16 réponses à ce sujet

[emperormikey]

Hi, I'm playing Mass Effect on an Inspiron 1520 after a while away from it and the performance (which I'm certain used to be fine) is now AWFUL. For some bizarre reason it will run at 13-15 FPS (I'm checking with FRAPS) regardless of whatever is happening, even the title screen runs at this ridiculously low rate. I'm perfectly aware from past experience that I'm not about to get stellar performance with this computer, but I'm certain that I used to be able to run ME better in the past.

My specs are;
Windows 7 x86
Intel T7250 (2x2ghz, 2mb L2)
2 GB RAM
Geforce 8600m GT using 188.34 forceware.
My audio is the usual non-specific onboard stuff.
Latest Directx runtimes installed and re-installed just to make sure it's ok.

I was using the 196.34 drivers before rolling back and the performance was the same. Whether I have the settings all maxed out or turned off, performance remains the same; even changing the resolution does nothing either way.

I have a suspicion it's a driver issue; I remember this game being horribly fussy with drivers upon release, any ideas? I'm running Mirror's Edge, Borderlands, Bioshock and Gears of War just as well as ever but Mass Effect is just dying on me.

If anyone knows a driver that runs this game well then please could you let me know?

[RmanDC]

It's a laptop. What do you expect?



You cant run probably run Call of Duty on your GF8600 with low-med settings but ME1 is out. Even if you can get away with 2 gigs or ram, it is still only a 2ghz cpu.

CPU is the main problem here IMHO

[carlosjuero]

@RmanDC - It isn't the CPU if it ran fine before on that machine, I run ME 1 on my laptop with Dual Core 2.26 with no problems.



To the OP: Try setting the shortcut to disable Desktop Composition (this turns off Aero in Vista and 7, freeing up video memory) and change the config to run at the lowest supported resolution and the lowest graphics settings.



If you see an improvement, slowly step up things until it gets to a happy medium (or leave them as they are).



The 196 series of drivers have been known to cause a few issues with some games (FPS drops), the 18x series has been pretty smooth for me though. Try completely uninstalling your GFX drivers and installing something from the 186.X series (reboot between uninstall and reinstall).

[OH-UP-THIS!]

Going out on a limb here and saying, you MAY not have enough ram.



Win7 uses just over 1 gig alone, then you've got the video sub-system, soundcard.



It all adds up, and I'm just betting you're running out of available memory.

[emperormikey]

Hi everyone, first off thanks for your thoughts so far.



RmanDC - I'm well aware of the limitations of laptop gaming, so I'm not after eye-candy just playable fps. The thing that's weird here is that reducing the settings to absolute minimum gives me only 2 fps more than at max settings. It could be the CPU, but it wasn't laggy on previous playthroughs.



Ohupthis - I'm unsure on the 'insufficient RAM' theory because it's never really been an issue. Win7 seems quite good at using its RAM efficiently in games etc. and all the documentation says 2g is enough.



Carlos - thanks for pointing me in the direction of the 186's; I've tried some 177's (which resulted in all the colours changing after a few mins and a crash), and some 182's (which resulted in 10fps instead of the earlier 15) and I've altered the settings as you suggested in the compatibility options. I'll get back with info on how the 186's go.



I don't think it's hardware; I'm running this at 640x480, low particles and textures, no motion blur, v-sync or film grain and it's the same fps as if I run it at 1280x720, high textures, med particles, motion blur and film grain on. It just doesn't make sense; I've gotten playable fps out of this before now, so I have no idea what's going on.

[PeTTs0n]

If you suspect the RAM is being overtaxed, try to increase the size of the page file (easiest is to google it, if you're unsure how to do), to see whether this makes a difference. This is often a very marginal difference however, as even if you're getting more random access storage, the hard drive is still the slowest component in a modern computer. And yes, W7 is pretty darn good at controlling memory efficiently, but there'll be alot of unnecessary communication (*purging of ram -> rewrite new data, repeat*, the CPU/NB has to do that more often if you have less memory) and slowdowns if you're short on RAM.



The CPU should handle it without any problems (CPU's are rarely too slow, they're the components that tend to stay decent for the longest periods - if you're not transcoding, decoding, recoding, or similar high-performance computing duties.) W7 utilizes a little more than earlier editions (except for Vista, perhaps...), so it's still worth checking if you've got stuff open that can save some CPU cycles (and RAM too!), such as AV/Firewalls, browsers (Firefox is a memory hog!) etc. etc.

And RmanDC, you can't measure a modern CPU by it's clock frequency.



The GPU *should* be able to handle it decently, although miracles shouldn't be expected. W7 is more taxing on the GPU when you got all the visual effects enabled. Remember that an 8600M GT is far slower than a regular (PCIe addin card) 8600GT, so it could be worth disabling a lot of the visual goodness in W7 to see whether this affects the end result.



And ohupthis - an 8600M GT most likely has it's own memory circuit(s), so it wont tax the regular RAM. Also, most soundcards use a negligible amount of RAM and CPU time. (Make sure ME isn't trying to run HW sound if your board doesn't support it though, it may try to run the advanced sound instructions on the CPU in that case, (depends on how the sound engine is made, and if it uses OpenAL or DirectSound) which will increase requirements.)

