Performance
 

Hi everyone.
I have encountered something game breaking. And that is FPS. It's a thread you would expect at sh5 forum :D .
Alright now is it just me or does every ones FPS crap like mine? In the subs interior itsjumping constantly from 15 to 25 which is not the bggest problem but when I am outside the sub it drops to 12~13 sometimes 9 if I'm in port or a ship burns it drops to 3 fps. I was expecting this game to run flawless considering it's age but well....I forgot how old my pc is.
I have GWX 3.0 installed btw.

Here are my specs.

Intel pentium 4 3.0ghz; 768mb ram; Nvidia geforce fx5200; a broken 320gb drive and a almost working 74gb drive.

I know the pc is crap but still... It is better than recommended specs isn't it?
The only thing I think I could try is reinstalling the OS since it wasn't me who was using the PC for the last year (I had a great notebook which could run SH5 with ease but my sister moved and took it with her.) , maybe it has some viruses. (though AV didn't find anything)
I can only reinstall the Os in a month or so when my friend will get back from vacation since I have to back up some stuff. Any other ideas that could help?

Yes it is true, but when you use with GWX mods (probably)
 

so it happens a lot about U-boat, and it affects the composition,and by extension your graphics card also,I would suggest that you look at drivers on the graphics card, and do an upgrade on RAM memory.to obtain a better optimization or change the graphics card,if you have the opportunity for this :salute:

Well I will steal additional 256mb ram plate from my friends old pc but again only in a month. I can't buy anything right now(would I love a new pc trust me) :damn:

Pretty much forgot to update my drivers if I'm honest. Will try and report if it helped.

I hate my stupid keyboard! ITS made from some rubber or jelly or silicon crap that doesn't type properly unless hit with a hammer. Have t recheck everything I write because of that. And the stupid cheap mouse that fails every 10 minutes. :damn::damn:

Barely. I have recently upgraded to 4 GB of RAM and a 1 GB video card, and I still have to dial back the AA on the card to keep it from stuttering when a ship is burning.

What mods are you running? This game takes a lot of power to make it smooth.

I started off playing with P4 2.66, 1.5Mb RAM, 250Gb HD and a ATI X800XL 256Mb and my frame rates were never that bad, even with GWX.

I know SH3 is predominantly processer-run but that graphics card is only just scraping into the 'it'll work' territory, it's seven years old and came with a choice of AGP or PCI (not -E). I'd like to think you'd got the AGP version, in that case there are myriad graphics card out there that are infinately (almost!) better that cost peanuts today. If you've got the PCI version then you may as well abandon ship now!

My suggestions: get new graphics card (if AGP, hell, somebody on this forum will have one gathering dust that they'll send to you probably for just p&p, we're that nice!); increase RAM - check what you're motherboard is capable of and come back to us (again, we might have some just laying around...)

Failing the above, start saving. It's never ideal, but with a modern PC you'll find so much more than SH3 enjoyable... :D


Edit: The latest drivers available for your card are 175.19 from July 2008, I doubt you'll need to update. Latest XP drivers are up to 258...

Thanks for the answers. i only run GWX 3.0 as I already mentioned. BTW the graphics settings are a bit messy. I couldn't find advanced.

Yeah my graphics card is agp8x . I was planning non upgrading it but then my sister bought a really great laptop which she let me use. But now she moved and I'm stuck with this rusty old bucket. It has 4 ram slots and 3 of the are used by 256mb plates.I really don't want to upgrade it since i had bad experience with it. I wasted all my money on a 320gb hard drive which broke down in a year (warranty just expired) and made my pc crash bsod and all kinds of miracles. I really don't want to waste any money on this.

New(well old) drivers didn't do anything either. LOL I could complain about this PC forever. My speakers are making this annoying buzzing sound all the time because they are near my wireless phone, and since it gets it's cable from a modem I can't move them far away for the buzz to stop :haha:
:D
SO looks like I'm doomed then


EDIT:

HA ha lol. The game crashed when i sped up time x256 :D

Can anyone donate a AGP 8x card? :hmmm:

@Ediko what RAM can you take?

Lol I appreciate the help. I really don't know about ram. All I know is that I can't it one more 256mb plate or I need totally new ones.. Would DXdiag indicate the ram type or any other way to find it. BTW I think there is a bug in the device manager. It hows me 2 3.0ghz cpu's although I clearly don't have a dual core... (did dualcores even exist in 2004?)

No, you are not doomed at all.
 

In the case of speakers, so the cables are not shielded,Therefore you for noise from other electronic devices,so if you have plans to upgrade your rig, so I suggest you build one yourself,and it has several advantages, it is cheaper and you choose what you want,instead of unnecessary things.Finally, I mentioned that there are some AGP cards on the market that is "decent" but I would not bet on it without saving and low-lying and building your own rig with PCIe 16 or PCIe 2.0,whatever you choose,I wish you good luck :up:

Thanks. I don't plan to upgrade this rig since its pretty much dying already. The problems I had with it bring back memories. It was already quite dated when I first got it and well its here just because I can't get anything. I don't plan to buy a new pc either since I will be moving to Denmark in a year (Free universities for the win) and I need all the money I can get (not like I can get any but still lol). So I will propably get a new pc when everything will be more stabilised. Meanwhile I thought I could waste some time in sh3 and some other old classics I didn't play enough but seems that the rig won't let me. QUite odd if I'm honest because I do remember playing SH3 a loong time ago and it was running fine I think.

Here's a link to a small program,
 

so you can see all the information you think is important (free version).


http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Yeah device manager was wrong. I downloaded hwmonitor maybe it's overheating a lot? Worth a look I guess.

Both the programs will,
 

come from the same manufacturer so it is up to you which option you choose..

The 1 MB card I just bought is AGP! My system is quite old as well, and is now maxed out. The card was $57 from www.newegg.com.

Brother, I feel for you. Trying to run SH3 on a marginal setup like that is a recipe for heartbreak. And here I sit on a pile of unused mice and keyboards cluttering up my house.