RAM intensive?

[Honest989]

After getting annoyed over the face that one of the A-10 campaigns wants you to travel through a gauntlet of Tor's I did a quick flight in the SU-25t. All was going well until I did a victory roll over the avenger :rolleyes:..

 

Is this game RAM instensive though? The reason I ask is that once shot and when I had flames etc pouring out of the aircraft, and when I attempted a crash landing the game slowed to about 8-10 FPS. I know the game has a problem with smoke because on ground pounding missions, if you fly through the smoke, the FPS slows.

 

So what's the deal?

 

 

P4 3ghz

1024 MB RAM

ATI 9800 pro (the old workhorse)

[Pilotasso]

yeah, made the transition a few weeks ago and the difference is brutal. It helps with stutering but still doesn improve max FPS (althought it does increase the average).

 

Its because of the less hard drive activity.

[Kula66]

More RAM will never hurt ... but its a question of diminishing returns.

 

Also, with apps that have memory leak issues you'll be able to run longer before your system starts having to page.

[Guest IguanaKing]

Yup...from my experience on two different rigs that shared some of the same hardware...LOMAC is very much RAM and CPU intensive.

 

Added my 9800XT to my old 2GHz machine with 512MB. No FPS increase, but my TVM actually started working and the eye-candy difference was HUGE. Moved it to my 3.4GHz machine with 1GB of RAM. HUGE FPS increase, and I was able to even turn the water setting all the way up before getting FPS similar to the same card on the old rig. Added another Gig of RAM, slight FPS increase...but I also noticed it didn't dip NEARLY as much in situations of heavy ground vehicle activity.

 

What drivers are you using for your 9800 Pro, BTW, Honest989?

[Snake_Eyes]

Totally agree with Pilotasso, Kula and Iguan.

 

Even from the 1st release (I had a 2.5Ghz Processor, 2Gb RAM, and an 9800 Pro) - and yep, 10fps at some stages.

 

If I remember rightly, most of the threads over at UBI Lock On were all to do with tweaks for this and that to get the old fps up to speed. Most of them were only minor improvements.

 

From setting dx sound acceleration to none, to the infamous ATI .dll tweak. Where the DXRenderer.dll was swapped with the one from the system 32 folder (ati2dvag.dll). The community was split on the result of this one. Many thought it a placebo, just as many said it worked!!

 

Even now, 3 years on here we are, still trying to give ourselves a decent return on fps!!

[Guest ThomasDWeiss]

I run mine with very high settings and almost never have a stutter - take this screenshot (1600x1200x32)

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/thomasdw/LOCKON%20FC/LOCKON2006-03-2618-42-53-32.jpg

 

this is a full 80+ objects mission screenshot, and I ran it at very high settings to test it so that someone with a more modest setup can still fly it.

 

I also added the tree mod

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/thomasdw/LOCKON%20FC/LOCKON2006-03-2618-47-29-92.jpg

 

and I still got a steady 20 FPS.

 

I have 2 GIG RAM, a 2x 160GB SATA RAID, a 4 GIG swapfile on an ATI 850XT PE , 3.2E P4 - a good but not that good rig.

 

I used the same tweak you can find at Lockonfiles.

 

There are many tweaks around - if you try them over time you will find the sweet spot were you can get a good FPS average.

[Guest IguanaKing]

Yup...I'm using your tweak Thomas. Its the best I have come across so far. I get occasional dips into the mid-20s, but most of the time I run high 40s to low 80s. Before your tweak...well...cut all those numbers in half. :icon_supe

[Force_Feedback]

The 1.12 fps tweak (version D) did increase fps for me, BUT, now I get stutters in which fps drops to 1.5-2, ALT-tabbing doesn't work. These stutters occur in F2 view, with various aircraft, but mostly on the su-25T after a few burning wrecks are created in a short amount of time, or when something burns.

 

My settings are medium-low (high models, medium scenes, 100km preload, no civ. traffic, basic haze, weapon-only effects, low water, active planar shadows, no heat trail. And full screen is OFF)

 

Now, if I make a simple su-25t mission, in which I get shot at by 6 Strela-1s (one group, average ai), the mission starts with 42-40 fps close to the ground (200m, on approach for the runway), but after a few "bad landings", and wrecks, the fps hangs at around 26 fps, and after like 5 minutes it drops to 2 fps in F2 view, and normal (26, not 40) in the cockpit view. I uninstalled the "fps tweak", but still get the same slideshows, which made me stop playing lomac.

