Horrid Freeze Problems

[-Logan-]

Hi,

Recently I upgraded my OS from Windows Vista to Windows 7. Everything went nicely, but recently I ran into a major problem when playing Regnum.

I seem to randomly get screen freezes when around many players at once, especially in the middle of a big war or when fighting a boss. I have no idea where it comes from, but I believe it could be from when many players cast powers at the same time. The freeze makes my entire computer go haywire, the audio begins to cut rapidly like a chainsaw, and it usually lasts around 10-15 seconds.

Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated, because the game is barely playable for me at the moment. I already did re-installs of Regnum and that didn't solve the problem.

[OpperVaagheid]

Same problem here.
On my main pc the freezes sometimes 2/3 min. And its not an useless pc. Its a decent gaming pc.
On this laptop the game worked awesome.
The game even run without problems in shader 4.
Since a while i had to switch it back to shader 3. Last couple of days i even cant play in shader 2 anymore and fixed pipelines are now activated. I think NGD really should pay more attention to fixing problems then adding new stuff (I hope the feb update will solve a lot of this)

[Orimae]

What he said...

Same problem here.
On my main pc the freezes sometimes 2/3 min. And its not an useless pc. Its a decent gaming pc.

The game even run without problems in shader 4.
Since a while i had to switch it back to shader 3. Last couple of days i even cant play in shader 2 anymore and fixed pipelines are now activated. I think NGD really should pay more attention to fixing problems then adding new stuff (I hope the feb update will solve a lot of this)

We have the very same problem,( as opper said above ) its terrible when i log on in a town in realm, or next to a fort, approach a fort (full or not :/ ) ... but your lucky your freezes only last like 10- 15 secs..mine are at least a minute till the game catches up... and in that time, i'm usually dead or all around me are dead because i cant heal them :/

So yeah, an explanation of why this happens and how i can fix it will be greatly apreciated.

I run shared model 2, no weather, no weapon trails, no shadows..and no, i wont go fixed pipeline, i paid good money for paint..i wanna see it >.>

[Znurre]

If you have plenty of RAM (4 GB or more), try turning off swap.
Windows is known for having bad memory management, and your problems sounds like swapping problems to me.

[Orimae]

If you have plenty of RAM (4 GB or more), try turning off swap.
Windows is known for having bad memory management, and your problems sounds like swapping problems to me.

Um, i am not too sure what this is, Swap thing (imma noob, sorry) and both me and Opper run Linux, Ubuntu 10.10 , was same on last version tho...( as far as i can remember)

[impp]

If you have plenty of RAM (4 GB or more), try turning off swap.
Windows is known for having bad memory management, and your problems sounds like swapping problems to me.

From a quick scan on forums this is a pretty radical suggestion (particularly is you read Microsoft posters).

I'll probably end up trying it just for fun.

[Znurre]

Um, i am not too sure what this is, Swap thing (imma noob, sorry) and both me and Opper run Linux, Ubuntu 10.10 , was same on last version tho...( as far as i can remember)
It could be a swapping problem on Linux too.
The client for me uses around 1.6GB ram, and even with 4GB of ram I run out of memory when having KDE4, Firefox, Mumble, Amarok, etc, etc. started while playing.
The OS will then try to swap unused memory to the harddrive, this is called "swapping".
The harddrive is much slower than the memory, so this will take a while.
During the swap, hard drive activity will increase and music can stop for a while etc. since the disk is busy writing, and the RAM is full.

The only thing you can do to prevent this in Linux, is to close some applications.
Linux never starts swapping unless your memory is full.
Windows, however, starts swapping immediately to have as much memory available as possible for new applications.
This could be the source for Logan's problems.

If he disables the swap file, in advanced system settings, Windows wont be able to swap.

[-Logan-]

This could be the source for Logan's problems.

If he disables the swap file, in advanced system settings, Windows wont be able to swap.
It's not the source of the problem for me :S
Something else.

[Zodar]

I'd agree that closing as many apps as you can should help. Firefox seems to use a lot or RAM and CPU, so I always make sure to kill that, along with any other thing that might hog resources. It might also be worth checking the Task Manager, just in case something has crashed - it might appear to have quit successfully, but could still be running in the background, using up valuable resources.

I had freezing problems a while ago and naturally blamed NGD. The freeze was long enough for me to get killed running from Syrtis CS to PP1, get aggroed by a mob and die before I knew what was happening. Freezing would usually be worst during battles, or when a lot of stuff was going on. It would usually get worse the longer I'd been playing, i.e. the first 30 mins or so would be trouble free.

I was able to confirm it wasn't R.O. because I got the same pauses with Quake3 Area. I tried fitting extra fans around the GPU. I also lowered the graphics settings. Both helped a little, but not enough. In the end I swapped my graphics card.

*edit - not sure if this is relevant for your o/s... sorry! ;)
I don't use Windows any more, so can't test the performance benefits of doing this, but if you're running a machine with more than one hard drive, another thing to try might be to move the swap file onto a different disk to your OS/Regnum and ideally onto the fastest drive you have. Its something I used to do all the time when I did run Windows:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307886/

Do you have a few different games to test against and a different graphics card to try?

[makarios68]

This is a common problem.

If you do a google search you will find plenty of evidence of gamers using Windows 7 complaining about game freezes.

It's also worth checking out your graphics card, as apparently certain ATI graphics cards are causing problems for gamers. (Also check your driver is up to date.)

I play several MMO's (i don't play Reggers anymore) and i get the freezes in every game. I hardly ever PVP anymore because it's just too annoying when you freeze in the middle of a fight - so i mostly PVE (yawn.)

