Before I begin. Computer setup:
Pentium Dual Core Processor
NVidia Geforce GTS 250
4 GB RAM
1750 GB HDD divided on 3 discs.
Windows 7 Home Premium
Not a huge gaming rig, but it works for its purposes.
Figured I'd post my way of solving the following problem:
After installing the Mass Effect 3 Demo and booting it up, I immediatly saw that the videos weren't playing fluidly. There was major frame drops (I was probably down to a couple of images every 2 seconds), and the sound was not in sync with the little I saw. I also experienced in-game framedrops every movement I made. Another problem I experienced was major pops in the sound. This was neither a problem for me in ME2, or DA2, or any other game so far, so I started with the obvious route:
Closed all running applications other than ME3, and Origin. Did not help. Also updated graphics card driver, sound card driver, and chipset. Rebooted, and Restarted the game. Sound popping improved, the graphical issues remained.
Tried lowering the settings in-game, considering the problem also occured in-game, and while the in-game graphics seemingly improved slightly, there were still major framedrops in the bink videos, and also when moving the aim around.
Next step was to look into my 'Mass Effect 3 Demo/Binaries/Win32' folder. Noticed that the binkw32.dll was of a newer date. I then decided to rename this to binkw32.old, and copy over the binkw32.dll from Dragon Age 2. This improved the videos slightly. I now could watch the movie with about 1 picture per second.
I was curious, so I downloaded the RAD Video Tools to play the bink videos out of the game, and noticed they played fluidly there. Puzzled I started checking the net for ways to solve this issue. Several attempts at different binkw32.dll's later I decided the Dragon Age 2 one was the best one so far, and while many sites recommended disabling any directx hardware sound card support, I could not find any specific setting for this on this computer. Another dead end.
I went back into the game files to search for more clues. I opened up 'Documents\\BioWare\\Mass Effect 3 Demo\\BIOGame\\Config\\GamerSettings.ini', and noticed that the measured CPU score only had the value '1', and that alot of the other numbers here were off, compared to the ME2 file of the same name. Tried copying over any data that wasn't similar from the ME 2 file, so that the configuration was the same. Restarted the game, but the issue was still there.
Then I started looking for binkw32.dll issues and CPU online, and came over the fact that alot of gamers with single core CPU's were having this issue. Considering I have a dual-core, I shouldn't really be experiencing a bink video issue. I then started msconfig, went to the 'Boot' bar, and into 'Advanced Options'. Here, you have the possibility of selecting the number of processors windows 7 uses. I Checked off 'number of processors', and selected 2, as I have a dual core machine. Rebooted, and started up the game.
Not only are all my cinematic problems gone, but my game now plays fluidly like never before.
Problem solved.
Modifié par Trikun, 19 février 2012 - 12:09 .
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