Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance - Terribly Low Framerate

[StormTroop]

Hi there.

Recently, along with several other people I know, I bought the Gold Edition of Supreme Commander, which contains both the original, and the stand-alone expansion, Forged Alliance. We started with the original, and I was pleasantly surprised with how well my notebook could play it - around 18-20 FPS with all Settings on High other than Anti-Aliasing, at 1440x900. Very nice. People then started to play Forged Alliance, so I installed it, patched it and started a game: awful. During a typical scenario (a base with some units) I get nothing more than 6-7 FPS on anything more than Low Settings. The particular setting that has the most impact is called "Fidelity." Most other settings (even the addition of 16x Anti-Aliasing) have very little effect on the framerate.

Now, although I've not played much of Forged Alliance, I got the impression that it was very similar to the original, only with more units and a new Heads Up Display - nothing to cause such a massive drop in performance. I've tried reinstalling, and with and without the patch, but there's no difference. These are my system specs:

C2Duo 2.2Ghz CPU
8600M GT 512mb
2Gig RAM
32bit Vista

Admittedly, my laptop is far from the best gaming machine out there, but it meets and surpasses both the Minimum and Recommended Requirements for both the original and Forged Alliance, and whilst I've got a "desireable" performance from the original, playing Forged Alliance is dreadful.

I really want to be able to play this game as, like I've said, many people I played Supreme Commander with have moved on to Forged Alliance, and are reluctant to revert back to the original :(

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[StormTroop]

*bump*

I might as well add that I've tried reinstalling, playing with and without the latest patch, and my disk has also been defragmented and "cleaned up" since the problem began.

[Twysta`]

Supreme Commander has been designed to last the next 5 years... and I'm sorry to say that even 20 fps is actually quite poor!
Turn all your settings down and the lower teh anti-aliasing, the better your framerate will be, not the other way round.

Even with the best computers this game can clog up a machine at the best of times.

[StormTroop]

20 frames per second, firstly, is not "quite poor" for most RTS games. Whilst for First Person Shooters it would be, most RTS's do not require such high framerates, and appear to play smoothly at around 20-30 FPS. For example, Command & Conquer 3 is actually capped at a maximum of 30 FPS. Secondly, my framerates relative to whatever you might deem poor or not would seem to be irrelevant, as I've already said that I'm quite happy playing the original Supreme Commander at my current framerate. The only problem arises with the drastically poorer performance of Forged Alliance.

Also, I'm quite aware that turning down/off settings will increase performance and not they other way around. During the part where I mentioned Anti-Aliasing, I was only highlighting the one setting, "Fidelity," than made the most difference when turned up from Low to Medium or High - I only included that detail in case it was of any consequence.

Finally, I know that, especially late game, Supreme Commander can be very demanding. However, given that I exceed the Recommended Requirements, and that the original Supreme Commander runs smoothly enough on High Settings, I don't expect to get 6-7 FPS from the moment I start a game with settings turned any higher than Low.

I am asking why two games that are *near enough* the same (I know there have been some small tweaks and changes, but nothing major - hence the indentical requirements for both games) run so differently, and why I am getting such poor performance from Forged Alliance when I get such a pleasant performance from the original.

EDIT: Just seen in another thread that I need to follow those 10 steps. I have done all of them, except the video card drivers, because seeing as I'm on a laptop (I dunno if this is the case with desktops, too?) I've learnt that the "latest" drivers don't necessarily = the "best" drivers. Also, seeing as these drivers work nicely with all of my other games, I'd rather not change them yet until I'm explicity asked to :D

[Twysta`]

Okay fair play my bad ^^

I have heard though that there was changes in Forged Alliance which meant that it was MORE graphically demanding that the original, I can't remember why exactly but it has in most cases resulted in a loss in fps and what not.

I find it a bit annoying tbh that I can't play the game to it's full potential because

a) I can't afford an uber pc worth like £2000
b) We have to wait for new technology to come out >.<

I know that Vista takes up a bit more RAM than previous versions of windows have as well but I don't think it would affect teh game that much.

I have also recently read that a lot of companies now are misleading customers with their minimum requirements section and that even with minimum requirements, although the game runs, it runs extremely poorly.

[StormTroop]

Yeah, I think there may have been one or two graphical tweaks added to Forged Alliance, but at the same time, I read somewhere that Forged Alliance is supposed to utitlise multiple cores better that the original Supreme Commander.... Anyhow, I can't imagine those "tweaks" which weren't enough to prompt any change in Offical Requirements, should be causing a 50-60% drop in performance.

