Best ways to reduce slowdown?

[Poet 0]

Ok, specs bit first:

P4 1.5Ghz on Asus 266Mobo

384DDR

GF2ti 64Mb + Soundblaster Live.

Not a monster system, but it aint gonna be seeing an upgrade anytime in the near future.

What gets me is that it manages to run plenty of other new and current games at high levels of detail with plenty of effects and very few problems ( BF42, UT2K3 ).

Yet Ive never managed in all these years to get a nice smooth OFP set up.

I've read plenty of threads, tried all the tips and still got issues, only if I turn the graphics down, and I mean RIGHT down ( Doom era type graphics ) does it manage to give an approximation of a stable performance.

So what is it in OFP that kills my machine like no other game?

What affects what?

What is CPU related, RAM related, Card related etc?

Are vehicle shadows more draining than object shadows?

Is a bigger viewdistance worse than high textures?

HW Sound seems to make little difference. On or Off?

I've fiddled with every setting and slider in the game, and just cant find a balance that keeps things looking ok and still playable.

I guess Im just sick of my buddy pointing out that Desert Combat for BF42 ( only got it installed cause he demands to play it whenever he comes round... ) looks 10x better graphically and runs smooth as silk on my system, even on a full server with all-out action.

Is there a monster settings tutorial out there? Where is the huge in-depth config tutorial most games have somewhere on the 'net?

Why cant I have my cake and eat it!

[Guest]

Terrain Detail level (bottom right hand corner of your in-game video prefs) is the single bigest factor in slow down. Have this set on Low or Very Low, and you should be able make everything else pretty.

[Gordy 0]

Ok, specs bit first:

P4 1.5Ghz on Asus 266Mobo

384DDR

GF2ti 64Mb + Soundblaster Live.

I had the same set up as you. Well except for GF. I have a Ati 8500.

I have bought a P4 2,8Ghz on asus P4P800SE

512 MB DDR 400. I kept the same ATI for the moment.

The difference?

View distance twice as I had.

Everything in high detail and no lag on redone compaigns with HYK US sol + BAS Delta + BAS helos + MArfy's vehicles + SIG Tanks + Marine assault Pack + Vit APCs.

I mean it rocks big time.

[Poet 0]

Terrain detail is at low, as are most other settings tbh. But it still bugs me that I can play 1 game with 20+ high detail vehicles blasting hell outta each other, and in OFP anything more than a tank and bmp and its slowdown city.

@Gordy, yeah I know I need an upgrade, especially with Doom3 coming, but cash flow issues dictate I gotta wait...  

Terrain - Low

ViewDist - 900

All tex - 128 or lower

Obj shadows - off

Veh shadows - off

Tried Acecombats tut on flashpoint.org, which helped a little but not much.

I just dont understand why this game performs so poorly on my machine compared to other games.

[shrike 0]

Why not go for an interim PC upgrade and get more RAM? 384 MB is a bit low for OFP, I remember getting much better FPS when I switched from 512 to 1024 MB.

You should be able to find 1 x 512 MB DDR RAM for a reasonable price nowadays, I bet the improvement will be noticeable.  

[sanctuary 19]

I have a similar system as yours Poet , but with half your memory.

With the settings i use, OFP is playable (of course , this word is always very subjective ).

Be sure to -disable- multitexturing in OFP options, you will gain a lot of "smoothness" with a GF2.

Do not -enable- any shadow (vehicle or object) in OFP options, GF2 are not shadow friendly in OFP engine.

16 bits does not really improve performance in front of 32 bits (i was a bit surprised to see that) , so stay in 32 bits with OFP to avoid the 16 bits visual artifacts.

800x600 as a resolution in OFP will help , 1024x768 is great and wonderfull to clearly see who is who , but your performance is reduced in 1024 x 768 , too bad

The default OFP view distance is 900 , with a higher number it is nicer yes , but the performance will not like more than 900.

