Another trick I found on this forum and it does help ...start the game and then minimize to desktop. I use the Windows key on my keyboard to do this. Once there, bring up your Task Manager. On the processes tab look for SH4.exe and right click it. Set you processor to Above Normal. A message will pop up and say this might make you computer unstable. Click ok. Bring up the game and begin play. Doing this adds abotu 5-6 FPS for me. However, I do loose some FPS in ports. No big deal there as I do not spend time in port. Thankfully the devs gave us the option to start outside the ports. So, you do not have to deal with the ports if you do not want to.

FPS and refresh rates...
 

I read through the 100fps site data, and most is accurate. I totally agree with the notions that blurred images in movies contribute to the smoothness. Even in the old Starwars movies the stop motion animations were laboriously hand blurred to make them smoother.

I am curious about something though. If your monitor scans 72 cycles per second (mine is 72Hz), what's the point in having a higher FPS? Surely that would be outside the physical capability of the monitor to reproduce? In other words, your FPS may be 200, but the monitor only changes 'frames' 72 times per second...

Also, anti-aliasing adds the blur factor to pixels, reducing the visual appearance of jerkiness. I can't run it on my system (FPS drops to 9), so I have nice sharp images at 15FPS. I definitely see the little jerky motions, but the game is still playable. Considering the choice for me is deal or stop playing SH4, I deal with it...;)

AVG, good tip! I didn't know about that one.

This was brought up by one of the devs and confirmed by RDP that it does help in some cases. I was one of them. I suspect most this will help as you are telling the CPU to spend more time running the game than anything else. This is probably the most productive trick I have used yet.......with exception of buying a whole new set up. :o

A better graphics card is the only way my friend :yep:

FPS fixation
 

I can honestly say I have not checked the FPS once since getting SH4.

Specs:
AMD 64 3400 (2.8Ghz)
Nvidia GeForce 7800 (AGP x8)
2 Gigs RAM
22" flat screen, game resolution running at 1680 x 1050

The game works just fine. I haven't fine tuned anything. The only decrease in performance I've noted is when I turn on "volumetric fog" so I don't turn it on!! LOL and I haven't missed it at all!! LOL.
Apart from that the only other thing that I can't do which I could with SH3 is use FRAPS to make a movie (with FRAPS on the game literally grinds to a halt).

Not sure why FPS would be an issue with supposedly 'better' systems, strange.:-?

I have the same with exception of the CPU. I have a 3200+ that runs a 2.1Ghz. The game runs just fine. Only ports make the FPS drop and is noticable.

This seems to be the case for some newer systems. But eventually those newer rigs will have a leg up as more games are made to take advantage of sytems with multiple CPUs, etc.

When I built my current rig over a year ago I wasn't to sad to scale it back somewhat after ( mainly due to cost :oops: ) seeing some of the stories here of folks with higher end systems. I have a mid-range system that runs the game fine.


RDP

if the hardware is adaquate or superior, one must carefully examine the Operating System.

Most people run trashed OS's.

Sounds about like mine, I have a Dell Inspiron 1750 with a NVIDIA Gefore Go 7900 256 mg and 2 gigs or ram.

I get 60 inside and around 30ish depending on the weather, heavy storm have hit 20 but mostly at 30. You sound on par for normal FPS. Nothing to worry about from what I see.

Windows XP
4 Gigs of Ram OCZ Plat
250 gig SATA 2
Deul Layer DVD Burner
AMD Duel Core 4200+ 64x
Nvidia 9800gtx

1x Time Compression 50-60 FPS
64x Time Compression 10-15 FPS

What in the heck am I doing wrong?

I have the same CPU (4200 x2) with 1GB Ram and a Leadtek 8800GT 512 graphics card factory overclocked with the Zalman cooler. I usually get 180FPS at TC 1 and 7 FPS at TC 8192 until I start sinking ships Then 7FPS drops to TC 4096. I also get between 40 and 60 with the free camera or Periscope and 110 on the sub's interior. I run somewhere between high and medium graphics settings (I set Character detail to low) and all the boxes checked except EE. My game resolution is 1440 x 900 at 75 HZ.

Your system should be able to top the numbers I get with all that RAM. There must be a problem somewhere. Have you tried the Nvidia tweaks on the forum and setting the core affinity to core 1? I run the bare minimum of XP services and usually have 800MB of free RAM. Check and see if you have some memory hogs running on your system.

If you wanna set the Priority of the game B4 it starts, try this.....

Create a .bat file in the Silent Hunter Wolves of the Pacific folder were the SH4.exe is.

In the .bat file write this: START /HIGH SH4.EXE

Create a shortcut to this file an place it were you want.

Use the new shortcut to start Silent Hunter in the High Priority Mode...

SINK'M'ALL

Don,t bet that having an 8000 series GPU will help Frame Rate. I have an EVGA 8000GT Super Clocked w 1900mb bandwidth across the card and 512mb of onboard ram and the frame rate drops to a crawl and crashes from time to time. I have all settings for the card set to application control and still can,t stop the crashes. I have the EVGA drivers as well ( as opposed to Nvidia) This is the first game in recent memory where I have not been able to force the graphics. It is also the only game that crashes on my system. AMD 4200+ ,Asus A8N-SLI Premium mobo. 2 gig of Mushkin DDR ram and the above GPU. I have the AMD driver tweak installed and my whole system is clocked up. I realize that I am a little short on the cpu. This is my first try at sub sims... a little disappointing. BTW all my game settings are on medium. :cry:

You might wanna try different Vid Drivers, any drivers other then 169.21 with my 8800GTS 512mb I get choppy game play. The MidWay Quick mission is a slide show with any drivers above 169.21 an unplayable. With the 169.21 I get as high as 180 FPS an no lower then 50 FPS in the heavy combat in the MidWay Quick mission.

8800 GTS G92 512mg
AMD DualCore 4400
2 SeaGate 80 gig HD in raid0
HANNS-G Wide Screen Monitor @ 1440x900 75 HZ NATIVE RES... ( 60 hz for some reason sucks )
Running minimun service
NO OC

Here's a good site to slim down XP: http://www.bold-fortune.com/forums/i...p?showforum=13