Over Tweaking XP?

[Haljon]

Hello all,

My friend and I play the same game online but I notice I have much more framerate "lag" then he does. Our computers are VERY compairable. I have made a LOT of tweaks to my system and am wondering if I have over done it. Is it possable to slowdown a system by tweaking it too much?

My system:
P4 2 gig
gForce 4 Ti 4200 64 meg
768 megs of PC800 RAMBUS memory
Intel 850GB motherboard
Cable ISP
Windows XP pro

His system
Athlon XP 1600 ( running at 1467 Mhz )
512 DDR PC2100
Future Power FP-VAKT266-1 motherboard
GForce 4 Ti 4200 64 meg
DSL ISP
windows 98 2nd ed.

 

[CALV]

what game is it? could it be that your friend altered game settings such as the max/min packet rate etc? also your connection will affect it a lot, even on a high speed conenction you can get lag. (and no, lag and ping arnt the same)


If they squeeze olives to get olive oil, how do they get baby oil?

 

[Haljon]

The game is Dark age of Camelot. There are no real game settings. His rez is set higher then mine and is near max setting. My rez is set much lower then his. DAoC has a "ping" meter util that gives you, ping to server, framerate and something else. Our ping times to the server are close but during large battles, my framerate drops a TON where his doesent. I recently took my memory to 768 from 384 hoping that this would help, but it really hasent. I have made a ton of tweaks to xp and my hardware to speed it up. Is it possable that some of my tweaks are slowing me down? Im ready to reload XP without any tweaks to see if there is a difference, but dont want to if this is not going to help.

Thanks for the input all.

 

[lagger]

are you using a refresh rate fix program ? is he ? if he is and you aren't this could explain it

<font color=red><b> It may be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others</font color=red></b>

 

[Haljon]

He does not use any tweaks at all. I do not use this program.

 

[jihiggs]

what drivers are you both using? check to make sure the settings match his.

how do you shoot the devil in the back? what happens if you miss? -verbal

 

[Haljon]

We have the same drivers. Keep in mind, I have xp drivers, he has 98 drivers.

 

[compuhan]

Could be the game runs faster on win98se than on xp. I've noticed ghost recon to be a bit faster on identical settings under win98se than xp (dual boot, so it's the same system). Could be detail levels also, if there are any for the game. Details such as shadows make a HUGE difference in performance.

As for overtweaking... well in tweaking my graphics card, I did notice longer load times and random choppiness in the nvidia wolfman demo that actually lowered framerates. But this was at the highest tweak (memory and clock) and it was very noticeable (considered unstable). Also, overclocking my system memory to a certain level caused some programs to load very slow, though the system actually benched higher (sandra).

Why not try removing the tweaks and see what happens? It may be helpful to list your tweaks as well.

Quality is better than name brand, even regarding beloved AMD.

 

[ejsmith2]

*sigh*

Exactly WHAT tweaks have you made to you system?

Are you talking about going through the registry and cleaning out old crap that will never be used in your lifetime, but msft feels it should be in there just in case they decide to use them in the future?

Are you talking about stuff like TweakUI and X-setup where you change your I/O lockspace to 8 meg, or turn off the 8+3 filenaming?

Are you talking about GTU, and turning on the 256burst, along with fastwrites and sidebanding?

Are you talking about overclocking your gpu and memory?



"I personally think filesystems should be rewritten from scratch every 5 years..." --- Hans Reiser

 

[Haljon]

Sorry all for the lack if tweaking info. I am VERY new to tweaking my systems in any way. The tweaks I have made are as follows.

XP tweaks- turned off many servers that were not needed as recommended by many XP tweak guides.
Downloaded and ran TweakXP program and ran many system, Hardware, modem, graphics, memory tweaks. Most of those were standard tweakXP options. Downloaded and ran cashman and set it as recommended by a XP tweak guide. Downloaded and installed Intels app accelarateor. If need be (as im at work now) I can let you know exatly what options I did when I get home.

A friend of mine thinks that one of the tweaks may be slowing down the game in some way. Could this be?

Thanks again. Sorry to be a pain, but im learning a lot form you all <smiles>

Edit: My system is not overclocked in any way.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Haljon on 10/29/02 12:56 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[CALV]

you say it happens when theres a lot of onscreen activity, thats what i meant in my original post, its your system/drivers/display that the problem, update agp drivers/disp drivers, and maybe use the refresh fix if needed tho I wouldnt have said this is the prob here


If they squeeze olives to get olive oil, how do they get baby oil?

 

[Haljon]

Calv,
I have the newest nVidia drivers as well as newest monitor drivers.

What refresh fix are you talking about?

 

[silverpig]

Do you have FSAA or aniso enabled?

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

 

[Civilized]

make sure you have latest chipset drivers...I think intel's is called application accelerator and it makes a big difference I hear.....
If you want high frame rates, make sure vsync is turned off...for some games though such as counterstrike leaving vsync turned off will make the game run choppy eventhogh the framerates are alot higher than with vsync...
with your setup you shouldnt be experiencing any drop frames =]...
my roommate has a p4 1.8hz pc800 and gef3 ti 500 and for some reason it runs alot choppier than my system: xp1900+ gef2ultra 768mbddr pc2100...they are comparable systems but still yet he has the faster graphics card?...weird

forgot to note taht he runs win2000 and im on xp prof.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Civilized on 10/29/02 04:15 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[tastim]

Also keep in mind... I didn't see you mention how you and your friends drives are set up.... if he is using SCSI drives versus IDE, that makes a HUGE difference in what you are experiencing. My friend has an almost identical system as me, however, all of his drives are SCSI... he doesn't even have his IDE ports turned on, and his system FLIES compared to mine... and he doesn't get those little hiccups in DAoC that I do.

Also realize, DAoC just has some very very crappy net-code and graphic engine. Nothing you can do about that.

 

[ejsmith2]

The sigh was due to everyone else answering you, but no one asking the question that needed to get asked.

Man, I dunnno about ntel's accelerator.

Start with the bios first, then.

Set your agp aperture down to like 4meg, and flip the cache to "USWC" or whatever the writeback acronym is. Turn on fastwrites, and 4x agp speed. The whole idea at first is to keep all the memory usage on the card, rather than the system. I dunno how ntel plays, but VIA likes to go to the system memory.

Next move I'd make is loading something like GTU. Geforce Tweak Utility.

Try things first with the fastwrites in the drivers turned off. Turn on "256 burst", and flip off anti-aliasing and asiotropic filtering (however it's spelled).

I personally use 100hz as my refresh rate, but 85 or 75 is good too. Alot depends on your monitor, but as long as you don't have some $1200 monitor, your refresh rate isn't going to pull down the gfx card.

There's some other tweaks in there, but it will affect disk access speeds more than anything else. You should be good to go.


"I personally think filesystems should be rewritten from scratch every 5 years..." --- Hans Reiser

 

[Haljon]

Ej,
Thanks. Ill try turning off fast wires and turning on 256 burst. I can not get the GTU as it is not supported anymore. Is there another tweak util I can use for my gForce 4? Will this be how I turn on 256 burst and turn off fast wires? I cant do it in my bios. There are only 2 video options on my bios. 1. AGP size. 64 or 256. Currently, its set at 64. 2. Primary *** options AGP, PCI. Its set to AGP.

 

[compuhan]

Yo. I asked him to list his tweaks before you sighed.



Quality is better than name brand, even regarding beloved AMD.