Antialiasing will kill your performance , disable it now ! i never understood why nvidia allowed antialiasing in a GF2 , no games are smooth with a GF2 and antialiasing on (even on the lowest antialiasing setting)

GF2 drivers can have very different results in OFP.

Some can display OFP as some kind of slideshow, while some other will help to have a playable OFP.

As 2 systems (not only the OS) will show different results with a same driver , it is not possible for me to suggest really a driver version.

Personnally i use actually the 40.72 drivers, as they seem to have good performance with all my games (and some are very old games )and are very stable (important that too).

But i noticed on some tech forum that some people had only problems with 40.72 , so as you see, only you can find what is a good driver for your system.

Actually , what is mostly sure is that with a GF2 , it is always better to stay away from the 5x.xx set of drivers.

I saw really poor performance on not-new game (and OFP is not new ) with those kind of drivers (while some demos of the ultra recent games were more friendly with those drivers, but from what i play, it is not worth the heavy loss of performance i noticed).

Something that should help a lot when you have a nvidia card (and that is not only limited to GF2)

Use the great Riva Tuner , and look in the DirectX tab of this program , under the Vsync category.

For Prerender Limit , change the 3 that is by default to 6

that should improve performance. ( if you notice mouse delay in OFP , reduce this number to 5 or 4 )

I hope it will help

[shinRaiden 0]

OFP is not the only thing running on your computer. Odds are windows and stuff is taking half of your memory. I still swear 2K/XP has some mem tweaks that kick in when it detects over 512mb.

That sb-live is also going to pull a few fps if you're running anything other that straight sound.

[Heatseeker 0]

When i got OPF years ago i had a P3 800mhz with 256 sd ram and GF2 and i used to play with 1024x7..x16 bit! At 32 bit it was slow but in 16 bit it ran quite well , i guess resistance pushed the sistem requirements quite a bit, at 800x600 you wont even be able to see who is shooting at you .

[korax 4]

<waits for TheAvonLady...>

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Bah! I cant help it, search The Faq for "performance", and maybe check out 3D spotlights OFP Tweak Guide, As you'll find most things are CPU and RAM dependant, so i'd keep your shadows off, terrain detail at very low, object textures at around 512x512, cockpit textures at 256x256, but terrain textures as low as they can go (64x64) as it seems to suck up a lot of memory (you can compensate by turning on multitexturing which covers up the uglyness of the ground), and put your Geometry performance at around 1000-2000, not too high because it only affects little things and really can eat up your computer if you put it any higher.  Then you can stick your viewdistance to 1000-1200, with both framerate and visual quality all the way to the right.  Keep your resolution at 1024x768x32 if you can, anything lower is just terrible (and dont forget to keep HW-T&L on for your vid card)

[Poet 0]

Thanks for the great tips Sanctuary.

I downgraded the drivers and things are definitely much better ( shame on Nvidia, the difference between the 53.04's I was running and the 40.72's I rolled back to was very noticeable ). And im not bothered about the newer games, as I barely play them ( the only other game I really play is Quake3, and I know so much about config tweaking there I could squeeze 125fps out of a Rubber Key Spectrum 48 )

Sticking with 1024 tho, and keeping multitextures, but with Acecombats tips and that great tip on the drivers and shadows off ( its a shame we dont have a simple blob shadow option in OFP ... BIS? ) I'm certainly getting close to a smoother ride.

Cheers!

[BraTTy 0]

Yes Sanctuary gave some good advice.

And too add to the topic.

Don't forget the usual defrag the hard drives and scan for spyware

Close any unused programs

I don't think I saw an answer to your soundcard hardware on or off, if you soundcard supports hardware acceleration always select on for more performance , can select lower quality sound for more performance too (sound quality really counts)

[BraTTy 0]

I still swear 2K/XP has some mem tweaks that kick in when it detects over 512mb.

Funny you say that...I had 512m Ram and I switched from Win98se to WinXp and I figure that I had lost about 10% performance from the switch

Until I upgraded to 1024m Ram and it more than made it up for it now,now I see performance increase

It seems 512 ram is the minimal you would want to run Winxp