Performance advice

[Paul Roberts]

Hi all,

I'm suffering from mouse lag with SH4 on my laptop. It's an old story, as I see from a search, but I wonder if anyone has advice about what to tweak.

My system:
Dell Inspiron 1545 (running plugged in)
Vista Home Premium 32-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P8700@2.53GHz
4.00 GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 w/256MB

Heat is not an issue. This is a system that runs other 3D games rather well: Combat Mission Shock Force, Jutland, and Mass Effect 2 are all on my HD and doing great.

I've turned down ALL of the graphics options in SH4 (except Ship Normal Maps, I think), and I still get noticeable mouse lag at the periscope, particularly with the plotting panels open.

What should I do to further improve performance? Are there specific graphic card settings that will make a difference? System tweaks?

I really want to play and enjoy this game. Thanks for any advice.

[irish1958]

The only thing I can suggest is to use ready boost and AlacrityPC and/or Game Booster. I suspect your graphic card is the bottleneck, however, in which case you might not be able to improve performance.
Some people have messed with the affinity and priority in the processes; you might try various combinations to see if there is a boost in your rig.
If you have any success, report back.

[danurve]

Logitech mouse by any chance? Try the newest intellipoint drivers.

[Paul Roberts]

Hmm. Intellipoint drivers seem not to change anything for me (logitech optical).

I do get results from dropping every setting in my video card. It still doesn't look too bad.

What do the "particle density" and "character size" settings in SH4 do?

[Munchausen]

:hmmm: IIRC, some guys fixed it via Vert Sync. Either by turning it off or by changing "frames looked ahead" to something other than default. Try searching the forum for "nHancer" and see if you find anything applicable.