System brought to its knees!

uhh, wierd, a system with a 4000+ and a 7600GT playing just fine around the same settings @ 1680x1050.....

Do you have all the updated drivers for your system?

Have you updated the game with the latest patch?
It's possible an update may fix your problem (presuming you haven't already tried this)

Here's the official site FAQ

http://info2.thq.com/faq/

and patches for Titan Quest, here..

http://info2.thq.com/support/

Can you show us what CPU-Z says?
It could also be sick Windows.
You could do a Windows repair rather than reinstall.
Let's see your CPU-Z first though.

What OS?

I got a buddy who plays it on his 9600pro just fine.

OS is XP Pro 32-bit. Game and all drivers fully patched.

I've heard Titan Quest has some performance problems on some cards. Don't have a link though.

Thanks for the links mcphisto - turns out i'm not quite fully up to date! I'll give it a go.

It runs on Max settings just fine on my x850xt at 1280x1024. It does slow down some if i turn up AA or AF, but not to anything unplayable. I hope you get it running Titan Quest is great. If you liked Diablo 2 in anyway, you will love this game. I was big into Diablo 2, this is similar but kicked it up alot. Enjoy.

I've got Titan Quest running perfectly at 1280*1024 (all video settings maxed) on a P4D3.4 with 2GB DDR2 and a 7950GT-512. It stutters on occasion (rarely) when there's a pile going on in LAN play, but that's kind of expected.

If it's the Immortal Throne expansion pack... hell, I don't know... There's rubber-banding, stutter, and horrible framerates throughout the game. In places it's so bad during LAN play that it becomes unplayable. Whatever hacking they had to do to add the new features has ruined what used to be a great game.

OK, after patching things seem to have got a bit better. It still stuttered twice today but from the way it did it, it almost seemed like Windows might have been doing something but I don't know what...

I do notice a slowdown when lots of monsters are on-screen and I am sure that this is the graphics card. It doesn't ruin playability but its not perfect.

Does anyone know if this game benefits from >256Mb graphics memory?

Thanks

How much system ram do you have .

That could be the problem . Also see what settings are set on you CCC .

The Catalyst thing   , :idea: it could be that all your settings are on HIGH quality , reduce those to quality .

I have 2gb ram. CCC is just set to "use application settings" for AA and AF. I had a look at Toms VGA charts and the X1800XT does seem to struggle with this game, NVIDIA cards do much better. However, as i'm an Oblivion player too i'm not going to change yet!

This game strains top end systems ;

"For all its slick dynamic lighting and dazzling spell effects, though, Titan Quest can be a bit of a resource hog, demanding a top-of-the-line system to show off all of its eye candy. The visuals scale down well enough, though even when we weren't pushing the upper limits of our hardware, we still noticed pronounced choppiness when the screen was flooded with monsters, or during dusk, when there seems to be a lot of lighting effects at play" Gamespot

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/titanquest/review.html?p...

You can check it out on that link. So its not your system i would imagine but just bad coding .  

You have the CPU voltage incorrect. Set it at 1.34v. It may fix your problems.

http://www.techpowerup.com/cpudb/371/Intel_Core_2_Duo_E...

What is your memory's voltage? Please list your memory model in detail.
A Newegg.com link would help.

This is my memory:

Newegg Link

I'm running it at 1.8V, with the correct CAS settings ie 4-4-4-12. I will post CPUZ when I get back to my home PC.

I will change the voltage on my processor - thanks for the tip!

You're welcome!

Up the voltage of the memory 0.1v. That way it will be 1.9v.
It will help your system.

Adding 0.1V to the RAM shouldn't hurt, but it probably won't fix your problems either. Does the stuttering you mentioned sound like the stuttering and stalling in the reviews or does it sound worse? Cause it comes across as worse to me personally. Do you know what your CPU temperatures are like? Cause it could be a throttling issue if say the heatsink has been badly mounted.

Yeah, but that super-low voltage to his CPU might be causing a problem.

How did it get set that low? Were you messing with it, BigH?

If you haven't set the voltage low, your PSU might be dying... or the voltage sensor is kaput.

Yeah, but that super-low voltage to his CPU might be causing a problem.

How did it get set that low? Were you messing with it, BigH?

If you haven't set the voltage low, your PSU might be dying... or the voltage sensor is kaput.

Yeah I was only referring to the RAM voltage idea, I'm still waiting to see what he says about the CPU voltage.

I have never touched my BIOS other than to set the latency settings for my RAM. The mobo is a Gigabyte DS4. I have no idea why the CPU voltage is that low - i thought mobos auto detected that type of thing?

I would say that with the latest patch my stuttering is still worse than the review. As I said last night it stopped completely twice for about 0.5sec each time. It is similar to a Windows stutter when you've asked a single core processor to do too much and it has to wait to finish something. Saying that I can detect a stuttering as described by the review as well but only when there is a lot going on.

This is getting weird, i'm glad you guys know what you're doing!

BigH

Check for operations in the background like your auto update of antivirus software or something like that. It does not sound like a game problem if it was it might not be intermittent. With the system you have it should run good at about any setting. Is it single or multiplayer? It runs perfect on mine

They do... that's why I asked if you messed with it.

If you didn't mess with the voltages, then something is definitely wrong. It might just be the voltage sensor, but if the voltage is that low there's something up with the PSU or motherboard...

Could you go into your BIOS - the hardware monitor part - and tell us the voltage your 3.3, 5, and 12v rails are running at?

I have a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 and had to manually enter the the memory voltage.

Here are my memory settings from CPU-Z

Do go see what your mobo's CPU voltage is set to... I would really concentrate on sorting that first, cause although the other folks have suggested some decent ideas (like when my avast! antivirus updates, my games stutter) this CPU voltage thing is potentially quite serious.

My BIOS just says the rails are OK, without a figure.

I have now changed the CPU voltage manually although CPUZ reports 1.296V rather than 1.325V I tried to set it to. I also saw that it jumps around quite a bit. I will try the game again and see if its any more stable.

Just a quick note to say thanks to everyone who has helped. Raising the CPU voltage definitely seems to have had an effect. I still get some minor stuttering but only that which was detailed in the review and by other people as being a symptom of the game itself.