Hi all you hadware gurus

Will a video card upgrade, definitely eliminate any stutters I have, flying offline at low level above Cann and if so which one will do?
(Water=0 or 4 is not big thing-there is only river in Cann)

My game setup :

Rez: 1920x1200 on clear day
HardwareShaders=1
Forest=2
Water=4
Game running on second core

My current pc spec :

E8400@3.0
8800 GTS 512 MGB
2 GB DDR800 RAM
P35 Mobo

Thanks
gprr

Well I had 2 8800GTS and had the same problem. So, I upgraded to a single 285GTX. Same problem, but a little better. The problem is really CPU usage. If your monitor CPU usage while flying over those cities, you will see that it goes to 100% until all the visible buildings are rendered. I use really high graphics settings and normally my frame rate stays well about 50, except over those cities where it can drop in the teens.

See signature for my hardware setup.

Hi bmoffa

Thanks for the swift reply.
It helped me alot to undestand where my current hardware is ranked among the top dogs around-no
upgrade for me
Wishful thinkig - maybe things would a bit better in SOW regarding cpu usage in multicore "friendly" game,evet it will be more demmanding in begining.
Kongrats on your wonderful machine

gprr

Yeah, avoid cities, unfortunately the game runs like a slow dog when over a city, even a fairly small one.

Actually I tend to run ok over a city but when I zoom in with my gunsights it will really slow down, and zooming in is crucial when lining up a shot on an enemy.

The game really is VERY cpu limited ...buying a better graphics card doesnt always help as much as with other games.Any chance you could get another few hundred MHz out of your cpu overclock (although youre not doin too bad as it is !)

quote:

Originally posted by ytareh:
The game really is VERY cpu limited ...buying a better graphics card doesnt always help as much as with other games.Any chance you could get another few hundred MHz out of your cpu overclock (although youre not doin too bad as it is !)

That's really strange because I have had the opposite experience. When I got my older PC, which was a E8400 on a Asus P5N-SLI with a 8600GT, I saw no improvement in FPS when OC'ing from stock 3Ghz to 3.6Ghz. But when I went from my 8600GT up to a EVGA superclocked 8800GT, I saw MASSIVE improvements in FPS!! The increase in shaders from 8600 to 8800 was huge and I think IL2 like lots of unified shaders.

Mortoma,

The problem described here only occurs over some larger cities, like CAEN, where there are lots of buildings. Rendering those cities appears to be very CPU (NOT GPU) intensive. I've tried a lot of GPU tweaking, but it does help in these cases. Maybe lowering my game graphics settings would, but I like it the way it is since its smooth as silk everywhere else.

However, upgrading GPUs will help almost everything else in the game.

It does make a difrence on cities also, its both the CPU and GPU being stressed, especaily if your running with really high settings.

It helps to experiment with the settings for the game regarding wich CPU core to use, in some cases it is better however to leave them at there default setting so the system desides wich core to run the game on.

Leaving the ;ProcessAffinityMask=1 with the ; infront of it does Not mean the game runs on more than one core.
It means the System can choose wich CPU Core to run the game on, usualy this will mean it will still just run on one core that the system thinks is best.

Only if you experiance a problem in performance with the default setting you should remove the ; infront of the line and experiment with it to see if theres any improvment, if no change or things get worse from it always put the ; back infront of ProcessAffinityMask=1 to let the system deside for it self again.

Mine is @ ;ProcessAffinityMask=1 and i only get stutters over a city if a large 500kg/1000lbs bomb has been dropped on it and al the buildings get destroyed up by the blastwave with me looking down on it.
No problems otherwise.

Hi guyz

Done some checking and got worst FPS lower as 10 but only flying level 500 m' and going half the city otherwise got 13 to 14 (after some work)very briefly but mostly,it was 16 and above.
Can't get rid of the feeling that I7 920 shuold have done mutch better,look here:
http://www.simhq.com/_technolo...technology_111c.html
In this test the 920 stock is faster by 42% than Q9770 (whitch is faster than E8400)in 1280x1024 and it should increase it's advantage as resolusion gos up......

Thanks for helping
gprr

Well the QX9770 is like $1000 while the i7 920 is around $270 so I'm pretty happy with my i7 920.

Also the i7 920 is 2.66Ghz per core at stock, and Il-2 runs only on one core, so...

Also relevant when flying over cities is available ram and hdd seek and data transfer rates. The game not only has to build the render for all those objects, it has to load the models and textures from hard drive.
Perhaps moving your game installation to a SSD would help, but I've never seen a report on how those affect this game so you'd be flying blind (pun intended) on the potential results.

