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SupCom... Why so system intensive... LAG on 6-10 player LAN

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Ok So i have no problem running this on my machine however.... At our monthly lans we have seen some major lag issues. We get about 6-10 on a game at any give time. My buddy who runs the thing has a dual opteron 185 OCed setup with 8GB of Memory with all the trimmings and XP 64bit. He has it rack mounted with a Dell switch running gigabit to each PC. He hosts the games on the server and once we are all running for a good hour or two and the units build up things start to crawl. I mean the units hardly respond and large groups have a hard time moving. It can creep along so slow that we just stop playing or people end up dropping out. He has said this CPU doesn't peg out that badly and the game is sucking up about 4 GB of RAM.

Does anyone have any idea what could cause this? Could it be the result of one slow PC in the bunch? Is it just ineffient programming? Any thought's on how we can speed this up or is it just how it is?

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My guess is either the powersupply is getting overloaded(sounds weird, but its my guess) or the graphics card is burning up. Sounds pretty strange. I would even try running it on XP Home or Pro. X64 has errors running certain applications from what I've heard/seen. Have you tried other games with this? If its just SupCom, then its bad coding with itself.

Good luck. :D 

My guess, based on experience lanning other RTSs, is that whoever in your group has the slowest PC (Ram and video card are the real limiting factors here) is probably the problem.

The way it works is the server bears the brunt of the logic and communications overhead, but the clients still have to render what is going on. In the interest of fairness RTS designers typically will slow down the game if one participant is having trouble keeping up. Sometimes this makes the game nearly unplayable.

Now if you are able to play sup com with 10 players for any decent length of time before problems start... well I would say that the bottleneck is not a weak computer at all... but just not as powerful as everyone else's in some way.

Again focus on memory and video cards, those are the most common problems in these situations.

Everyone has a fairly decent PC. All our PC's are x2 or Core 2 systems.

The server has an Nvidia 7950 GX2 in it so that bad boy basically handles anything we throw at it. We tried playing it while I hosted but we only have 4 people for about an hour playing and couldnt get a large amount of units to test really. We might attempt next Lan. I know ive run into issues on C&C generals when my cousin used to play on his craptop dell with built on video. It would actually loose connection to all PC's while I hosted. We kicked him out and everything worked. Although he is not using it on supcom he uses my buddied sleeper HP with all new guts and a 7600gt i believe on a e4300 core 2 with 2gb ram... That is probably the lowest end PC of the group. Everyone else has 8800's x1900's or highend 7xxx nvidia cards.
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Try even unclocking the processor to stock speeds. Maybe the heat is building up on it. Also, when running the game, close all other programs if you have not already done so.

He has run it at stock and never has anything else running besides the game in play. Nothing seems to speed it up. Is it multithreaded and use multiple cores? could this be a reason?

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He has run it at stock and never has anything else running besides the game in play. Nothing seems to speed it up. Is it multithreaded and use multiple cores? could this be a reason?



The game should be utilizing as much bandwidth as possible. If it is being limited, then thats the source of your problem. Also, are the temps of the processors in fair range? If you could find out, that would great also.

My buddy is really particular with temps and power supplies. He always goes overboard on both. The server has a huge Thermalright cooler on each CP with literally the highest CFM 120mm fans he could find on newegg. Im pretty sure the temps are good. We have not problem on any other games. But then again there arent thousands of units on the screen.

Is it just me or did he say the fastest was a 7600GT… since when was a 7600 a fast graphics card. I have not got this game but a friend who has said it plays like a dog even on his X1900. Try kicking people who have slow cards to see who is slowing things down.

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Everyone else has 8800's x1900's or highend 7xxx nvidia cards.


The slowest is the 7600gt But this was only thrown into the mix one time. Other than this everyone has the above stated.

If its gunna run as the slowest pc, then i think thats the problem. I myself have the game but dont play it cos it runs like crap on my comp (comp in sig). The game is just sluggish, zooming and scrolling etc, even with relativley little amount of units. The much awaited new patch didnt fix it either.

Im sure its a great game and wish i could enjoy it. my hardware is too new for it or something, although i know that sounds obsurd. So, my guess is that someone else has similar problems and this slows down all the computers

im gunna get vista in a week, then wil try it. Do you and your friends all use xp or a mix?

Playing skirmish on my machine it runs like a champ actually. I was playing it last night with a billion freaking units and nothing lags at all. But then again this is solo on my machine.

Your PC is far superior graphically than mine, it should run awesome.

Here is another question. Is 30 FPS to slow for my gaming experience. I don't really notice much screen lag unless there are planes zooming by but I get 30 FPS zoomed in with all graphic settings cranked (vert sync off) (AA = 6) I started lowering a few items and saw I didn't gain many FPS unless I really crank everything down to medium settings. BUt the water and units don't look as clean. Am I losing anything going from 30 to 40-50 FPS on an RTS such as this? I mean visually? I heard 30 FPS is fine for a RTS because it is less stressful on the graphics card. How much truth is there to this?

yeah ive also heard that 30 fps is what you should be getting in this game on max settings, with a high end computer.. roughley. So if you dont notice it then its fine, and you should keep it on max if it feels right. you wont gain any advantage over other players either :lol: 
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