This whole thing is only half-relevant to the whole topic. You're discussing how Hyperthreading/dual cores work, and I was originally talking about total processor usage. That's assuming your question was a reply to the last bit of my post about the DirectDraw processor usage, anyway. You have yet to actually tell me what you were even replying to.

When I said it's using all of your processor up, that means your processor, not one of the cores. Sure, you could estimate both cores' CPU usage, but it's much easier and reliable going by the CPU usage that's said in the processes tab. That is the CPU usage I was mentioning, the one in the processes tab - the actual total CPU usage, not the split CPU usage. Where you're confused is you're thinking each graph represents a processor. Those graphs are your two cores; both cores equal your processor.

If you still don't get what I'm saying, just take "both" as an answer to your question. If you have it set to a single affinity, then the there is no need for the question. Either way, we're getting nowhere by this whole thing. Maybe you should try my tests and post your results so you have something to compare with everybody else, instead of saying something subjective like, "it runs great."

Direct Draw usage, well its normally about 25% of my AMD Opteron, running all these various things and graal that is. The IE7 browser can eat up some CPU useage, but graal still hits around 20 - 40 % for me just on the CPU load.

As far as any Direct Draxx issues, no, I have none anymore. I had to install my processors drivers still was all.

Saying you have no problems is the giving the same answer as when you said your Graal ran great. Anyone can think their Graal runs perfect, and probably because they've not seen better. Do a screen recording while moving in and out of levels in full screen, just like past videos in this thread have. Once you get these videos on here, we'll know for sure if there actually is the problem or not.

Also, it'd help if you said your exact scenario where you tested your CPU usage. Were there people around? Were you moving around?

Reborn what GFX card do you have? You can help us test this loading delay.

He/she mentioned their video card in an earlier post:
It wouldn't hurt if the other people that explained (or lack) their experiences here would make a screen recording too (Darlene, zephirot, Magadal).

There is another reason actually the newer drivers "might" be slowing down. I've been experiementing with some video card overclocking features, yes I know all about how Nvidia doesnt really support doing this. I do know my Video card is actually rather slow and I should upgrade it to something with atleast a 400mhz core on it, instead of the current 250mhz. I managed to overclock mine to 350 mhz, it seems to reduce alot of the lagg on Graal. But I wasnt lagging when others could barely move. Minor details are making differences for me, but anyways I would suggest we find out how fast our video cards actually are. Knowing how fast they are with some people that say the newer Nvidia drives cause slowdowns, might reveal something.

First of all I went here to find video card overclocking tools.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/
The one I'm actually using now is here
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815

You can try it and see if it helps to correct your video lagg, just read the agreements a little. Overclocking your video card could void your warranties (Mines expired warranty anyways). At the very least you can use the utility to see how fast your video card is. Just get the strange feeling the older drivers did something these newer ones do not do by default.

**Running any processor or video processor, can cause it to overheat and actaully slow down again. Keep this in mind, you might have to experiment a little with your settings to get it just right. Alternatively, the drivers update listed above can auto detect the best settings someone else things would be best (Sometimes its not and can go above that).

** This is a qoute from another website that talks about the same/simliar tweak.
"This tweak is intended for use with GeForce/Quadro cards and ForceWare 55.xx - 9x.xx 3D Stereo drivers. NVTweak is not fully compatible with Windows 98/Me or driver versions older than 55.xx. If you do happen to run this tweak with older software, you could get errors at startup! To enable full compatibility, you will need to disable the options that are causing issues with your current setup." This may hold very true to others on graal as well.

I've said in earlier posts that both overclocking and underclocking make no difference on my card. Take a look yourself:

Both were using ForceWare driver 66.00, and in 1600 x 1200 resolution. Both 2D AND 3D were adjusted.
(core/memory)
88/125: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkOYlqCh1T4
350/500: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ventNucK7Z4

I'm pretty sure Gerami's card has higher clocks than mine. He does get a bit better performance on the newer drivers than I do, but when I use older drivers, I get similar performance to his. What would be interesting is if Gerami would underclock his to my clock speeds and see if he gets my results.


Getting my card up to 96 degrees celcius (204.8 Fahrenheit, I think) doesn't slow it down in any game I've played. I do think that's a little higher than "normal" temperatures under full load, but still, it makes no difference. My video card doesn't reach those temperatures while running Graal anyway--maybe like 76c. My idle temperature was 72c last time I checked, and my room was 78 Fahrenheit.

hey I currently use omegadrivers... they have not been updated since last yeat 2005 since nvidia I guess threatened the creator...


http://omegadrivers.net

but any drivers I use for my video card that are new or that did not come with windows xp regulard drivers would tend to crash and slow down my pc...

omega drivers when installed give you 2 options

graphics options which make the graphics a bit better
and
performance options...

I have used both settings but decided to stick with the performance ones...

the drivers even though not really new are a compilation of the best drivers that nvidia had at the time and are also tweaked for better performance so even selecting graphics would still have a bit better performance than normal...

but the drivers are about a year and a half old and have not been updated forawhile...

omegadrivers.net

I've never found any benefits to using the Omega drivers in the past as far as frame rates in 3D games. I don't think they work with my card, though they did with my older GeForce 5200 FX card. I'll try real quick, but I'm pretty sure they don't work on mine. Strange though, 66.00 works fine, and these are based on 66.93. Maybe ReBorn could test it, but then again, I doubt they support 64bit XP. You could help as well, since you've got them already. What's your card and processor?

Yeah, just tried installing and it doesn't work with this card.

I just tried manually installing them "manually" through device manager, and I got it to work like that. The load times are somewhere around 300-500ms (noticable) longer than 66.00. I don't think there's really anything that can be done but wait for an OpenGL and/or Direct3D mode in future versions. Maybe the developer(s) could make a quick test version for us with them.

Maybe the problem is simply Graal itself?

Ok worked a little bit on the problem.
Before the modification:
Geforce2: 110 milliseconds for level switch
Geforce 5900XT with 512mbyte video ram and latest driver: 300 milliseconds

After the modification:
Geforce2: 40 milliseconds
Geforce 5900XT: 50 milliseconds

The window size was a little bit smaller for the Geforce2, that's why it might still be some milliseconds lower.
It seems that the newer drivers take much more time for updating textures that are in the video memory, or they're more optimized for DirectX 10 stuff. It should be ok now though with the modifications I made, so with the next Graal version (next week) it should work better.

I had 6600GT and it worked fine.. I have ATI Radeon X1600PRO 512MB now, never tested graal on it tho.

Vulcan said that the new version is also making level switches faster for him on ATI card.

k.