Problem with huge arena fights

[Cerberus_e]

As everyone knows upon entering this thread, I'm having a problem with huge arena fights.
This game runs very smooth, I can get 50 FPS when I play Painkiller with all settings on maximum, and 4*AA on my Geforce 6600GT, 2.6 ghz CPU (intel pentium 4) and 1024 MB of RAM (dual channel, DDR400).
Though I play on lesser settings because I want it as smooth as possible, here is what settings I play at:

http://img294.imageshack.us/my.php?image=painkiller25ha.jpg

Everything runs very smooth, it's all fun and all that, but I'm having trouble with some of the bigger arena fights.
It's also worth noticing that while I was having problems before I upgraded my PC (Geforce FX 5200 and only 512 mb of RAM -- Particles slowed my system down, when I shot my shotgun while standing right in front of a wall for example. Rr when something collapses, like blocks of stone from the ruins, both antennas at both sides of the slippery snowy bridge fight, or one of the structures in the oriental castle) I didn't have a problem with huge arena fights back then, it ran all very smooth.

Now after upgrading my PC, I don't have problems with particles anymore, but there is STILL a slowdown when the antennas collapse in the snowy bridge (I don't know what causes it... physics maybe?).
but the problem with huge arena fights is that I seem to get triple haste for free, and I haven't even gained the card yet. Meaning it slows down significantly.
I noticed in the trainstation those green soldiers seem to love to pack together in one big crowd. Well, when I launch a grenade with my stakegun in that crowd it slows down for around 5 seconds... I'm assuming it's because of the physics. But when I got to the abandoned factory (and even worse in the military base) it slows down a lot during those airfield fights.
Even without launching a grenade, those soldiers can make the game slow down sometimes when I'm looking at them and they're in big packs. It's even worse with all those tanks and stationary cannons (when I destroyed those it seemed to slow down a lot less).

I have no idea what to do, lowering my settings even more would cause the game to look the same as on my FX 5200, and it ran smooth in that card with arena fights. (Or at least: I don't remember big slowdowns, maybe I was also having them?). A 6600GT is like a whole lot better so there have to be huge improvements (and there are, like I said I can run the game on maximum settings in the Castle level... I just have problems with some lesser settings, even without anti aliasing, with arena fights and collapsing antennas).
So I hope someone of you knows some magical solution :)

[Varus77]

At least the cause is your CPU - isn't so bad but not good enough for really smooth gameplay during huge arithmetical operations like counts of many monsters, difficult calculations of flying objects (canon balls), or many ragdoll-effects of shooted/killed monsters...
All these things are not related to your graphic card and therefore you have the same slowdowns. But for the particel effects and for bloom, coronas, shadows, warp, lightning and so on you got an improvement.

You can test it with the second benchmark of PK via console ("~" - left fom "1"):
>benchmark C5L2

[Bjossi]

That is true, your processor is pretty bad compared to the rest of your system. If you want slowdowns to dissapear, I suggest a fast AMD64 processor, like AMD64 FX-57 4800+ Socket K8-939.

You wouldn´t get physics-related slowdowns in big fights even if you tried. :p

But if you don´t want to spend extra money on a new motherboard, I suggest a 3.4 Ghz P4 with 800 FSB. DualCore Technology is pretty useless.

[Varus77]

yes...but Dualcore is not supposed by games.

[Bjossi]

That´s why I said it´s useless.

[Varus77]

Yes - I knew your opinion about Dualcore or HT - and yes, my answer would be went better with an "and" indeed of my "but".
It cames through the fact that ONLY for games the technology is useless. For me - I've P4 HT - it's useful because rendering in Max works with double speed or even compiling codecs, making of mp3 and so on, goes much faster.

[Cerberus_e]

Thanks for all help, but I don't think it's my CPU because like I said in the first post: I upgraded my computer. Everything except my processor (which used to be the fastest component of my PC, but now is the slowest)
I didn't have those slowdowns on my Geforce FX 5200 & only 512 mb of RAM. My CPU was the same as now.
The slowdowns I had back then where graphical for sure (FX 5200 is extremely weak). But big fights didn't slow down.

I'm now in battle out of **** and dead city was very slow... until it eventually froze completely so I had to reboot. after the reboot it was very smooth for some strange reason, but now I'm in leningrad it's slow again. Even slower.

I don't think Bloom causes slowdowns, since the orphanage ran very smooth.

Any other suggestions?
Someone suggested a benchmark... does it do more than give you a result of frames/second or so? I'm going to try it

EDIT -----------------

I tried it out, here are the results:

FPS: 2.21 / 56.07 / 66.74
Score: 56.07
http://img356.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot03407gb.jpg

Sometimes there is a slight pause before physics start working in the benchmark, but definitely not always when the demo tests it.

