NVIDIA driver slowdowns

spydrct02 · #1 11-21-2006, 11:19 PM

If you've upgraded your video card to a more modern NVIDIA card, you've probably noticed everything (3D games) is quite faster, but on the other hand, Graal is much slower. Apparently the later forceware drivers work pretty crappy with Graal. Using older forceware drivers is the only way to make your Graal run properly at regular speeds. I'm thinking tile drawing performance is some how reduced in later forceware drivers.

Some effects of using newer forceware drivers:
- Pretty slow level changes when fullscreened in higher resolutions
- Overall gameplay is pretty skippy/jerky
- Changing your camera around (focus) will cause the same lag/freeze as changing a level, though how far you changed the camera from your position affects it.

The latest version I've tried that worked fine was version 76.44, dated around April of 2005. I know for sure anything above version 90.## works pretty crappy, but I haven't tested any of the 80.## drivers.

This is not a card-specific problem from my and others' experiences, and some people have a card that is too modern to use old drivers for, so they are stuck with a slow Graal on a fast/faster card they payed $100+ for.

Crono · #2 11-21-2006, 11:25 PM

Graal is normal for me, im using one of the latest drivers and have a 7600GT. Then again I upgraded from an ATI Radeon 7500LE so...

Maybe Graal isn't optimized for our cards or something, i dont know XD.

musashi445 · #3 11-21-2006, 11:29 PM

I have this problem aswell, I recently bought an Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS Graphics Card (so I can play 3D games). Works great with all of the 3D games I've played so far. On Graal it doesn't work well at all, my movement is slowed to the point of almost not being able to play. I cannot do any of the things I use to, basically enjoy the game. There's a long pause at level changes and very slowed movement in an area with high population.

zephirot · #4 11-21-2006, 11:32 PM

Nvidia 7600 GS, I can play graal very well

Crono · #5 11-21-2006, 11:37 PM

What CPU do you who slow down a lot have?

spydrct02 · #6 11-21-2006, 11:44 PM

Gerami: Maybe you haven't experienced "normal" gameplay, and "normal" to you means "slow" to anyone that's seen "normal."

If this is the case, you can test by fullscreening in a higher resolution and walking in and out of a house. If your client freezes for about a second when doing this, you probably do have this lag problem. In 1600 x 1200, it likes to freeze for a good 2-3 seconds on level changes.

My CPU is a Pentium 4 "Northwood" at 2.4 GHz.

Admins · #7 11-22-2006, 12:29 AM

To the people who have slow downs on Nvidia cards: do you have other programs running? What does graal4console.log display? Have you checked that the graphics driver options are not set too high ? To run Graal without lag you don't need more than 300 Mhz and a pretty old card with good driver, so I would say the driver has a problem. Everyone who is writing to this thread, please check what graphics card do you have and what driver version so that we don't make wrong assumations.
(I also assume that you have Windows XP)
In the office we all use Nvidia cards but we have not experienced such problems.

Crono · #8 11-22-2006, 12:50 AM

AMD Athlon XP 3200+ @ 2.2ghz
1GB (512 x 2) Corsair Value Select
Leadtek 7600GT 256MB AGP (Drivers: Forceware 91.47)
Seagate Barracuda 200GB 7200RPM 8mb cache
Windows XP SP2

Switching levels at window mode (1024 x 768) is fine. I even had FRAPS recording my screen and the FPS never really dropped down unless the level was REALLY REALLY crowded.

I just did my moniter's highest (1280 x 1024) and ran around UN and Era and still fine.

spydrct02 · #9 11-22-2006, 12:59 AM

AOpen 256MB GeForce 6600 (clocked 350/500) video card
x2 512 (1 GB) DDR PC3200 RAM
XP Pro; SP1

Yes, forgot to mention my OS experiences:

On XP, shutting down programs doesn't help mine at all, nor disabling services. I do have Windows XP. It is pretty strange though, because Graal would not lag on a different OS. Even on Vista with the Vista ForceWare drivers with all the 60+ services enabled, it wouldn't lag at level changes like it does on XP. Both XP SP1 and SP2 perform the same. Linux performed similar to Vista.

I attached my graal4console log, but all you're probably going to get from that is the fact I like to use higher resolutions.

I uploaded two videos to YouTube to show both new and old ForceWare performance. There's quite a speed difference, and both are recorded at my max resolution using Fraps 2.8.1.

- New ForceWare drivers (93.71): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZTBU35c3QU
- Old ForceWare drivers (76.44): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLSSUy0b7Rs

Gerami, could you test the same way as in the video? Maybe even a screen recording? Testing a different way won't give the same results.

Crono · #10 11-22-2006, 01:40 AM

- Forceware 91.47 (latest i think) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOGhd1cdZk

Er I get an unsupported codec error...-_- will fix it if i know how

I just logged on UN, spawned in Spar room. So I press F9 and record. I'm using Fraps 2.6.0. Recorded at 1280 x 1024 (the highest my moniter will go) and fraps was set on 20FPS (graal is limited to 20FPS). No problems for me.

Admins · #11 11-22-2006, 02:01 AM

The problem is that when Graal is updating the tiles it needs to access the textures from video ram. That is normally quite fast and doesn't need to be done very often, but we had similar slowdown problems with S3 cards when testing v4 beta. I will check what we can do about it, we have quite a lot of variety of nvidia cards.

Crono · #12 11-22-2006, 02:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stefan

The problem is that when Graal is updating the tiles it needs to access the textures from video ram. That is normally quite fast and doesn't need to be done very often, but we had similar slowdown problems with S3 cards when testing v4 beta. I will check what we can do about it, we have quite a lot of variety of nvidia cards.

Well, know that it's fine on my computer.