Awful framerates on my brand new PC?

[DrJonez]

Hi,

First off, let me say that the game looks awesome. So many little features and things that I've always thought were SUCH obvious additions to the game, and that no companies have come even close to getting right yet with any of their X-COM clones. Bravo

So, my problem.

First, let me list my PC stats:

Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz
2GB PC6400 RAM
Nvidia 8800GTS
Windows Vista Ultimate

So, with a setup like that, I can pretty much run any game that's out right now on highest or near highest detail with no problems and silky smooth framerates. I can run UFO: Alien Invasion as well, but there are times when my framerate drops to nearly zero and the game becomes all but unplayable.

It mostly happens in the screen where you're equipping your soldiers with their guns and armor and such when assigning them to an aircraft. My framerate is ok until I go to primary or secondary weapons, where there are a lot of items on screen, and then it drops down so low that dragging and dropping any items becomes very difficult, and the music starts skipping and sounding all screwed up. Also, any time I go on a tactical mission my framerates are miserable unless I'm zoomed in extremely close.

I've tried turning all of the video settings down to their lowest settings, and I'm still not getting anywhere. Any ideas why it's running so slow?

[BTAxis]

It might be shoddy nVidia OpenGL support. Vista's drivers are still not exactly up to par.

I have played UFO:AI on my machine running Vista with pretty much the same specs (but using an ATi card), and I didn't notice any problems with the frame rate. I was unable to play the game fullscreen, though.
But that was long ago, and the version you're playing may just have some issue with Vista. Have you tried the 2.2 test installers?

[DrJonez]

Err, what's a 2.2 test installer?

[DrJonez]

Ahh, I found it. Downloading now. I'll let you know if it fixes anything

Are there any specific changes in this that are supposed to address frame rate issues?

[BTAxis]

They're installers for more recent versions of the game (depending on how often mattn builds them, but he does so pretty often). Grab them here:
http://mattn.ninex.info/?page=Download
And be advised that this is not considered a stable version - bugs are going to be in there, and if you find them, report them.

[BTAxis]

Are there any specific changes in this that are supposed to address frame rate issues?

There was a change that improved speed, but that was from around 40FPS to around 60FPS. It wasn't aimed at improving 2FPS, that's another problem altogether.

[DrJonez]

Wow, 2.2 seems to have fixed it. Thanks a ton That was fast!

[BTAxis]

Oh by the way,

So, with a setup like that, I can pretty much run any game that's out right now on highest or near highest detail with no problems and silky smooth framerates.

Try Supreme Commander and weep. That game is slow as anything on any machine out there.

[DrJonez]

Ok, so maybe it's not as fixed as  I thought :[

I tested it by just quickly going into the equip screen for my dropship, and I was still pulling a good 45 fps in there, and I thought it was fixed.

Just started a new game, went to equip my soldiers, and it's back to being choppy again :[

[DrJonez]

No more suggestions?

It seems sort of intermittent. Sometimes when I go into the equip screen it's very laggy, and sometimes it's just fine. I give up :[

[Mattn]

make sure that you are using your vendor's latest graphiccard driver - and not those m$ shitty drivers - they don't work

[DrJonez]

I was running Nvidia drivers from April before, and installed the latest ones just yesterday. No problems in any of my other games

[BTAxis]

The other games most likely don't use the OpenGL API, though.

[DrJonez]

I have several games that I know for a fact use OpenGL.

[BTAxis]

I see. Then maybe it's something specifically related to the quake 2 code? You could try looking for other Q2-based games (such as Warsow) and see if they do the same.