I also realise that Offcial "Recommended Requirements" are often set quite low, and that, from a gamer's standpoint, those requirements should probably be set a little higher. However, I severely doubt that when Gas Powered Games were testing out their Recommended Requirements, they got as bad a result as I'm getting. Add this to the fact that I actually exceed the Recommended Requirements by a reasonable distance, and also that the original Supreme Commander plays so nicely, and I would have thought that there was something else that was wrong :/

Oh, and for the Vista thing, I've had all the Vista resource-hungry junk turned off since I got the laptop, to get the most from it :D

[Twysta`]

When they said utilise multiple cores better, I would've thought that'd be more aimed at quadcore than dual?
But I guess that's multi core none the less!

There's a few console commands you can try, I can't remember them but if you turn off stuff like the sky it can give you a few more fps!

You'll have to google for the commands though sorry :(

[StormTroop]

....bump....

Don't mean to sound impatient, or anything, but it's been nearly 6 days now, and I've not got an "official" reply, so to speak :(

[pharoah]

well here is your official reply lol.have you tried the custom drivers from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ if not id try them.also when they list minimum requirements thats normally based on desktop parts.just like your 8600gt its desktop counterpart is alot more powerfull than the mobile version.another thing have you tried a lower resolution?

[StormTroop]

I'm using drivers from laptopvideo2go at the moment, version 169.28. They're not the most up-to-date, but of the ones I've tried, they work best with all my other games.

And yeah, even though desktop cards will be more powerful than laptop ones, I still exceed the recommended requirements of the game (in terms of video RAM, min. is 128mb, Recommended is 256 - I have 512mb), and that wouldn't explain why I can play the original game so much better?

Lower resolutions do result in a higher framerates, but I'd rather keep it at 1440x900 if possible....

Basically, I'm working on the assumption that there is something wrong with the game or the way it's set up that is causing it to run slowly, and not that it's just a case of "My laptop can't handle it" because everything I've seen suggests that FA should be running just about as well as the original....if that makes sense?

[pharoah]

more units as you said that can cause a performance hit.being more ai on the field of battle.i see you have went through the 10 steps.when you reinstalled the game i know thats one of em.did you delete the games files,and folder.if you were to try another reinstall of the game.install it with as many running processes as possible disabled.especially disable any antivirus software that is running.be sure to turn it back on after the install is done.

[StormTroop]

Yeah, more units do slow the game down - in the original, later in a game the game does slow down, but gameplay is still smooth, just slower. And although more units do decrease the framerate in Forged Alliance, it runs slowly right from the start of a game (a single unit).

I tried reinstalling again, removing everything I could find, including cleaning the registry, and also having every miscellaneous process closed. Still just as bad :(

With Forged Alliance, even at 1024x768 (the lowest resolution available - I play the original at 1440x900 for reference) and on low settings (I'd normally play on High without Anti Aliasing) the game still runs poorly, and I can't think that Forged Alliance is just that much more demanding than Supreme Commander...

[koala]

What's your CPU usage when the game starts to lag?

Have you tried monitoring CPU and GPU temperatures during gameplay?

I've just looked at some other forum posts that complain about low fps in this game on both laptops and desktops. Some have very high specs, well beyond the recommended requirements, and they also get lag, especially when large armies are onscreen. XP performs much better than Vista for this game.

Example from http://www.overclock.net/pc-games/30...-alliance.html :

this game is a very CPU intensive game (as you have learned). i really think that the performance hit is due to bad optimization of the CPU or a memory leak.

it Definitely isn't a GPU problem.

i have a nvidia Ge force 9800GTX.

AMD Athlon X2 5200+ (2.7GHz ea core)

1.7GB ram.

by the way, forged alliance never uses over 900MB of my ram any time!

[StormTroop]

Well, the game lags from the start at around 12 FPS, and then progressively gets lower to 6 FPS or less as the game develops.

I wasn't really sure how to montitor CPU usage, but I used Task Manager. There were two boxes (for the two cores? I dunno.) the first graph's CPU usage pretty much reached 100% whilst I was playing, whilst the other graph, to the right of it, stayed pretty low, but spiked occasionally to 70-80% for a split second.

Memory usage stayed firmly at 1.40Gb.

I tried running the game in the XP SP2 Compatibility mode, but it didn't help.

How would I monitor temperatures? However, like I said, it lags from as soon as I start, so I'd not have thought enough heat to cause a problem could build up so quickly?

[koala]

Open SpeedFan, then run the game. When it starts to lag, Alt-Tab back to the desktop and take a screenshot of SpeedFan's Readings tab. It will show the temperatures and PSU voltages. Post back with this screenshot.

Run Fresh Diagnose with all other programs closed and antivirus disabled. It will analyze your dual-core CPU's performance.


From http://www.driverheaven.net/gamingre...ance/index.php

The System Requirements

Supreme Commander has always been known to be incredibly harsh, even to higher end PCs, but the situation has been somewhat improved through patches released shortly after the vanilla version's release. Forged Alliance's system requirements are somewhat similar to that of the patched Supreme Commander (although the performance seemed to be better with SC), with a few issues resolved. The game is partially scalable in terms of graphics, although a lot of the settings don't actually improve the visuals/performance all that much. The biggest difference comes from setting the fidelity option to medium compared to low, with the high setting being a barely notable difference. Whilst adding a lot of extra details such as higher texture settings are neat for taking screenshots, it hardly affects the game experience, since most of the time the player will be zoomed out far enough for the difference between for example medium and high texture detail to be basically non-existent.

