simba02 0 Posted November 17, 2004 Hi guys as the topic tellls,i have problems while playing ofp. My cpu performance is up to 100% while playing.Even playing resi mission ....,BAS mission plying is almost impossible.I am playin with normal setting ,900m view distance,and an inspiron 1100 notebook ;2,2mhz;386 mb ram; Can anybody help solving that prob? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kevbaz 0 Posted November 17, 2004 welcome to ofp my friend Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Placebo 29 Posted November 18, 2004 simba02 what version of Opf? KEVBAZ being friendly is nice and all but in troubleshooting threads helpful is better than friendly Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joltan 0 Posted November 18, 2004 (simba02 @ Nov. 17 2004,12:02) said: My cpu performance is up to 100% while playing.Even playing resi mission ....,BAS mission plying is almost impossible.I am playin with normal setting ,900m view distance,and an inspiron 1100 notebook ;2,2mhz;386 mb ram; I highly recommend 512mb ram at least - helps OFP performance big time (difficult and expensive on a notebook, tho). Also what gfx card does your notebook use? One with shared memory (that would be bad - especially with as little ram as you've got)? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
shinRaiden 0 Posted November 18, 2004 The video chipset in your model is not designed for handling graphics more "extreme" than Solitare, that's what you get with a shared memory Intel Extreme Graphics chipset. Secondly, it uses shared memory, so even if OFP had all that 384mb to its self (which it won't because Windows camps most of it), you're still not factoring the video 'card's shared memory demands. They cut the cost by not putting any memory on the video chip, and just borrowed it from the system. Third, you've got a couple major system bottlenecks. Instead of the video card minding it's own business chewing up whatever the CPU throws at it, you've got the video chip and CPU fighting for the same system resources and processing, with the hard drive and sound chip wondering when it will be their turn. Additionally as far as I can see most of the CPU's for those models are bargin-bin Celerys, not too bad when you have a desktop that you can throw adequate cards and resources at, but here some pretty hard handcuffs. Forth, you've got all the latencies that come with having a laptop. OFP can always use more CPU power, hence Kevbaz's comment. Unlike other games, you can't max out OFP on today's hardware, you'll only get lag or maybe a CTD if you do something really creative. But seriously, congratulations on getting OFP to come up on that machine. It's going to take some creative work to see if it's even going to be usable, but it's still worth a try. At the very least you'll understand your computer better. For starters, you'll want to try some pretty dracoian measures. See the other threads here for adding the "-nomap" option to change the memory dynamics. Open the flashpoint prefs tool and set all parameters manually to their lowest level, and set your OFP display settings to something like 800x600x16, and Direct3D only. I'd be real antsy about trying HWTL on it. Theres a lot of things you should do to tune Windows for a smaller system load, see some other places that have more detailed support on that stuff. Me personally I'd kill every process and service possible and really go psycho on the machine, your milage of course will vary. There *may* also be some driver settings for the video driver that will allow you to alter the system resource dynamics of the onboard chip and other display settings. You'd need to talk to someone online or in person who knows more about the specific options available to that card. Hope this helps a little. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
berghoff 11 Posted November 18, 2004 Isn't your CPU usage always 100% when running full-screen apps? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
llauma 0 Posted November 19, 2004 (BergHoff @ Nov. 18 2004,16:40) said: Isn't your CPU usage always 100% when running full-screen apps? Not if it's not needed.. I don't think the cpu is running at 100% while you use the internet explorer Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
simba02 0 Posted November 19, 2004 Thx a lot guys, i ll try to answer on each post. @Kevbaz: as placebo said,that doesn´t really help.Btw i am not new to the community - as i am to the off. forum. I ve got a new comp - this notebook.Before i had an 900Mhz P3 tower,geforce 3 , and i hve the impression opf worked better on that "weaker" one.thx anyway. @placebo :i ve opf goty 1.96.Installed new,to check if any addons causes that lags. @joltan and shinRaiden (thx to that long explaination) i still don´t know what grafic card i have but as i checked in the Extreme graphic report my used graphic memory is 11Mb!!! that not much ,think i should turn it higher.But i will get my gragh. card names soon and post it too. --Sorry i am a totally rookie in system work and hardware--- In summary it means i should tune my notebook with better hardware to havin´same old fun as always!!? Do ya ve any examples for usefull graphic card (i think that will be the prob) for notebooks? As i said thx to all - helped a lot!! edit:graphic card is Intel ® 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics controller. ... i hope this is it Does anybody knows how to change the used graphic memory? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NKVD 0 Posted November 19, 2004 poop graphic card and not enough memory..on top of that, not enough cpu power... 1) for OFP to play at good framerate you gotta have 1GB of ram...now, 512MB might do fine but when stuff hits the fan you will notice some slowdowns... 2) I have computer at work - Pentium IV 3.0GHZ with 1GB RAM, OFP:R demo runs fast..loading times are extremely fast..playing at 1024x764...I have exact card as you do, however, Ive got more ram and faster cpu. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
shinRaiden 0 Posted November 19, 2004 Video cards on laptops, especially IGP (video on the mobo, not a seperate card), are normally not upgradeable. 82845G series specs DVMT Dynamic Video Memory Technology details Let's break it down like this: You currently have 384 mb of RAM. 1024X * 768Y * 32B will camp around a 16mb video buffer. You may see an allocation of 32mb in the DirectX tool, this is just smoke and mirrors to trick apps that check for available VRAM. The dynamic window Intel quotes is upto 64mb for systems with more than 128mb of ram and driver revisions newer than PV1.1. If we assume that DVMT is aggressive and only takes the 16mb, you're left with 368mb, and a split 50/50 makes for 184mb for Windows and OFP before hitting the page file on the HD, at which point you can kiss any hope of playability goodbye, especially with the higher latency laptop HD's. On the other hand, if DVMT decides to take the whole 64mb that it can, you're down to 320mb, 50/50 split leaves 160mb for OFP. That's not a whole lot of addons there, the default RES dta\hwtl folder is 129mb, and another 217mb in RES Addons, 1 mb of bin data, and about another 4mb of applications. If you're not familiar with the technical details of how to aggressively streamline an XP installation for low memory footprint (killing processes, limiting services, culling graphics effects, tuning performance variables) chances are good that you're probably running a 60/40 memory split in favor of Windows. At the very least with what you've got to work with imho you'd need 768mb because of the DVMT shared memory situation. That is not going to fix the problem however of bandwidth through the same memory pool, limited computing power of the chipset and CPU, and other system latencies. -edit- If you go to the Dell support website and enter your serial tag from the bottom of your laptop it will pull your system model specs from it's soul-sucking database. Secondly, you can generate a DirectX diagnostics report that will produce the same information and more, but the video memory numbers will probably be unreliable. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
simba02 0 Posted November 19, 2004 So in fact,what can i do to get better performance? I am playin opf since two years,almost each and every f***ing day.I hoped i would get a better situation ,by a new comp with higher cpu - thats quiet ironic.My older 900mhz comp worked better for that. I understood ya right,that u think ,i won´t be able changing my graphic card ? Perhabs or will it be guaranteed havin a better performance by a higher ram -maybe up to 768 or better up to 1024? thx a lot shin!! pls keep on Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
shinRaiden 0 Posted November 19, 2004 Well adding additional RAM will help somewhat as I mentioned above. Because of the situation you have with the IGP chip, I'm not sure how much performance boost you'll actually get out of it. You'd need to talk to someone with more experience in that area. What you probably have right now is 1x256mb + 1x128mb for ram. I don't think you'd have to go to 1gb - although that would be nice - but adding RAM will impact your battery life and increase the system temperature. If you replaced the 128mb with a 512mb that would give you 768mb, which given the situation of your laptop would in effect becomparable I think to what you'd experience with a 512mb or 640mb desktop. Before you go messing with hardware though, you need to do some load tests, like looking at the process details in the Task Manager, memory allocations, page faults, and more. Another good test would be to run the Direct3d test from the DirectX diag tool with Fraps and see what the FPS looks like there, to see what level OFP might be reachable. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
simba02 0 Posted November 20, 2004 My Vga Card has its own slot,so it would also be possible to change the card - in "harmonie" with the rest of my hardware. But well first i will absolve the tests you mensioned above. thx for the information Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kevbaz 0 Posted November 23, 2004 (placebo @ Nov. 18 2004,09:43) said: simba02 what version of Opf?KEVBAZ being friendly is nice and all but in troubleshooting threads helpful is better than friendly heh it was kinda my way of saying "its what ofp does" itll use all the cpu power you throw at it Share this post Link to post Share on other sites