I think Tully is on to something. What is your operating system? Two Gb of RAM would be quite small for system running Vista, for example.

B

Thanks Brando and Tully

Running XP Pro + 2GB RAM.
In my standard test, flying to Caen 500 m' altitude from the sea 180 HDG I see steady 1.27GB usage in the load area .
As bmoffa mentioned,one core is totaly overloaded and the other is sleeping...

Thanks
gprr

quote:

Originally posted by gprr:
Thanks Brando and Tully

Running XP Pro + 2GB RAM.
In my standard test, flying to Caen 500 m' altitude from the sea 180 HDG I see steady 1.27GB usage in the load area .
As bmoffa mentioned,one core is totaly overloaded and the other is sleeping...

Thanks
gprr

Did you try to set ProcessAffinityMask=1 like that than?
That sets it to use the First Core, you said the game was running on Second Core wich would be ProcessAffinityMask=2

ProcessAffinityMask=3 sets it to use Both Cores.

And ;ProcessAffinityMask=1 wich lets the system free to deside wich core to use.

quote:

Originally posted by NDS_Camp.:

Did you try to set ProcessAffinityMask=1 like that than?
That sets it to use the First Core, you said the game was running on Second Core wich would be ProcessAffinityMask=2

ProcessAffinityMask=3 sets it to use Both Cores.

And ;ProcessAffinityMask=1 wich lets the system free to deside wich core to use.

Hi Camp and thanks for helping

I was running ProcessAffinityMask=2 than ProcessAffinityMask=1 and after your post went to ProcessAffinityMask=3 witch made noticeable chang in cpu load shrring but not in game performance - can't say whether lost or gained 1 or tow fps.
Using one core makes the load line to go 100% horizontal and other one makes minute signs but using both makes first core load almost to the top than transfer some load to second core-
no even load is spoted.
While back,Hunter82 said using ProcessAffinityMask=3 works better on AMD cpu's.

Do you or somebody know something about using (Symmetric Multiprocessing)SMP on win xp ?

Correction - have 4 GB RAM.

Thanks

gprr

This message has been edited. Last edited by: gprr,

I don't believe changing ProcessAffinityMask is going help much here. IL-2 is still going to run on only one core. At best, you may isolate it from other processes trying to run on the same core.

I believe the only solution is to greatly reduce graphics settings and/or game screen resolution. I like running at 1920x1200 with other graphics settings set very high. The game looks great that way and I almost never fly low over those cities. When I do I know what to expect.

Hopefully, BoB SoW will make better use of multi-processor capabilities.

quote:

Originally posted by bmoffa:

Hopefully, BoB SoW will make better use of multi-processor capabilities.

I'll drink to that

Yet it would be very intresting to see how AMD multicores handle performance above cities....anyone???


gprr

It might indead be Memory and HardDisk data transfer speed related and could have nothing to do with the CPU.


p.s. you did notice that the default setting where the system desides what core to use has a ";" mark infront of it? did you try that setting also?
Thats how i run it on my AMD DualCore.

Maybe i run a procesor monitor tomorrow on an seperate screen to see what it actualy does while playing IL2.

quote:

Originally posted by NDS_Camp.:
It might indead be Memory and HardDisk data transfer speed related and could have nothing to do with the CPU.


p.s. you did notice that the default setting where the system desides what core to use has a ";" mark infront of it? did you try that setting also?
Thats how i run it on my AMD DualCore.

Maybe i run a procesor monitor tomorrow on an seperate screen to see what it actualy does while playing IL2.

Hi Camp

You may be right in both cases:
- using ";" makes the most even usage of two cores and the load lines are far below the top (good boy cpu )but ill set it on ProcessAffinityMask=2 as it still makes no performance diffrence and this way I get all anti viros updates run on first core without blocking my online game.
-Data transpers...using P-35 board with 4GB (on win xp)+ 500GB SATA disk with 16mb cache,don't know where to improve and make the diffrence...
Even bmoffa with I7 920 and its QPI (Hyper Transport for AMD)and onchip memory controler still has same problem(with much better v.card)

What AntiVirus software are you using?

I would use the ";" setting and see if i can turn off the Auto Anti Virus updates or set them so they dont run while playing a game etc.

And not every P-25 Mobo, Memory and Harddrive are the same so your specs dont really tell us anything about transfer speeds.