[Trueblue]

Hi there, so I don't have a great PC but it exceeds minimum requirements and in some area's even recommended specs.
My specs:

Core2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66ghz
Ram 4GB DDR2
Graphics card - Geforce 9800GT 512mb + 1.5gb shared

Ok before everyone goes on about my card being shit and everything let me just explain that on ultra settings @1920x1080 I get about 18-20fps.
But if I turn everything I can off (shadows and reflections/depth of field etc) and everything else on LOW then I get only a 2-3fps increase. Usually that means a CPU bottleneck but as you can see my CPU is more than capable.. I have also set the resolution to all the different settings (even 800x600) just to see the difference and the highest i got with everything on low/off and 800x600 was 29fps

My thinking is that if it was a hardware issue then I would get a LOT more increase in fps from ultra to low right?

I have done my research, and I have updated my drivers, and uninstalled the 2 3D vision drivers as others have said. I have also tried all the FPS mods from this thread http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum...sen-2-FPS-Mods

And they didn't help at all.. not even a 1fps increase.

So I am totally out of idea's now.. I refuse to accept that my hardware is at fault because ive seen people with worse specs get fine fps. Also I just think my hardware is capable based on my own technical experience and 22 years of gaming, and the fact the graphics in risen 2 are FAR from good anyway..

Not to mention if it can run fine on a 360 then why not on a PC with much better hardware?

Anyway.. I get 45-60FPS on Skyrim with a mix of high-ultra settings.

In fact I play all modern games with fine fps.. its just risen 2 which is being like this

My next desperate idea is to format my PC and hope some driver or something was causing a conflict. But If you guys have anything better please let me know..


Many thanks!

[foobar]

Graphics card - Geforce 9800GT 512mb + 1.5gb shared

Shared VRAM is usually a bad idea. It's too slow to be actually helpful and reduces the amount of memory available to the system.

[Trueblue]

Oh yeah believe me I have tried to lower the amount shared but my BIOS doesn't have that feature and so I posted on expertsexchange asking for help and some experts said that windows controls it and that the shared RAM will only be used as its needed and not reserved for graphics.

But anyway I don't think that is linked to my problem as I play other games just fine.. I am getting a new card soon though.. well actually I am wondering is it worth getting a new card or building myself a new PC.. as DDR2 is so expensive these days and my motherboard sucks anyway (foxconn).

Any suggestions on a decent card that isnt expensive and will last until I build a new rig? (6 months tops)

Well back to my FPS problem.. I found a "tuning utility" on this forum that had the ability to disable post processing. So I tried that and it gave me about a 10fps boost!!! But it is still not a solution.. My card should be able to handle this game fine without turning features like PP and AA off

If anyone can think of anything at all to help please let me know!

And thanks for your post foobar!

Cheers!

Shared VRAM is usually a bad idea. It's too slow to be actually helpful and reduces the amount of memory available to the system.

[foobar]

Oh yeah believe me I have tried to lower the amount shared but my BIOS doesn't have that feature and so I posted on expertsexchange asking for help and some experts said that windows controls it and that the shared RAM will only be used as its needed and not reserved for graphics.

That is correct, in a sense. However, as I understand it (which might be wrong as there's little info on the web about this), the memory reported to the application (the game) is always the full amount (dedicated + shared). The application does not or cannot distinguish between the two types. Hence, if it just assumes "Hey, there's a lot of VRAM, let's use it!", then you're in for a nasty surprise. Other games may work better if they use the VRAM differently (i.e. smarter).

Any suggestions on a decent card that isnt expensive and will last until I build a new rig? (6 months tops)

I think it does not make sense to buy an intermediary card. The 9800GT was a good card in its time and still has a some kick. If you wanted something better, you would need at least something like a GeForce 550Ti. And that's about 100€, a typical middle class card. That's 100€ for a card you'll only use for a maximum of 6 months. Doing that is only smart if you can later make up for that money. For instance, if the card in question for your new PC costs x Euro now and then x-100 Euro in 6 months. Sure, prices for IT hardware drop all the time but not on that scale in that timeframe. It's probably better to buy a performance class card (depending on your need something between 150 and 200€) right now and then later simply transplant it into your new PC. You might loose ~20 Euro compared to not buying anything at all until the new PC is ready.

My card should be able to handle this game fine without turning features like PP and AA off

Don't overestimate your card.

