Trouble running OFP

[a wild goat 0]

yes yes it is true...I am having trouble running OFP...actually anything come to think of it. I even have poor desktop performance...using youtube or myspace is a slideshow...but anyways it doesn't take much to drop my fps down to 10 - 20 on OFP, it's very annoying and I've never really figured out why. I've reinstalled Windows XP and I only have 27 processes (about 177 MB, all necessary for windows) running when playing OFP.

Intel Celeron 2.80 GHz overclocked to 3.08 GHz

1 GB DDR 440 MHz

74 GB 5400 RPM IDE Western Digital

ATI HD 2600 512 MB AGP

400 Watt PSU

P4M800M4 MB (400 MHz FSB)

well my main theory is there a major bottleneck going on here with the whole slow as hell FSB speed... not really sure though. Thus I ask the community for help.

[BronzeEagle 2]

check for a worm virus, thats all i can tell ya.

[Richey79 10]

You sure that overclock's stable?

Test it with Prime95: http://www.playtool.com/pages/prime95/prime95.html

I've had varying degrees of success overclocking systems. Sometimes it's given good results, but other times even .1 Ghz has resulted in crashes whenever the system was under stress, yet Windows seemed to run fine. Depends on the motherboard and how compatible all your components are, as well as case airflow.

Also, are you able to overclock using an unlocked multiplier, or is it an FSB overclock? -Using the multiplier and relaxing memory timings is a far more stable process, in my experience.

Always worth trying at stock frequency to check if that's the prob. Use Youtube as your benchmark: it shouldn't be running like that, once a vid has buffered. Since OFP is such an old game, it's difficult to reliably pin-point exactly what the problem is - easier with a simpler application.

[a wild goat 0]

Yes I overclock using a multiplier, heres what happened when I used the stress test

[Nov 25 13:47] Worker starting

[Nov 25 13:47] Beginning a continuous self-test to check your computer.

[Nov 25 13:47] Please read stress.txt. Choose Test/Stop to end this test.

[Nov 25 13:47] Test 1, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19922945 using FFT length 1024K.

[Nov 25 13:53] Test 2, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19922943 using FFT length 1024K.

[Nov 25 13:57] Test 3, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19374367 using FFT length 1024K.

[Nov 25 14:02] Self-test 1024K passed!

[Nov 25 14:02] Test 1, 800000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M172031 using FFT length 8K.

[Nov 25 14:08] Test 2, 800000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M163839 using FFT length 8K.

[Nov 25 14:12] Test 3, 800000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M159745 using FFT length 8K.

[Nov 25 14:18] Self-test 8K passed!

[Nov 25 14:18] Test 1, 560000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M212991 using FFT length 10K.

[Nov 25 14:18] FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.484375, expected less than 0.4

[Nov 25 14:18] Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

[Nov 25 14:18] Torture Test completed 6 tests in 30 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings.

[Nov 25 14:18] Worker stopped.

---------- Post added at 04:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:27 PM ----------

well clearly that overclock was not stable, fatal error after 30 minutes. I tested again at stock frequency with no errors after an hour and I stopped the test, I do not feel like testing for 6+ hours. That test did tell me the overclock was not stable, but performance remains the same, in game or desktop.

Edited November 25, 2009 by a wild goat

[anguis 4]

I think your HD might be a problem - does it thrash a lot when you play? Put your page file in a separate partition: cf. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482

I used to have tons of stuttering in OFP (though none in regular desktop usage) before I configured my comp according to what's in the above article - OFP runs nice and smooth, now (CPU is an AMD Athlon64 @ 2.4 GHz, ATI Radeon x850xt, Vista 32-bit, 1600x1200, VD=1200, Terrain Detail=High).

I also have my AGP Aperture size down to 64.

The anti-malware I run is Microsoft's Windows Live Security Essentials - smoothest anti-malware software I've ever used (I use only Windows built-in firewall, as well).

Edited November 26, 2009 by Anguis

[a wild goat 0]

I think your HD might be a problem - does it thrash a lot when you play? Put your page file in a separate partition: cf. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482

Problem with that is I have only 220 MB of unallocated memory...I need 1.5 GB for another partition to put paging file on. I cant find a way to free up some mem

[anguis 4]

Well, that's a great excuse to get a faster second hard drive (if you can do it)! And then you could put the page file on that to get the optimal setup they describe in that article (you'd still have to free up some room in your current one, but you could move some stuff to the second drive).

Happy Thanksgiving, by the way!

[a wild goat 0]

Well, that's a great excuse to get a faster second hard drive (if you can do it)! And then you could put the page file on that to get the optimal setup they describe in that article (you'd still have to free up some room in your current one, but you could move some stuff to the second drive).

Happy Thanksgiving, by the way!

ah I spoke too soon, I found a program that allowed me to create a 2 GB partition...I used the directions on the link you sent me and set no paging file for C drive and page file for the new partition. Did I do this correctly? also when I look in C drive there is a hidden file called "pagefile.sys" size 1.5 GB the size of the page file. should this be in F drive(new partition)?

[anguis 4]

If I'm reading that article correctly and if both C: and F: are partitions on the same physical hard drive, with C: your boot partition and F: basically a pagefile partition (you should have F: wholly dedicated to the pagefile - pagefile.sys would be on F:, too, and as large as F: ), I think you're almost setup as best as you can be without using a second hard drive:

C: would have a paging file with a system managed size

F: would have a paging file with a custom size, with both the initial and maximum sizes the same and equal to the size of the partition

There is another article put out by Microsoft that details a little more this whole concept, explicitly mentioning keeping the paging file size static (in the dedicated partition) - unfortunately, I can't find it.

Edited November 27, 2009 by Anguis