could use some extra fps, though the only problem I seem to have is on badland where I get a steady 9 fps In all the other maps though, I get around 40-50 with an occasional drop to about 20. I've turned everything off, like bumpmap, specular, blah blah blah.

 

Have you deactivated Shadows and Bloom? .. Very heavy on some older cards.

You can furthermore try to set the shader detail to low, or even deactivate them completely using
mat_bumpmap 0
mat_fastbump 0
mat_specular 0
mat_fastspecular 0
like I did.

Texture detail usually improves fps only rather slightly and only on cards with "too" small VRAM.
I don't know what too small is for Empires but i seem to have problems with 128MB.

 

*GASP*!!

 

No kidding!

I've got an average of about 30-50 fps.. drops to about 20-40 after like 1-2 hours of gameplay.
The only serious problem for me with Empires is that frames stall to 0 when there is a lot to load, just like in HL2 SP, too.
Like turning around and it has to load 5 buildings and / or lots of textures etc.
I think it's like that because I've only got 512MB RAM .. and no chance of upgrading (Rambus PC1066)
Harddrive isn't the fastest, too

Oblivion for example runs with OLDblivion (a mod that converts the shaderpackadge to PS 1.1 - PS 1.3 [Oblivion requires 1.4] and fixes some crash Bugs) with all Shaders on at ~20 fps.

Half-Life 2 runs at 15-50 fps on very maximum settings.

I can't upgrade my graphicscard either because the board only supports AGPx4...
I will buy a whole new rig this year.

The GF4 Ti4600 however did suprise me again and again with pretty good performance for a card that is like 3+ years old.
Did never regret the purchase.

btw. that's making it into my Sig :D

 

Museum of Natural History called, they want their exhibit back :p

j/k

 

LOL, this is all pretty funny. But you can make ~20 fps on Oblivion! I averagely make maybe 8-16 fps, Outside its like 5 fps :/ That is my maximum with a GeForce FX5200XT. Hehe Send me what your using at jmj1993@bellsouth.net Thanks for the info anyway.

 

Got it fixed with the shader settings and what Krenzo said. Thanks guys.

 

i dont know if this helps but i had a +map command in my launch options for loading a map, this created a server and i would goto my map every time the game started, i then would goto the server list and join a game , when i did this i had about 5-15 fps because it never shut the server down and i was hosting a server without knowing while i was playing in a server...