*** Situation Update ***
Well, a lesson has been learned here. I discovered last night that my current system IS NOT that bad at running the T-34 vs. Tiger simulation that I was upgrading for in the first place. Get this: my sound card was to blame!
That's right. See, I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 with a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2. Creative's Vista support, especially x64 support, has been lacking, to say the least. I always suspected it was might be a troublemaker and, sure enough, it's a big one.
Last night I got tired of the low visual quality I was playing with (in order to try and get above 15 FPS) and just cranked up all the detail to gaze at it. When playing, I was registering 9-12 FPS. I paused the game and my frame rate counter jumped to 35-45 FPS. HMMMMM. That's odd. Why would it jump so much for just pausing the game? It was obvious something odd was going on.
Sure enough the next level I loaded the game crashed to the desktop and Vista told me the sound card was to blame. I thought I'd try an experiment and turn off all sound in the game and try playing.... and you know what... I was averaging 30 FPS @ 1920x1080 with 16xQ AA / 16x AF and ALL visual details in the game maxed out. I was in shock. Holy crap. So I just upgraded my CPU/mobo/memory because my stupid Audigy sound card drivers aren't playing nice with Vista x64 (I even made sure I had the latest drivers - same problem) and causing dramatic performance problems in this game.
I quickly powered down my computer and ripped out the audigy and enabled my on-board HD sound. Installed the drivers and fired up the game - and whamo - now even with sound on I am averaging 30 FPS. AHHHH man I felt stupid. And on top of that, the on-board audio isn't bad at all - I can still adjust bass/treble/etc and everything sounds just as good as before.
Of course, my upgrade is not in vain. When in a heavy forest (forests are very detailed in this game) I drop to around 19 FPS - still not terrible - and I'm thinking the Core i5 will get even this low average back up to 30+.
I'm really happy I discovered this. Had I not and gone ahead and moved the Audigy 2 to the new system my performanc probably would have been no different - and I would have been crying. Now I have a playable full-detail game that will only get better with the Core i5 arrival. I knew the GTX 275 should have been able to handle this game. Now I know!!
Well, a lesson has been learned here. I discovered last night that my current system IS NOT that bad at running the T-34 vs. Tiger simulation that I was upgrading for in the first place. Get this: my sound card was to blame!
That's right. See, I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 with a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2. Creative's Vista support, especially x64 support, has been lacking, to say the least. I always suspected it was might be a troublemaker and, sure enough, it's a big one.
Last night I got tired of the low visual quality I was playing with (in order to try and get above 15 FPS) and just cranked up all the detail to gaze at it. When playing, I was registering 9-12 FPS. I paused the game and my frame rate counter jumped to 35-45 FPS. HMMMMM. That's odd. Why would it jump so much for just pausing the game? It was obvious something odd was going on.
Sure enough the next level I loaded the game crashed to the desktop and Vista told me the sound card was to blame. I thought I'd try an experiment and turn off all sound in the game and try playing.... and you know what... I was averaging 30 FPS @ 1920x1080 with 16xQ AA / 16x AF and ALL visual details in the game maxed out. I was in shock. Holy crap. So I just upgraded my CPU/mobo/memory because my stupid Audigy sound card drivers aren't playing nice with Vista x64 (I even made sure I had the latest drivers - same problem) and causing dramatic performance problems in this game.
I quickly powered down my computer and ripped out the audigy and enabled my on-board HD sound. Installed the drivers and fired up the game - and whamo - now even with sound on I am averaging 30 FPS. AHHHH man I felt stupid. And on top of that, the on-board audio isn't bad at all - I can still adjust bass/treble/etc and everything sounds just as good as before.
Of course, my upgrade is not in vain. When in a heavy forest (forests are very detailed in this game) I drop to around 19 FPS - still not terrible - and I'm thinking the Core i5 will get even this low average back up to 30+.
I'm really happy I discovered this. Had I not and gone ahead and moved the Audigy 2 to the new system my performanc probably would have been no different - and I would have been crying. Now I have a playable full-detail game that will only get better with the Core i5 arrival. I knew the GTX 275 should have been able to handle this game. Now I know!!
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