Also; try to install newer sound drivers - this can actually solve weird issues with several games, especially if you've got a cheap/integrated sound solution. (Been through that a few times.)



Other than that, nothing but general troubleshooting, good luck!

[emperormikey]

PeTTs0n - That's a very nicely put together set of things to try.

I've disabled all the Win7 visual stuff in compatibility so it goes to Basic scheme when I start ME, so that's freed up some resources. I always turn my AV off and I have nothing running in the background except Steam and in this case FRAPS just so I can see what's happening when I alter the visual settings.

I've disabled HW sound, not noticed any difference performance-wise so I'll just leave it off.

The video card does have 256mb of vram (ie it is at the lower end of the scale) so I'm keeping textures at medium since I'd assume any higher and it'll start borrowing from the RAM since it's that sort of card.

I can inform everyone that the 186.91's have increased fps over the 196's by a few frames to 17-19fps (although they're still unaffected by screen resolution oddly), and that the game does feel a bit smoother as a result.

So the drivers helped, and I can only assume the other stuff will have helped here and there in it's own little way.

*edit: I just
did a quick investigation by running around in the citadel for a wee
bit, and ME only took up ~700mb of my RAM,
leaving me with 700mb sat around empty (Win7 was using another 600ish).
I'm apparently not short on RAM after all... any ideas as to why the
game doesn't want to cache anything in the RAM or is being slow despite
my apparently copious RAM quantities?*

Modifié par emperormikey, 05 février 2010 - 12:38 .

[PeTTs0n]

Well, Windows always try to have as much free RAM as possible, and tries to manage RAM usage, sometimes a little more than it should - giving the problem I mentioned earlier. (Too many purge->write cycles.) This is mostly a good thing, as a 100% memory usage will totally screw up anything you're doing at that time. Even so, Windows *can* be limiting Mass Effects share of the memory, so that it doesn't get as much as it "should" get, for optimal conditions.

This is just in general, however, as I feel like there's something else to it, according to your description. If there's a way to disable TurboCache (nVidia's technology for using the system RAM as graphics memory) I would recommend you try that. (Check the BIOS, nVidia driver settings etc.)
Also, you could try disabling the sound card in the device manager to see whether this affects the performance at all. (I've been through several cases with ridiculous slowdowns due to buggy sound cards/drivers.)

And as you say - changing graphic drivers can help (or make it worse), it usually is a symptom more than a cause however.

Laptops aren't really my cup of tea to be honest, been working a lot with computers but mostly stationary ones :/

Modifié par PeTTs0n, 05 février 2010 - 11:17 .

[emperormikey]

Thanks for getting back to me PeTTs0n;



In terms of the RAM I guess there isn't much I can do about that really (short of upgrading). Regarding Turobocache; the only way I've found to disable this is via BIOS (Dell's BIOS are a bit rubbish and don't let you do this) or via Rivatuner, which only seems to work pre-vista according to the Interweb and my own attempt to do it just now.

I tried disabling my sound drivers, which either netted a negligible or no improvement, and I updated my audio drivers which did just as little to help.



I've noticed that for some odd reason it's only running at 15fps on the main menu too; where there's the resume game, options etc. and the game can't possibly be doing anything too taxing there! This seems mighty suspicious to me... I agree with you in that I don't think it's the RAM either, or the (admittedly small) power of my laptop as such, because that really shouldn't matter on a title screen.

[neoxus299]

I play ME 2 with the highet setting and resolution available,I get constant 60 fps, but in ME 1 I get like 40-50 fps

[emperormikey]

Hi neoxus299, do you mean you're running it with a similar setup to mine?



If so what graphics drivers are you using?

[emperormikey]

Apologies for the double-post but I can now report that the issue has been resolved!



After trying EVERYTHING I could think of/was suggested on here/found on Google searches I just resolved to try the last ditch reinstall tactic (I guess the gaming equivalent of turning it off and on again).



Whether it was that or the fact that I update my DirectX to the February 2010 redist. I don't know, but I'm now pushing out a steady framerate around the high 20's-low 30's with motion blur, film grain, high textures, med particles and 1280x720. I'll just turn off some eye-candy and it will be more than smooth enough for my needs.



Thanks once again to everyone who tried to help out!

[PeTTs0n]

Cheers on getting it working!

[R4Di4TiON]

I have a similar problem with the poor performance. I can run ME2 with maxed settings and still get smooth frames at least in the 40s and 50s. When I try playing ME1 tho, its extremely laggy, tweaking the graphics doesnt help a bit. Later on when I tried starting the game, my comp just crashed.



I don't think it's a performance issue, but rather a compatibility issue. I have Penti4 Dual Core at 3.00Ghz, 2GB RAM, and 8800GS clocked at 725, 1810, 953.

[Gorath Alpha]

ME1 PC's Tech discussions have been moved, and are now sharing the same forum as ME1 on the Xbox360.

[emperormikey]

This is really odd; the slowdown returned in the last few days. I definitely suspect compatibility too... if only I could work out the conflict.

[Gorath Alpha]

Gorath Alpha wrote...

ME1 PC's Tech discussions have been moved, and are now sharing the same forum as ME1 on the Xbox360.

Who needs a new prescription for eyeglasses?   That wasn't plain enough? 

http://social.biowar...egory/103/index

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 07 mars 2010 - 10:28 .