I've tried all the suggested 'fixes' to the problem, but to no avail, so i'm hoping that one day i'll get an auto-update that fixes the issue.

[Raindance]

(Also check your driver is up to date.)


I also think you should check if they are updated or not. That's all I know.

[-Logan-]

My GPU is an nVidia, and I can plenty of other games smoothly. When I upgraded the OS I also downloaded the latest drivers too, so I don't think the GPU is the problem.

I would like to monitor the changes in the task manager, but even that is hard to do, because when I get these freezes, everything freezes. Normally RegnumOnline.exe uses around 330-360MB of memory when running, and the highest I saw it go before one of these freezes was 550MB, it might have gone over that, just that the task manager froze visually as well.

The problem is most likely coming from resource processing and usage. Znurre suggested I delete all my resources, and select the option to download all new resources in the options menu next time I run the game. So far, I haven't had any more freezes. I'll get back and see if that was really the problem. Hopefully it won't come back <_<

[Kitsuni]

Does turning off sound and music completely help at all? A gigantic number of sounds get mixed together when a battle starts, particularly from spells from Sultar's terror, which can play up to 40-50 sounds at once (especially on RA). Normally there is a setting in the configuration file to limit this to 16 channels or something to help prevent freeze-lags from occuring as a side-effect. On top of this, all of that content has to be loaded from the disk, which is the slowest component in the system. Running RO from a ram disk might alieviate the problem some, however I am not aware if that is possible in Windows 7.

[-Logan-]

Still freezing. That wasn't the problem -_-

Happening totally random now. Lasting around 15 seconds, occurs even when running with a single person. So I doubt it has to do with lag from many players now.

[Kitsuni]

Try downgrading a few driver versions. I've recently found out that something is horribly wrong with the latest NVIDIA drivers. Apparently they cause major issues both in games and occasionally in Aero (the Windows user interface). People are downgrading all over the 'net, and waiting for the next release, so upgrading to the latest drivers as soon as you installed may have been the source of the problem.

[_Enio_]

I have these freeze problem since ages, on Win XP.

(4GB ram, good system in general)

[buldarnemon]

Same here with fedora 14 64 and nvidia gtx 460 + 4 gigs i get random freezes every now and then. 15 to 20 seconds later comes back to normal as if i was diconnected for 2 secs then running smooth again, weirdly enough sometimes i still have my pointer on and reducing the window accelerates the returning to normal.

[-Logan-]

It's not a driver problem.

And I've just experienced it in another game, so now I know it isn't a Regnum related problem. Seems to be something with my system.

[Zas_]

I experiened this issue (i think), with Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu Maverick), 260.19.06 nvidia drivers, x86_64 platform with stock 2.6.35-24 kernel.

I upgraded my kernel to 2.6.36-020636 (manual way), so far issue is gone.

[Kitsuni]

It's not a driver problem.

And I've just experienced it in another game, so now I know it isn't a Regnum related problem. Seems to be something with my system.
Download and run 3DMark (beware, it's a huge download) to stress test your hardware and look for any points of failure. Inadequate cooling, design defects in the video card and other issues can sometimes only crop up when a performance update (usually from drivers) allows the card to efficiently run at maximum power. Also make sure that the power supply can feed the entire system enough power constantly, and not just in short spikes, or it will overheat. Particularly of interest is the +12V rail on the power supply, which generally needs to be able to put out 20-24 amps just for the video card.

Edit: Some fixes

[Forgeon]

I experience that freeze too since a few weeks now.

It seems really random in location. Number of around bosses and players seems irrelevant. It can happen any time, running or fighting (or even staying still).

swap is not an issue in my case (far enough memory, really, 24G, if the system need swap, there is a leak! (which is not reported, so no, not a swap issue))
number of cores neither (I even wonder if more than one or two is actually used by RO), nor speed (i7 @ 3.33GHz nominal, slow down at 1.6GHz with usual governor)
The frame rate is fine at 60 fps on the GTX470 most of the time (some area get a little temporary slowdown, but not enough for accumulated huge number of late frames). (and CPU usage is barely at 80-90% as reported in RO)
Cooling is really not an issue (disks are below 30°C, even the 470 is not pushed in its hot zone).

Remaining details: Ubuntu 10.10 (maverick), kernel 2.6.35-26, nvidia driver 270.18, x86_64

[buldarnemon]

I experiened this issue (i think), with Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu Maverick), 260.19.06 nvidia drivers, x86_64 platform with stock 2.6.35-24 kernel.

I upgraded my kernel to 2.6.36-020636 (manual way), so far issue is gone.

i'll check kernel version thx

Edit: i got kernel 2.6.35.11-83.fc14.x86_64 :/

[Zas_]

i'll check kernel version thx

Edit: i got kernel 2.6.35.11-83.fc14.x86_64 :/

Try 2.6.36 and report, for me it fixed the issue.

Issue not fixed by kernel upgrade, it came back.

[buldarnemon]

upgraded to 2.6.37 and didn't fix the problem. I feel it has something to do with my ethernet adapter rather ... I'm still investigating thx

[Forgeon]

Same as Buldarnemon, 2.6.37 does not fix it.

[NotScias]

I have an Archlinux x86_64 with 2.6.37 kernel on an Intel SSD finely tuned for max performance (aligned partitions, noop sheduler, /tmp in ramfs, trim...)
Althought I almost had no big freeze in game, the log in process is really long, and the game freezes for several seconds (5-15) once the character is in the world. I have this issue only since a few RO updates...