Diablo II choppy and cpu usage 100%

[paruhd0x]

Diablo II even in single player is 100% cpu usage and every 5 seconds my busy cursor comes up and the game lags majorly. What is going on?? I'm on a 900MHz system! For more details about my system look at my sig link... exclude the proc speed on it though cuz its 900 not 1200... yet.. Any ideas?

 

[Zoe]

To improve gameplay performance, you should set your swap file size to at least 128. Make the minimum and maximum sizes the same. This will prevent Windows from changing it's size during gameplay, the most prevelent cause of hard drive lag in D2. Also, if you can, make the swap file on a hard drive different than the one you installed Diablo 2 on. This will allow your computer to access both at once rather than overloading information going to/from the one with Diablo 2 on it. Finally, if you insist on keeping virtual memory to a minimum, play a game of diablo with the fps info on the top of the screen. (Obtained by typing 'fps' during the game. This is without the quotes.) Take note of how much ram Diablo 2 is using. You can add/remove size from the swap file as needed for however much info your computer is storing on your hard drive.

D/l the latest non-beta drivers for your Geforce from the Nvidia site.

Make sure no unnecessary program(s) is running in the background.

 

[Mem]

Try making sure nothing is running in the background like anti-virus etc,so disable these also defrag your harddrive,& what Via drivers are you using?Might be worth downloading latest patches as well.

 

[Gatsby]

Also if all else fails you can switch to directdraw as the video output.
It makes a world of difference.

Gatsby - 907

 

[pen^2]

if u are using anything other than a 3dfx gfx card, i highly suggest to make a switch to directdraw. i have tried just about every win98se driver for radeon there is and concluded d3d runs like sh!t :|

 

[paruhd0x]

it is not a video problem. switching to direct draw does not reduce the prosssor usage in any way.

 

[paruhd0x]

<< To improve gameplay performance, you should set your swap file size to at least 128. Make the minimum and maximum sizes the same. This will prevent Windows from changing it's size during gameplay >>



Zoe how would I go about doing this?

 

[paruhd0x]

Mem, I have all the latest drivers for my system... I've tried 2 of the latest beta 4in1 drivers and the official latest ones and no difference. It seems that msgsrv32.exe is the thing that is taking the cpu usage... Why....

 

[Sinner]

One performance gain can be made by defragging the hard disk and copying the music files to the DaibloII directory I forget the whole filename but its extension is .MPQ and it is around 347 megs.

If you have norton speeddisk reorganize your hard disk to put your swapfile in front and D2 right after it.

 

[Whitedog]

Having the game installed on one hard drive and the swap file on another won't help you any... IDE hard drives can only be accessed one at a time, no matter how many you have.

100% CPU usage is normal... Most desent games are programmed to utilize 100% of the processor for maximum performance. Even with the game sitting idle, the CPU will show 100%.

Which OS are you running the game under? Me, or 2K? You Rig says dual boot. With 256 megs ram, you should config your WinME system.ini with the Conservativeswapfileusage=1 setting. I was having the same problems you are and that solved it for me. Now I run win2K and don't have any problems...

For best performance with WinME (gaming), install 512 Megs ram and DISABLE virtual memory. Don't let any of these yahoo's tell you otherwise.

 

[Sinner]

Whitedog not to contradict you but here's how IDE works:

Most computers have 2 channels. Each channel can only access 1 thing at a time. So if you put a second hard drive on the second IDE channel and drop your swapfile on it...upfront...you can gain performance.

This also goes for copying CD-ROMs. Put your Reader on one channel and your CDR on the other channel for faster copies.