 

my rig:

Athlon XP 3700+ San diego @ 2.3 Ghz (I have a Vortex 48 cooler, so the load temps are 36*)

1024gb of ram (2x 256 @ 266mhz+ 1x 512 @ 400Mhz)

200 gb ata 133 HD

Radeon 9800XT not overclocked, with Zalman VF-700Cu

[Guest IguanaKing]

Heh...maybe there's a bug in the new version. I'm patched to 1.12a, but still using Tommy's 1.11 tweak...works great for me. :D

 

Hey, Force...what drivers are you using on your 9800XT?

[Kindred]

More RAM yes I like lol, just upgraded my putter, Added 2Gig, now running total of 3Gig's of ram. Made a hole lots of difference, especialy for BF2. Good thing RAM is cheap these days :D

[VGV]

i have 4Gb of RAM now. in lockon i see no diference from 2Gb :(

system:

Ahtlon 64 3800+ x2

4Gb DDR 400 dual chanel

asus 6600GT

[Honest989]

In answer to your question, I''m using the latest official ATI drivers which is 6.3 I think. I may get another stick of RAM - I don't want to turn this into a 'how to upgrade your pc' thread, but lets just say that I bought my pc a month or two too early - the result is i don't have PCI-e and with vista (yuck) and DX 10 cards round the corner, plus the possibility of the reduction of available gfx cards for AGP, i'm not sure whether it's worth upgrading. much else other than the card and the RAM for this beastie for the time being..

 

 

btw: this was the result of my victory roll...

[Guest IguanaKing]

Drivers above Cat 5.13 are unfriendly to 9800 series cards. I found this out a couple of weeks ago when I was thinking my 9800XT was having problems. I noticed that, for several months, the Pixel Shader 2.0 test in 3DMark2003 (the one with the elephant and rhino) had lots of snow on the two animals, and even a checkered pattern of big, snowy squares. Just for grins, I tried reverting further and further in my drivers, and 5.13 was where it stopped. Went back and forth several times...same result every time. In LOMAC, this defect translated into flashing sections of terrain and what appeared to be electrical activity in the clouds above me...most-noticeable in overcast conditions. I'm running 5.13 now...no more problems. Also...have you noticed extraordinarily long boot up times with XP now? That MS Net stuff that's required for the latest drivers is actually the cause of that. Check your user accounts in the control panel...you will see that an unfamiliar user icon exists now...it begins with ASP, as I recall. After reverting to 5.13 to cure the flashing terrain and cloud problem, I deleted the mysterious user account...now I get fast boot-ups again. :D

[Pilotasso]

Mine is working with Omega kat 5.2. Works perfect: I can see crisp textures in distance, all settings are set for "quality".

 

You would be surprised how well this machine works as long as you know how to oil it well. ;)

[diveplane]

2.5ghz ddr2 ram here, i up graded to this amount few weeks ago what a difference, imo min to run lockon i would say around 1.5 to 2 gig ram

 

 

am upgrading to 3.5 gig few weeks

[Guest ThomasDWeiss]

The Su-25T is an FPS killer - put one in a mission and you will feel the difference.

 

What you can do is hit F2 right after you start the mission - then move and pan the camera do the same inside the cockpit, this way you load the textures (to RAM,swap file? I don't know) and before you attack drop a flare.

 

This is what I do - sometimes I get some stutter when doing it the first time, but I avoid a lot of problems later on.

 

the external view you should see is like this one

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/thomasdw/LOCKON%20FC/LOCKON2006-02-2517-24-36-29.jpg

 

Another thing you should do if right after you start a mission if FPS drop below 10 FPS is ALT-TAB

 

and avoid switching views a lot - if you have to, pause before you do.

 

( 2 GB RAM is the ideal - I've had 2 GIG since LO came out, so I don't know what a difference it makes, but WinXP uses 512MB RAM, if you have 1 GIG - that means you have very little to spare. )

[Force_Feedback]

Heh...maybe there's a bug in the new version. I'm patched to 1.12a, but still using Tommy's 1.11 tweak...works great for me. :D

 

Hey, Force...what drivers are you using on your 9800XT?

