Possible CPU Bottle Neck In Age Of Conan?

[Rip181]

Hey Guys/Gals,


I have a Question; I am running AOC on an old 19" LCD with a res of 1280 x 1024. I have an 8800 GTS (G92) a E2200 Overclocked to 3.0 Ghz and 2 gigs of PC6400 Ram. Am I running into a CPU bottleneck?

Reason Why I ask is I was reading the review of the new ATI 4800 Series and they are getting Playable FPS at well over 1280 x 1024 Res with High settings. While Most of the time I am in the 40-60 Fps there are a few zones were I am barely 35 fps. I am running on High setting with Shadows off, no AA and 8x AF. I know the E2200 is a budget CPU so I was wondering if it was holding me back.

Also My monitor is an Analog Monitor (I hate it wish I would stop being cheap and buy a new DVI Monitor) is that hurting me?

Any Suggestions are welcome, I know the game isn’t well Optimized right now it is just killing me that I cant turn everything on.

Thanks


I Did Post this on an other forums, I just want to get more opinions that is why I am also posting here.

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

It will hold you back but not by much, i think anandtech did a review/benchmark on this. Maybe 4gb of ram will work? Its dirt cheap.
EDIT: it will hold you back 6 fps @ MOST

 

[Qwakrz]

I have a 3GHz Q6600 and a 8800GTS 512 overclocked to 800 / 2000 / 1000 and still only see an average of 40fps and 25fps in cities so your system does not seem to be CPU limited.

AoC is very poorly optimised and will take a few patches to try and get the performance it needs.

 

[grieve]

I agree with Qwakrz, i am running q6600 @ 3GHZ, 4gig's PC6400 with 8800GTX, 24" monitor... i run it at 1900*1200 and have it cranked but i notice slowdown as well.

the game is a pig.

 

[ibp_john]

Analog is only the connection and shouldn't make a difference in performance.

As for people getting playable FPS in the reviews, they probably aren't going to go in the areas that will slow the cards down .

 

[Rip181]

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure. It seems I am on par with others. In the cities is where I am dropping to the low to mis 30's and I thought at my res it should be that low. But it looks like from others comments is FC need to optimize some more.

I knew Analog probably didnt hurt fps but you never know unless you ask. I didnt know if the conversion slowed it down or something.

Thanks guys

 

[Rip181]

O ya one last thing. I heard Vista runs AOC better have any of you guys know if that is true?

I have been thinking of getting vista 64 and 4 gigs of ram. But I just dont know about vista it seems like such a resource hog.

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

Vista is not the best, but if a p4 3.0ghz with 1gb ram can run it smoothly so can your system. I couldnt go back to XP after 'going' Vista and with SP1 out it's almost as fast as XP

 

[Mathos]

Neh, not really. MMORPGs like that are always going to be CPU and bandwidth Hogs. Gotta realize the game is having to update locations of every player within rendering range every second or many times per second. This is effected greatly by available connection bandwidth. I saw this first hand with EverQuest back in the day. Had a pretty good system for the times, but any type of raid situation, or highly crowded area, and the FPS would drop to hell and the game would be near unplayable. That was on 56k dial up, on the same system, same game, after cable internet became available in the area things changed. FPS went up all around, and the game became for the most part playable in high traffic situations. You'd still get a bit of slow down in high stress area's but nothing serious.

Gotta remember the computer can only update screen info, regardless of how good the GPU/CPU is as fast as it's being received.

Most of these games aren't multi core optimized. They're barely optimized for what they do run on. And I've played plenty of em to be able to say that, Ultima Online, EverQuest, Earth & Beyond, DAoC, Guild Wars, Eve Online, and a few others not really worth mentioning or just can't remember. E&B and Eve were the ones that seemed the least dependent on connection speed, and actually used the hardware they were played on to good advantage. Gotta say EVE was one of the most graphically and game scope impressive games I've ever played, especially once you use the updated graphics client, that was updated to DX9c, and DX10.

