massive fps drops

[Nightchill]

ok, i've installed regnum on both of my boots (winxp & arch), and on winxp regnum runs perfectly but on arch it suffers from massive fps drops, actually-it's like 1fps since the moment i log in, unplayable. what could be the possible explanation for this difference between arch&xp boot?

[Ulmanyar]

Drivers.

What graphics card are you using? And what driver? Or do you use any "heavy" eye-candy that could affect your performance?

[Bamm-Bamm]

First thing to try, is disabling the xorg composite extension.
Add this to the bottom of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

The xorg version used in Arch by default now enables it...

[Nightchill]

Drivers.

What graphics card are you using? And what driver? Or do you use any "heavy" eye-candy that could affect your performance?

proprietary catalyst driver for ati radeon 9600pro, i use no eye candy.

@qwasd, composite? i'll try but i doubt it, i'm not in desktop environment, i use wmii.

[ieti]

I have no such problems. My distro is Debian Etch, graphics card is NVidia 7300GT 100.14.19 driver. Sometimes I have lag spikes and crashes but not frame rate drops.

I suspect it is something related with ATI drivers. My friend that play regnum in linux(Debian Lenny) and have ATI card have same symptoms - frame drops after playing some time. After this he restart game and play till next frame drop.

[Zordak]

Have you tried running the game in safe mode? Do you always have the fps drops?
I experience even freezes (on a 7900gt, launching the game with 150 fps...) after tens of minutes playing time if i am not in safe mode.

Z.

[Nightchill]

Have you tried running the game in safe mode? Do you always have the fps drops?
I experience even freezes (on a 7900gt, launching the game with 150 fps...) after tens of minutes playing time if i am not in safe mode.

Z.
yep, unfortunately nothing helps in my case. regnum was ok when i first installed it on this computer. that was ubuntu 8.04. then i had smooth playtime till fps drops, and relog would solve the problem. but then something weird started to happen with then latest regnum update (the one in August i think). upon log on massive fps drops (but no fps rise =/) so it was unplayable. then i put regnum on my gentoo boot, same thing. unplayable. then i tried with sabayon, nada, and now with arch - n a d a. like i said, everything was fine untill that August update.

[Mikan]

This is an ATI problem that NGD won't fix. It's easy to say it's drivers (since that is the cop out most developers use), however, in my experience not a single other game has this problem.

I can run most games on super-high settings with over 60 FPS, including Regnum Online at over 100 FPS, and yet I still get freezes and occasional "complete FPS drops" and eventually the game gets unstable and crashes after experiencing serious lag. It gets exponentially worse when I enable shaders.

So, like I said... it's an ATI problem NGD won't fix. Ther's many other threads in this discussion forum covering it, and not a single official reply from NGD (and it would probably be "it's the drivers!" anyway).

When questioned about it on IRC Kailer said "NG3D is UNFIXABLE" (word for word) and claimed that problems such as these are mostly a combined bi-product of drivers or system configuration as well as bugs in the game itself, which normally are bearable but sometimes mix together to make effects like this.

All of this seems to've come from an update a few months ago, too.

Regards,

[shirtees]

How do you run RO in safe mode? Im running Ubuntu 8.10. I ask this becuase the game runs fine here at work (500mb nvidia), but on my laptop at home with a built in ATI card I get those frame drops often lately.

[Nightchill]

on the 3rd window (after the login one), click options, tick Force safe mode, go back & run the game. btw, you'll have to do this everytime before starting game.

[Bamm-Bamm]

@qwasd, composite? i'll try but i doubt it, i'm not in desktop environment, i use wmii.

I did not mean compiz, but the xorg composite extension... This now gets automatically loaded by the X server. You can check if it's running by entering in a terminal:
xdpyinfo | grep -i composite

If you get a match, enter what i told you above in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, restart X and try again

[Angelwinged_Devil]

running with a gtx 280 (nvidia) I also notice a heavier fps drop than ever before

[Cuchulainn]

Im also playing RO on ArchLinux (64bit) and have also the catalyst driver installed. I have noticed that the new catalyst version 8.12 is a bit more laggy than 8.11 or 8.8 is.
An advantage of catalyst 8.12: its often possible (not allways, system crashs possible) to change from fullscreenmode to window mode, that was not possible with some former version of the catalyst drivers.

I have an desktop computer with an HD4650, there i have only very few lags when i play RO. On my notebook with HD3200 RegnumOnline it's not very good playable because of lags.
Solution would be to downgrade to catalyst 8.11, but i wont do that because i acctually mostly play RO on my desktop computer.

Catalyst users can check the catalyst control center and deactivate unnecessary 3D-options e.g. Catalyst A.I etc to get a few more fps

[shirtees]

Running in safe mode now thanks! Works great on my laptop. I also went into the options and let it autodetect my settings. Better graphics and better game play with no lagging problems! Thanks :)

[Nightchill]

I did not mean compiz, but the xorg composite extension... This now gets automatically loaded by the X server. You can check if it's running by entering in a terminal:
xdpyinfo | grep -i composite

If you get a match, enter what i told you above in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, restart X and try again
i did, no luck =/

@shirtees, nice, hope you enjoy it :)

[Arafails]

Disabling composite will have practically no effect unless a compositing manager is running. Honest.

[CappY]

I got similar problem... After playing some hours,i got 10-15 framedrops (usually i play with 20-25 FPS) after some hours i play with 5-10 FPS. My sys is Linux 2.6.26-gentoo-r4 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux with NVIDIA FX 5200 and nvidia-drivers 173.14.12. I get again 25 FPS when I restart PC. Force safe mode doesn't help.I got composite enabled.

[Znurre]

I got similar problem... After playing some hours,i got 10-15 framedrops (usually i play with 20-25 FPS) after some hours i play with 5-10 FPS. My sys is Linux 2.6.26-gentoo-r4 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux with NVIDIA FX 5200 and nvidia-drivers 173.14.12. I get again 25 FPS when I restart PC. Force safe mode doesn't help.I got composite enabled.The game has alot of memory leaks, which means that the FPS will continue to fall until you restart the game again.