 

Original cat 6.2, no mods, I do have ATI tray tools running, but I haven't set any overclocking (because the card is in fact a R-9800Pro bios flashed to a XT, no problems at all with it btw).

 

So I guess I should revert to 5.13

 

I'm soo annoyed with lomac, all I can do now is play America's Army, and although AA is great and all, I really like to fly them AFM planes and crash(land) them.

[Guest IguanaKing]

If you have extra time...try reverting to 5.13 for your drivers, and get rid of that extra user account that was created by MS .NET. Worked wonders for me. :D

[Force_Feedback]

If you have extra time...try reverting to 5.13 for your drivers, and get rid of that extra user account that was created by MS .NET. Worked wonders for me. :D

 

Thx for the help, I removed that strange user accont a while ago, and I've rolled back to 5.13 from NGI or something (some hacked driver from guru3d). Gonna find me a nice power metal album and fire up lomac to test it, and if it won't work, I'll play AA instead :D.

[Guest IguanaKing]

How about Flotsam and Jetsam- Cuatro. A good one to test with would be Double Zero. :icon_supe I know...old album...but it kicks arse!!!

[Force_Feedback]

Just flew a basic mission, with a su-25t and the Kuz in it (no other ground/air units), fps is higher than with cat 6.2. Crashed my flying pig a couple of times, no biggie, fps dropped with like 10-15 units (from 45 to 30), but then I flew into a bridge, big boom etc.

I reset the plane, lower the gear to land, and WHAM, fps drops to 1 in F2 view (no matter in which direction you look), when I switched to F1 view, fps was 35, like nothing happened, switch to F2, fps drops to 1, switch back to cockpit view, and the fps is 35 again (near the ground).

 

I listened to Twilightning while doing the "test". :)

 

This all after I removed the fire shaders (I replaced them by files of 0kb, so it wouldn't write into the error log). I'm desperate here, had these issues ever since 1.11 came out, by the time 1.12 came out I got a new rig, the fps improved, but these slideshows annoy the hell out of me.

 

Could it help to install new chipset drivers? Or turn off the overclocking? I don't understand it, with my system I should be able to fly lomac the way I like (on medium settings), but playing at 1 fps is impossible. Maybe I should install my download version instead of the Ryussian CD version I have running now.

[Honest989]

wierd.... I removed the wierd net framework account and got like.. 10-12 more fps :rolleyes:

[Guest IguanaKing]

Yup...I did too. I'm glad that helped you a little.

 

Force, not sure what to tell you, but I'm noticing studders each time somebody fires a weapon. The game even appeared to lock up once when a MiG-23 got hit by a Slammer. But, its always been like that, just does it a little less now. Sometimes I get weird flashing on the map, corresponding with white spoking in the cockpit. I ALT-TAB in and out a couple of times, and it goes away. Sometimes the lighting and sound changes when I do that though. Oh well...more bugs.

[Force_Feedback]

Yup...I did too. I'm glad that helped you a little.

 

Force, not sure what to tell you, but I'm noticing studders each time somebody fires a weapon. The game even appeared to lock up once when a MiG-23 got hit by a Slammer. But, its always been like that, just does it a little less now. Sometimes I get weird flashing on the map, corresponding with white spoking in the cockpit. I ALT-TAB in and out a couple of times, and it goes away. Sometimes the lighting and sound changes when I do that though. Oh well...more bugs.

 

 

Well, I installed some mobo drivers (never knew you had drivers for the motherboard, lol, guess times have changed) and the spikes are more bearable, as my FPS during a spike has quadrippled, yes it's 4 fps now :p And the stutter duration is now like 5 seconds, then the fps returns to the low twenties, antil some other plane crashes. I disabled the fire shader, but without any avail, rather than other flame graphics. I could try lowering the effects, but I don't think that will help.

 

For crying out loud, I get 65-72 fps near the ground (H=< 200m) in the su-25T when starting the mission (in flight), then it drops to 27, after some crashes, and If I hit a bridge, or lower my gear while my plane is damaged I get 3-4 fps. This is the reason I'm so pissed off.

 

Oh, I have 1 PC3200 512mb DDR module, and two 256mb DDR modules AT PC2100, will it be better if I remove those two modules?

It will cut my ram in half, but it will be the "better" half, cause now everything runs at 266mhz.