You system should run it fine. I'd look at possible driver updates, or check AA/AF settings in your driver control panel, if you've got it set high in the drivers, it will override whatever you set in the game. Otherwise what speed of internet connection are you using? Sadly newer games are starting to demand more and more bandwidth. Guildwars is a good example of that, every time it's got an expansion it takes more and more. I wouldn't try and play Conan on anything less than a 3Mb connection.

Conan was one of those online games I looked at and decided to wait on, haven't had enough time lately to devote to any of the online games I currently have. So, no point in throwing another one on the backburner.

 

[Preclude]

You're fine. In fact I play Age of Conan at 1680x1050 at max settings (besides bloom cause 95% of games over do it) with an Athalon 64 x2 4200+ OC'd to 2.8 Ghz with an 8800GT and I still don't see maximum CPU Usage.

To be honest the biggest performance limiter in MMOS is usually your HD. Make sure you have a good HD Defraged weekly, yes weekly.
An example of a good HD/HD Setup would be like a single platter 320 Segate/Western Digital, a Raptor, or 2 HD's Raid 0

Also, you may want to get a better monitor and run it at a higher resolution. The stress on your CPU will probably be the same or even possibly less.

The other limiter you my find is a bad quality Network Card/Router. This effects it to a lesser degree most times, but can be significant. Now i'm not saying go get a Killer NIC, but something decent quality would be nice. Also if you have like a Linksys router you may want to look into overclocking it, and putting a fan on it if you have a lot of network traffic.

 

[dragonsprayer]

maria shriver?

sorry i could not help it!

 

[Rip181]

You system should run it fine. I'd look at possible driver updates, or check AA/AF settings in your driver control panel, if you've got it set high in the drivers, it will override whatever you set in the game. Otherwise what speed of internet connection are you using? Sadly newer games are starting to demand more and more bandwidth. Guildwars is a good example of that, every time it's got an expansion it takes more and more. I wouldn't try and play Conan on anything less than a 3Mb connection.

I have updated my Graphics drivers, I will look into others though maybe there is a conflict.

I doubt it is my Connection I am using ATT's Fiber obitic which is coming all the way to my house no over the telephone line crap like others with ATT have to deal with. I have a 6mb down 1 mb up connection also. But I can see where connection would be a problem and I never thought about it.

The other limiter you my find is a bad quality Network Card/Router. This effects it to a lesser degree most times, but can be significant. Now i'm not saying go get a Killer NIC, but something decent quality would be nice. Also if you have like a Linksys router you may want to look into overclocking it, and putting a fan on it if you have a lot of network traffic.

I am hooked up directly to the ATT modem which has a built in router. It is a big @$$ box too. but it controls my TV's and internet.


I defenatly like all the suggestions. I did defrag last night with a highly reconmended defrager and put all my gaming files on the outer edge of the plater so I will try that out. I even overclocked teh processor some more to 3.2 Ghz (not bad for my cheap E2200 - 1 Ghz increase from stock)


Has anyone Upgraded from XP Pro to Vista 64? I heard that AOC runs better in Vista64 and was thinking of finally taking the punge. I of coarse would be getting 4 Gigs of Ram.

Also, you may want to get a better monitor and run it at a higher resolution. The stress on your CPU will probably be the same or even possibly less.

This is what I was thining. Since I was at a such low sew 1280 x 1024 that my cpu was wonker more than it would on 1680 x 1050 or whatever it would be.

Any other suggestions would be great. cause I am in the Noble District I am getting like 34 fps and that is with shadows off.

 

[Zoron]

I have Vista 64 paired with an 8800GT. I'm usually averaging 35 - 40 in cities and my ping is usually below 100ms. Also a 22" monitor running it at 1680 x 1050. I think it runs perfectly smooth most of the time... slowdowns only happen occasionally... but then that's to be expected with a new MMORPG these days.

PS: Forgot to mention that I'm running everything at stock... no overclocking whatsoever. Also running in high detail with shadows off.

 

[epsilon84]

Here's a look at AOC CPU scaling on a 8800GT:
http://au.gamespot.com/features/6192732/p-6.html

It actually looks quite CPU bound. Quads don't help much but extra clockspeed certainly does.