Also, to go into the console, I had to load the game itself first.
I loaded Leningrad (which I quit the previous time because I was so frustrated it ran as slow as triple haste) and I was astonished to see it ran PERFECTLY SMOOTH. Not a single slowdown. And that in the exact same location as where I quit.
Painengine looks good but performance can be really inconsistent at times, as proven by this case.

[Bjossi]

Ok, if you want us to find the solution, you have to be more open to suggestions, your processor is very slow, it has not only to process what is going on regarding physics, but it also has to process data to memory and video card storage and hard drive.

So it has to do alot of work in such graphically advanced and intense game with many high polygon models and hi-res textures all around you and every single object in a map has physics which the processor needs to calculate data for.

Simply getting a faster processor will 90% likely give you alot of improvements.

Btw, this may be the video card too of course.
You should give us more detail about yours. Like memory interface, memory type, amount of memory, clock/memory speeds, amount of pipelines etc.

[Varus77]

You can test it with the second benchmark of PK via console ("~" - left fom "1"):
>benchmark C5L2

At first: if you're not using an american tastatur layout then you've to change country code to get to work the "~" at the menu - changing the layout with this combo: "left ALT + shift" together one time and then you'll get "~" (<<< left from "1") working at the menu.

Second:
I've an ATI9800XT (bit slower than yours) with a P4 3.0GHz HT ("bit" faster than yours)
Compare:
with those settings (higher than yours)
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/6682/vergleich016ql.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
I got these results:
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/225/vergleich026zk.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

now you can see the effect of a faster CPU.

If you want to see the influences of graphical effects then you'll find on my page (signum below) a comparsion
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/7338/booheffectsforum7gl.jpg (http://www.hall-of-pain-666.de.vu)

[Cerberus_e]

Ok, if you want us to find the solution, you have to be more open to suggestions, your processor is very slow, it has not only to process what is going on regarding physics, but it also has to process data to memory and video card storage and hard drive.


I am open ended to solutions, I tried the benchmark for example, but the problem is: a processor costs money (and not a little bit).
If getting a new processor is the solution, then I might as well play on low quality, since I won't put any more money in my 2 year old computer, when I'll buy a new one within 2 years or so.

I was just doubting that it's my processor because:

- It worked before I upgraded my computer, and I still have the same processor. However, if you say the higher graphical settings I use makes a huge difference then this doesn't count anymore, but there's still point #2:

- Sometimes the level works very smooth when I'm doing the exact same things on the exact same location, and will continue to be smooth for the rest of the level... Quitting and restarting the game seems to magically fix some things.



Btw, this may be the video card too of course.
You should give us more detail about yours. Like memory interface, memory type, amount of memory, clock/memory speeds, amount of pipelines etc.

Asus Nvidia Geforce 6600GT 128mb 8*AGP
It's probably not a problem since the guy above has a videocard similar to mine (I even think his is a bit faster), and look at his score :)

[Bjossi]

Processors do cost money, but that is life, if you get slowdowns on max settings, simply lowering those settings does the trick.

I run Painkiller with all shader model 3.0 goodies turned off, like Bloom and Dynamic Lighting for example. Apart from that I run the game on almost everything set at max, 1024 x 768 and no AA/AF/V-Sync.

Your video card doesn´t seem too good, we may have found the problem if you have 128bit memory interface and slow clockspeeds.

[Cerberus_e]

Well, I'm playing on "normal" now (I only upped to resolution to 1024*768).
It's smoother now, except when there are lots of physics objects working :)
So the performance demanding levels (leningrad & colloseum) run on normal settings like all other levels on "very high" quality.
It's not a problem, but my processor was quite good when Painkiller was released :) Not very good but still OK.
That's why I made this thread, because maybe there was another cause of my problem... apparently not :)

Thanks for all help. (I will keep checking this thread in case someone still has something to say)

[Bjossi]

Well, Painkiller wasn´t exactly demanding back then, but after BooH/1.61...;)
Btw, you say you lower to normal settings and 1024 x 768 and you still get slowdowns? That isn´t normal.

The same thing happened to me, the game was slow motion no matter what settings and how much I lowered. But when I turned off Dynamic Lighting, Bloom and Warp Effects, the game was so smooth all the time that I couldn´t get it to slow down even if I tried, big arena fights included.

So this may be your video card, try turning off the settings I tried and see what happens.

[Cerberus_e]

I had dynamic lighting on medium, bloom turned off, and I don't even know what warp effects are (what are they?) :D
I uninstalled the game because I finished it again, but when I replay it yet again I'll keep your advice in mind :)

[PeTjA]

... which essentially is heat haze effect.
Taken from here
http://dreamcatcherinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26398&highlight=warp