radeon 9800 + COH = slow performance??

M

Mtt83

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 2, 2002
Messages
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:confused: I have a P4 2.4 and a radeon 9800. This combo should run most things fairly well. I play city of heroes a lot, which uses opengl for some reason, and usually get <=30 fps unless i'm in an indoor map where my fps tend to go up a bit. I'm running at 8X agp (tried 4X with no change) and have fast writes off. All of my opengl setting are default. I've tried both catalyst and omega drivers with the same results. Can any offer any explanations why my system is performing so poorly? Thanks in advance.
 
Ram? HD Fragmentation? I mean there are alot of things that can cause it.
 
I keep my HD defragmented and have 768MB of ram so that shouldn't be the problem either.
 
I was running a 9800Pro (sapphire) on my system (see below) and ran CoH and I don't think it ever dropped below 30. Dunno what to tell you.
 
well a 2500+ (especially at 3200+ speeds) rapes a 2.4B, but if its a 2.4C you should have no problems.
 
I have a AMD64 with a 9800pro 128MB and was able to run CoH in beta at 1600x1200 /w 4xAA and 8xAF on just find... only time I ever noticed a frame drop as if there were TONS of heroes on screan at once and even then it was more then playable.
 
Do you have any not needed background processes runnning? (folding, quicktime/real updater, AOL, malware, etc)

What is you OS? If its XP or 2K, Do you have HD indexing on? (If so turn it off)

You can boost your speed by diabling shadows in the game options.
 
I'm running winXP. I'm not sure where to look to turn indexing off, and if I do turn it off will it have any negative effects on my system? I will also try turning off the shadows in-game to see how much it affects performance, I just hope it doesn't make the game look crappy without them.
 
i play with the system in my sig. with the omega's 4.5 drivers.

I never checked framerates but it seems to run fine until there are like 50+ heroes on the screen like in atlas park at Ms. Liberty.

The only thing I get is constant crashing. For like no reason. My system is prime95 stable for 24 hours, and memtest 86 came back negative as well. No other games crash my computer. :(
 
When your computer sometimes feels sluggish, take a look at your HD access light. If its blinking, or solid, something is accessing the drive. If its not your current application, chances are its the Indexing service (if its on).

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, set up the Indexing Service (Yes, now you can find that temp log file from some long forgotten utility in 5 Msecs, instead of the ungodly 15 Msecs) to constantly poll your HDs and update the indexing file "when there is nothing else to do".

To shut off indexing,

Go to your My Computer Icon on the desktop.

Right click onto each of your HD icons and select Properties.

At the bottom of the Properties page, you will see 2 check boxes.

Compression
Indexing

Make sure that the Indexing check box is unchecked.


ADVANCED:

You may also want to shut down the indexing service.

go to Control Panel -> Administrative Services -> Computer Management

Select Services, then look for Indexing Service in the services list.

Right Click on it. Is its running, Stop it.
Select its properties and set it to Manual


Another Thought:

Is FastWrites Enabled in your BIOS?

IF its on, you may want to diable it. Some motherboards behave strangely with ATI cards with FastWrites enabled (YMMV).
 
Indexing is now turned off and I had already set my agp down to 4x. I've even tried lowering all of the settings in the video options in-game and only gain maybe 2 fps. I'm at wits end trying to figure this out. :( (On a side note, thank you all for your suggestions thus far. I appreciate them.(
 
What are you using to benchmark the FPS? Fraps can actually drag the performance down droping your framerates. I honestly don't know what wrongs, I don't know what king of frame rates I get on my 9800XT, but it never seems to lag, now that I updated to 4.5cats.
 
I use the in-game command to turn on the fps display. It's a similar command to other games: /showfps 1
 
Did you figure this out?

I got a radeon 9800 pro 128mb and have the same exact problem. The coh support team has tried to help but nothing yet.

I get about 8 fps just standing there.
 
it is possible you guys got the *cheap* version of the 9800, the cheap version still reads as a 9800 pro but it only uses a 128bit memory interface compared to the 256bit that the real pro runs at, this kills performance.
 
- Run dxdiag, is your "AGP Texture Acceleration" in "Enabled" under the Display tab?

- Are you overclocking the card?

- How the heat in your case?
 
I had horrible problems with COH and a AIW 9800 Pro as well. Would play great for 30 minutes then would drop down to less than 8 fps for about a minute. Then it would be okay for 15 minutes or so then would drop back down. Tried reformating and reinstalling XP, tons of different drivers, made sure I had the chipset driver installed, made sure it wasn't overheating .etc. Finally said screw it and bought a 6800 GT and the game runs perfectly now. The ATI worked great with every other game I tried with it so probably just a COH/ATI issue.
 
CoH and ATi Have conflicting issues. My 9500pro ran great, tonight I'm going to install my x800 pro.. i hope it runs smoothly.
 
Unit-0 said:
- Run dxdiag, is your "AGP Texture Acceleration" in "Enabled" under the Display tab?

- Are you overclocking the card?

- How the heat in your case?
Click to expand...

Yes its enabled.
No overclocking.
Heat is not an issue.

Tried the card on another system similar to mine except 4x AGP instead of 8x and it ran only 3 fps

Tried it on an Athlon 2600 sytem and it ran 30fps+. You could even bump the details up to 200% and the res and it still ran faster than on my system.

I've tried omega drivers, fresh xp install on another hard drive, latest motherboard drivers, previous catalyst drivers, bios changes, ATI control panel config changes..just about everything (I'm a programmer so I know my way around)

I think ATI drivers have problems with certain motherboards, mine being one.
I will probably just take it back and get an Nvidia card and stay away from ATI because they have too many problems. I wish I could keep it but i dont want to rebuild my system right now.

On a side note i have a 2.6 ghz P4 laptop with an ATI Radeon 9000 mobility card in it and it gets only 3 fps...totally unplayable. COH definitely has issues with ATI cards
 
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