If you look closely, you'll see that it is actually below the minimum system requirements (which state a "GeForce 8800GTX"):

Card	Pixel fillrate	Texel fillrate	Memory bandwidth
GeForce 8800GTX	13.8 GP/s	36.8 GT/s	86.3 GB/s
GeForce 9800GT	9.6 GP/s	33.6 GT/s	57.6 GB/s
Factor	69.6%	91.3%	66.7%

Since the limiting factor is usually the smallest bottleneck (memory bandwidth in this case), you could roughly estimate that your card has only two thirds of the power that it would need minimally. Lucky for you, the system requirements are a bit conservative and leave some room for slower cards. But on the other hand, full HD resolution is quite a lot of pixels. The tool you mentioned wouldn't have given you 10FPS more if the GPU had not been at its limits before.

[Trueblue]

Yeah but the requirements are only that much because the game is so shitly optimized for PC. If it wasn't for crappy consoles and bad ports our PC hardware would last a lot longer.

Anyway, I went and bought a GTX560.. as its miles better than the 550ti and only like 30% more expensive. Should last me a couple of years. I am not fussy about framerates as long as they are over 30+ it makes no difference.

http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyt...hdmi-7HQB.html

Thanks for your advice

That is correct, in a sense. However, as I understand it (which might be wrong as there's little info on the web about this), the memory reported to the application (the game) is always the full amount (dedicated + shared). The application does not or cannot distinguish between the two types. Hence, if it just assumes "Hey, there's a lot of VRAM, let's use it!", then you're in for a nasty surprise. Other games may work better if they use the VRAM differently (i.e. smarter).



I think it does not make sense to buy an intermediary card. The 9800GT was a good card in its time and still has a some kick. If you wanted something better, you would need at least something like a GeForce 550Ti. And that's about 100€, a typical middle class card. That's 100€ for a card you'll only use for a maximum of 6 months. Doing that is only smart if you can later make up for that money. For instance, if the card in question for your new PC costs x Euro now and then x-100 Euro in 6 months. Sure, prices for IT hardware drop all the time but not on that scale in that timeframe. It's probably better to buy a performance class card (depending on your need something between 150 and 200€) right now and then later simply transplant it into your new PC. You might loose ~20 Euro compared to not buying anything at all until the new PC is ready.



Don't overestimate your card.

If you look closely, you'll see that it is actually below the minimum system requirements (which state a "GeForce 8800GTX"):

Card	Pixel fillrate	Texel fillrate	Memory bandwidth
GeForce 8800GTX	13.8 GP/s	36.8 GT/s	86.3 GB/s
GeForce 9800GT	9.6 GP/s	33.6 GT/s	57.6 GB/s
Factor	69.6%	91.3%	66.7%

Since the limiting factor is usually the smallest bottleneck (memory bandwidth in this case), you could roughly estimate that your card has only two thirds of the power that it would need minimally. Lucky for you, the system requirements are a bit conservative and leave some room for slower cards. But on the other hand, full HD resolution is quite a lot of pixels. The tool you mentioned wouldn't have given you 10FPS more if the GPU had not been at its limits before.

[Trueblue]

God damn it...
Guess what?

I am getting the exact same problem with my new card.

I knew it wasn't my card at fault sigh but it hasn't even given a 5fps increase.

Brand new GTX560 1gb and my fps are ~30 on FULL everything @ 1080p and ~30 on FULL LOW/OFF @ all resolutions including 800x600.

I knew It wasnt my 9800GT >.< I knew it was something else..

But I have no idea what.. I really don't know what it could be

My CPU uses at most 25% when on Risen 2, and memory at most 2gb ish. I have 4gb. Gah..

Any idea's?

[foobar]

Since no one else seem to have an idea, please post the diagnostic files mentioned in the thread "READ THIS BEFORE POSTING". Perhaps it will give us some new insight.

[Trueblue]

http://upload.worldofplayers.de/files8/dem0BiMDxDiag.txt

http://upload.worldofplayers.de/files8/msinfo.txt

Note that although it says I only have about 5gb HD space.. I of course usually have a lot more and ensure so when I play Risen2.

Many thanks!

Since no one else seem to have an idea, please post the diagnostic files mentioned in the thread "READ THIS BEFORE POSTING". Perhaps it will give us some new insight.

[foobar]

Hmm... your error log shows some problems with different apps (none of which is R2) regarding exception 0xc0000005. I doubt this is related but wanted to mention it. It could indicate some other problem.

