Stuttering and gameplay issues! - also posted at UBI

[Phoenix3000]

Hi all,

I finally managed to get SH4 installed last night (Collectors Edition) - 3 installs and unistalls due to a problem with adding the patch. I finally managed to add the 1.1 patch on the 4th install.

The problems below existed in the pre-patched version too.

OK, first off, my machine is a Dell XPS M1710 laptop running XP Home on NTFS C: drive.

The specs: NVidia GeForce 7900GTX 512MB graphics card, 2GB memory, and Intel Centrino dual-core 2.16GHz processor.

I have owned this system for only 4 months.

I have been able to play other games such as Road to Hill 30, Earned in Blood, SH3 GWX 1.2 etc. etc. with all graphics maxed out at the highest resolutions without any slowdown.

So, hopes were high with SH4.

Anyway, after installation when in-game the graphics 'stutter' all the time - especially externally - internally it's like thay are 'clipping'.

I have set the nVidia control settings to use vSync for the sh4.exe upon launch but that made no change - neither did enabling VSync in the main.cfg.

I have turned all settings to their lowest levels and still get the choppiness, and with high settings its the same.

Please, please can someone help with this - talk about frustrating!

A new game such as SH4 shouldn't behave this way.

Does anyone know of a solution to all of this?

Cheers!

Phoenix

PS: - Using DirectX 9.0c (latest), and latest graphic card and sound drivers from Dell (downloaded and installed 2 night ago). I also defragged the drive the day before install and run a full system scan for virus and spyware, both with Microsoft Defender and Zonealarm Suite.

Every other game is fine - except this one!

[stabiz]

Its probably your dual core. Ludicrous that this should mess up the game at this time, but thst what it is for me.

Alt+tab out of the game, ctrl+alt+del and right click sh4.exe in the task manager, set affinity to one core, press "ok".

See if that helps, mate.

[Phoenix3000]

Thanks for replying Stabiz,

I'll definitely try that when I get home tonight (stuck in the office right now - only 2.5 hours to go.........)

Excuse my ignorance, but what does setting SH4 affinity to one core actually do?

It won't affect the hardware in any way will it?

Or is it telling SH4 to only use half the processor power available?

Has it made a noticeable difference to your game? - Are you able to play at high graphical settings nice and smooth without the VERY annoying stuttering?

Cheers mate!

Px3000

[stabiz]

No, its not dangerous in any way, it just forces sh4 to use one of the cores, the other core will take care of other stuff, like windows.

It improves the stuttering in my game, next to nothing at at times with all settings cranked up except post processing, but I almost broke my keyboard when it came back, this time due to the fog. Its not an fps issue, I`m sure of that, since fraps reports high fps all the time. The stuttering is even present when just panning around with free cam when the game is paused.:hmm:

Its not fragmented drive either, checked that. Latest nVidia-drivers, etc. I mean, I can play Armed Assault, a way more hardware-hungry game than SH4 without issues.