Unfortunately, the game is incredibly CPU demanding, and as soon as a lot of units are roaming around, the game speed reduces beyond playable levels. I'd strongly advise anyone to not try and play Forged Alliance on single core CPUs: even if you think you can cope with the jerkiness of the later single-player missions, it simply won't be enough for multiplayer. The game speed depends on the slowest CPU performance out of all players involved, and someone playing with a single-core CPU brings the game to a halt quickly, and the result will be that every player will quit sooner or later once it becomes unbearable. Even a slow dual core processor fixes the jerky gameplay and constant pauses associated with single core CPUs; beyond that, the CPU speed only defines how much the game will slow down. Another important thing to have for Forged Alliance is at least 2GB of RAM for larger multiplayer matches, although 1GB can be enough for smaller 2vs2 games.

[StormTroop]

Hey there.

Here's the screenshot from Speedfan. As soon as I alt-tabbed out, the readings dropped, so I got the screenshot as quickly as I could....



I also have Fresh Diagnose downloaded, but have no idea what to do with it - there are loads of different options and stuff.

Also, I was a little confused by the example you posted. You highlighted the bit about slower processors causing lag (which, by "gaming standards" mine probably is) but then that's immediately followed by it saying that even the slowest dual-core should be much better....

I dunno, was a little confused as to whether you wanted me to draw anything from the example? :D

[koala]

The example was to show that slowdown in this game is most likely caused by the CPU rather than the graphics card or lack of RAM. The second highlighted sentence was in case you played online, to show that the problem can be caused by other players having slow CPUs.

SpeedFan is showing that your CPU is too hot. Replace the thermal paste with some Arctic Silver and make sure the heatsink is firmly attached. Instructions for Dual Core Intel CPU here.

It's also showing the Local Temp is too high. Make sure you have a front case fan pulling cool air in and a rear case fan blowing warm air out, and that there are no cables blocking the airflow from front to rear.

You need to register FreshDiagnose to run some of the advanced features, then go to Benchmarks > Processor Benchmark and click the Start button in the top right of the window. I can't close down any of my programs to test it at the moment, but it looks simple enough.

From the Fresh Diagnose Help file:

CPU Processor Benchmark
This benchmark performs continuous and complex calculations based on well-known Whetstone and Dhrystone algorithms. The benchmark produces speed ratings in terms of Millions of Whetstone Instructions Per Second (MWIPS) and Millions of Dhrystone Instructions Per Second (MDIPS). It also produces an actual speed rating in Megahertz. Bigger is better.

CPU Multimedia Benchmark
This benchmark performs a set of Intel SSE, SSE2, x87 and AMD 3DNow! instructions including binary and logical operations to produce a rating of 100. Bigger is better.

[StormTroop]

Originally Posted by koala

SpeedFan is showing that your CPU is too hot. Replace the thermal paste with some Arctic Silver and make sure the heatsink is firmly attached. Instructions for Dual Core Intel CPU here.

It's also showing the Local Temp is too high. Make sure you have a front case fan pulling cool air in and a rear case fan blowing warm air out, and that there are no cables blocking the airflow from front to rear.

That sounds like you're talking about a desktop, when I'm on a laptop. I'd have thought your judgement about it being too hot was also based on me using a desktop? Whilst on sites like laptopvideo2go.com I've looked at threads on laptop temperatures, and many people have 80-90 degree temperatures, and people on there wouldn't usually 'til you hit over 90 degrees.

Haha, I'm also saying this because I'm quite sure I'd be too afraid to open up and tinker with the innards of my laptop, so I'm hoping those temperatures will be okay for a laptop! xD

I'll register the Fresh Diagnose thing and run the benchmark, is there anything you want me to post back with from it?

[pharoah]

you could possibly improve the cooling with one of these cool mats

[StormTroop]

Originally Posted by pharoah

you could possibly improve the cooling with one of these cool mats

Yeah, one of those mats would probably be a good idea, but I, personally, don't think that overheating is causing the lag - I checked my temperatures under load once before using Call of Duty 4 and Command and Conquer 3 (I was seeing whether overclocking might be viable) I found that my core temperature was around 80 and, whilst most of the laptop overclocking threads indicated that 80 was okay, I decided not to push it.

Anyway, I get these temperatures in every other game I play, with no adverse effects.



Also, I'm still having trouble with Fresh Diagnose. I tried to register it, but after putting in my details, I got this:

Oops. There is an error processing your request. Make sure you have entered a valid name and e-mail address.

Avoid using free email accounts.

I only have a free email account, so now what? 0.o