You might want to check:

• If you installed new drivers with your new card, uninstall 3D Vision drivers again
• Some mainboards have multiple PEG slots. Not all of them are necessarily equal. It often happens that only one slot can use all available PCIe lanes. Sometimes, it can be configured by jumper, addon-card or BIOS whether one slot gets all lanes or the lanes are split between two slots. You should check that your card is in the slot with the highest performance.
• You wrote that your CPU uses 25% at most when playing R2. Was that a total or per core? Because if you have a quad core CPU that is at 25% load, it could indicate that one core (running the main thread of R2) is maxed out. In that case, the CPU is probably the limit.

[Trueblue]

Cheers I'll check out the errors and see if I can solve them.. usually I ignore unless its causing problems as most errors are usually nothing to worry about, as after a couple years anyones PC has a cocktail of conflicting applications causing silly error reports. But if any were causing a problem then surely other games would experience the same performance issues..

I have updated drivers as you can see in the logs.. and deleted both 3d vision again..

Only have one PCI-E slot on my motherboard..

Oh and my mistake, I meant that Risen 2 uses around 25% ish of total. Sometimes more.. so with other process's depending on what I have running, my PC can reach around the 40-50% mark on CPU utilization during Risen 2 gameplay.

I haven't checked out other games with my new card yet.. I'll check out Skyrim later and maybe dead island and red orch.. are there any games similar to risen 2 that might act the same way??

Unless Risen 2 is only using one core I don't see how there would be a problem though..

UPDATE: Ok So I set the affinity on Risen 2 to 2 cores and got a very slight (1-3fps) improvement but it could have just been a coincidence. I then set it to ONE core (core 3) and got a definite 10fps drop + random stuttering. So I am pretty sure its using all 4 cores or atleast 2.

Cheers!

Hmm... your error log shows some problems with different apps (none of which is R2) regarding exception 0xc0000005. I doubt this is related but wanted to mention it. It could indicate some other problem.

You might want to check:

• If you installed new drivers with your new card, uninstall 3D Vision drivers again
• Some mainboards have multiple PEG slots. Not all of them are necessarily equal. It often happens that only one slot can use all available PCIe lanes. Sometimes, it can be configured by jumper, addon-card or BIOS whether one slot gets all lanes or the lanes are split between two slots. You should check that your card is in the slot with the highest performance.
• You wrote that your CPU uses 25% at most when playing R2. Was that a total or per core? Because if you have a quad core CPU that is at 25% load, it could indicate that one core (running the main thread of R2) is maxed out. In that case, the CPU is probably the limit.

[foobar]

are there any games similar to risen 2 that might act the same way??

Not really. It's not based on a big engine like Gamebryo or UDK but PB's own creation. The closest thing to R2 is R1 but that's old enough to run smoothly on your system in any event.

But try the other games and perhaps some benchmarks (like Furmark) nonetheless. It'll show whether the card in your current system is really working correctly (I think it is but let's test it to be sure).


Regarding your edit: Yes, R2 (like R1) is not a single core app. It can use more than one core. However, that does not mean that the load is balanced equally. That would first and foremost require that the task can be parallelised perfectly. And no game can be. There are some things you can put in separate threads to take some load of the main thread but eventually, things have to be synchronised again.

[Trueblue]

Ok well on full ULTRA/No FXAA Skyrim + the High quality DLC pack and no skyboost etc I get 40-50fps while outdoors
Dead Island full ultra I get 95+ fps outdoors.
Black Ops I get 50-90fps depending on whats going on

I'll test it on more games later but the new card is definitely helping.. with my old card I never would have reached 90+ fps in any of those games.

If you are out of idea's I will just have to format.. PITA but what else can I do heh.. Almost done with risen 2 anyway but I would like to solve this out of principle and for anyone who ever has the same trouble.

Cheers!

Not really. It's not based on a big engine like Gamebryo or UDK but PB's own creation. The closest thing to R2 is R1 but that's old enough to run smoothly on your system in any event.

But try the other games and perhaps some benchmarks (like Furmark) nonetheless. It'll show whether the card in your current system is really working correctly (I think it is but let's test it to be sure).


Regarding your edit: Yes, R2 (like R1) is not a single core app. It can use more than one core. However, that does not mean that the load is balanced equally. That would first and foremost require that the task can be parallelised perfectly. And no game can be. There are some things you can put in separate threads to take some load of the main thread but eventually, things have to be synchronised again.