Hard Drive/RAM issue with certain games

RenegadeXI

Hey guys, first post here so bear with me

First of all, my system specs:

CPU: Athlon 64 3700+ @ 2470 MHz
RAM: 1GB DDR PC3200
GPU: ATI Radeon X1800XL (Catalyst 7.4)
HDD: 1x Maxtor 300GB SATA1 7200rpm // 1x Seagate 80GB SATA1 7200rpm
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit


My system is very stable and runs nearly every game I can throw at it with no issues at all. Now, my problem therein lies in the fact that certain games, specifically F.E.A.R. and CellFactor: Revolution have a severe problem when it comes to loading and in-game performance. Loading in each respective game usually ranges from 3 minutes to 10 minutes, and in-game performance after that is extremely choppy (not an FPS issue, just massive amounts of stuttering and hard drive thrashing), as if the game is still loading some assets. The strange thing is, FEAR performed wonderfully on Windows XP, loading times ranged from 10 seconds to 25 seconds at most and after that gameplay was smooth as butter. It appears as if Vista might be the perpetrator here and attempts to cache the entire game rather than just one level. And yes, I have installed every single update and all my drivers are up to date.

As I stated before, it only happens with those 2 games. Command & Conquer 3, Dark Messiah, WoW, WC3, Rainbow Six Vegas, etc. all run fine as they are supposed to and load really quick.

I have tried everything, and the problem still persists: changing the location of the paging file, increasing paging file to 4GB, un-overclocking everything, installing older drivers, removing all background processes, and turning off DEP... I'm seriously out of ideas, and have no clue as to what could be causing this, so I turn to you to give me some suggestions

Thanks in advance!

ChaosMinionX

Sounds just like a compatability issue within Vistas drivers/handling of the game....Since they ran fine on XP.... The only thing I will say its one of the reasons I havent gone to Vista yet, but have a copy of Ultimate sitting on my desk....Im waiting for SP1 to see how many issues get resolved.

cozumel

Have you checked to see if there any Vista patches available for Cellfactor and fear?

Edit: Welcome to DH.

Dyre Straits

Greetings and welcome to DriverHeaven!

My first impression as I read your post is that another 1 GB of RAM would probably do you a world of good. I know that, even with XP, I noticed a tremendous amount of difference when I went from 1 GB of DDR 3200 to 2 GB of Dual Channel DDR 3200. AND, it affected games like F.E.A.R., OBLIVION, and others.

What this problem sounds like to me is that the game is having to use too much of the PageFile (or what was it Vista calls it now?) for loading things.

So, I'd try getting another 1 GB of RAM and see if there's any improvement.

And, how long has it been since you Defragged your HHDs?

Good luck!

Mousey

Definately sounds like incompatability with vista to me, especially if they ran wonderfully on xp.
That's prolly why i've ditched vista for good, i absolutely hate it now, most especially the insane memory usage which sucks about 20 fps + out of most games.
Someone wrote in to a magazine i read saying they used to get constant 60fps in CS:S with all the settings whacked up to the max, then in vista they got between 32 and 40.

[/rant]

My advice would be to backup, and go back to XP.
if you get a BSOD while your'e starting the XP setup try another HDD you haven't installed vista on, if you haven't got one of those try looking for a Vista downgrade thing microsoft have had to make.

hope this helped

RenegadeXI

Thanks for the responses... I appreciate it.

Yes. I noticed people have problems with FEAR in Vista in general, and I tried every work-around and fix. Nothing did it for me. CellFactor was just released so I doubt it'd need a Vista patch.


Well, yes, naturally that would help tons... but I don't see why FEAR would take on average 5 minutes to load a level, one minute to QUICKLOAD, and everytime I fire my gun, stutter for 3-5 seconds, on 1GB of RAM. It's just nonsensical

I'm guessing it probably is the only viable work-around, though. I wasn't planning on upgrading till AMD released their 4x4 platform though



I defrag everyday, really. I use Diskeeper 2007's Automatic Defragging (Invisi-tasking-thingy). I thought that might have been the cause, so I switched to Perfect Disk 8 for a bit to see if it helped things, but my overall system performance just ended up slower.


Eh, honestly I would if I had more problems with other games or applications. As of now, only those 2 give me crap and it's just annoying. But thanks for the suggestion, I'll probably do that in the future.



I was afraid it'd boil down to this. Maybe it's one of those uber coincidences where my exact hardware combination causes all sorts of anomalies with Vista and certain games

ChaosMinionX

Could also just be a Vista incompatability with FEAR....Vista isnt rocksolid with alot of games right now.

kris23

just get the ram dude, i run vista, my loads werent that bad with 2 gigs. the performance was ALOT better than 1. and i had an X1950PRO at the time.

ChaosMinionX

That could also be an issue if you dont have enough ram, because then your system is trying to run the game and the resource hog at the sametime

Dyre Straits

The extra RAM is still my first hunch to go with. I think the limited amount currently is causing the system to have to access the HD too much. But, that's just my hunch.

Tipstaff

One thing to consider in the case of Cellfactor, is that it requires the PhysX software to run. Even though the game might have been just released, the Vista version of the PhysX software that came with it, or one that you have installed, might not be running as it should. If anything I would try downloading the latest version off of Ageias site HERE (which, btw, were just updated as of Tuesday, May 8th). Once you install it, reboot, and try the game again.

As for FEAR, believe it or not that particular game is being reported by quite a lot of people has having issues when being run on Vista. For some reason, moreso on Nvidia cards than ATI, but both none the less.

I do remember one person mentioning that under Vista you can't run FEAR with the Textures on Max like you could on XP, and suggested turning it down. Don't know if that would help you out though.

BTW, what sound card are you running? And are you using the default drivers for the sound card that came with Vista, or are you using a newer set?

RenegadeXI

Thanks, but I do infact have the latest PhysX software. It took a while of snooping around google to get it to install (would always throw a Fatal Error right after licensing; quiet mode installation did the trick). I'm well aware that I need a PhysX card to play the game in a decent framerate, but even so, I should be getting low FPS instead of insane load times.

I'll try setting the textures to Medium. I'll post later today with the results (uninstalled it out of frustration, heh).

Sound Blaster Audigy 2... using the latest from Creative's website.