Newbie - (Hardware) Cheat? - Fix Needed

[Sarak De Mir]

Lo All.

In game for 10 days now. Didnt like the lags etc I was getting - so I upped my computer specs.

Now getting a stream of tells from respectable ppls' along lines of 'you're cheating' and 'install the patch' ' stop using the turbocharger in the ant' (admittedly I liked that one).

System Spec. : Old
Win Xp
4GB Ram
Amd 4400 x2 Dual Pro.
Risk Harddrives.
Only game installed.
10mbCable
Lag : 0-500ms
Loss 0-1.5%


System Spec. New
Xp64 op system.
16 gb Ram
Twin Dual Pro
Risk Harddrives.
Only game installed.
10mbCable
Lag : 0-500ms
Loss 0-1.5%



What do I do to remedy matter - I did search on forum - but must of missed the issue.

[Fragmatic]

Why do you have such a rediculous amount of RAM? :huh:

[Sarak De Mir]

The slots where there - and its tax deductable.
And at wholesale prices am only really paying around 15-20% of true price.

So why not see what a maxed system would do.

[Rbstr]

Back when i played PS, I used to run/move faster than everyone for some reason.

Have no clue why.

[Electrofreak]

To the original poster, it has to do with the fact that you have two CPUs. PS, last I checked, does not support 2 CPUs. I believe that 2 CPUs in a computer have to adjust speed to keep data streaming in sync, and this is what is causing the issue (the game is essentially out of sync with everyone else because the processor is speed-throttling). To be honest, I'm not sure why you didn't have this problem from the start. Maybe the reason it's doing it now is because you're using 64-bit Windows XP.

Speed-stepping, commonly used in laptops to preserve power, also can cause the problem. Maybe they've added a patch in the meantime for it, but I dunno. Go to the PlanetSide.com tech help forums and ask TSR-Joel. He'll know the latest on that issue. I may be wrong, but I think he said they had a temporary work around of sorts, though I could just be thinking of another issue.

As for your RAM... are you sure about that number? Last I checked Windows XP could only manage 4 gb of RAM. Unless it's some super secret of Win XP 64 that I don't know about. In addition, I don't know of any 4 GB RAM modules or any motherboard with more than 4 DIMMs. Regardless, using more than 2 GB of RAM is pointless in this day and age unless you're doing video editing or extremely high resolution photo editing. Higher Latency on larger RAM modules will also have an adverse effect on your game performance. In PlanetSide, you will see almost no graphics improvement over 1.5 GB or RAM, and with larger amounts of RAM you may actually see a performance loss.

[Mag-Mower]

Yea, I dont think WinXP Supports 16GB of ram, and how did you fit 16GB onto a single board? That has to be like 4 4GB modules...

[Rbstr]

He's got server box like specs. I've never messed with them, but I know you can have crazy amounts of memory in some of them. The've got riser PCI-X cards that hold more memory and what not.

[Electrofreak]

Yeah but those run Windows Server or a Linux OS, specifically designed to handle large drives and memory.

[Rbstr]

He's got XP 64bit.

64bit doesn't realy have a point, unless you want to address more memory.

[Electrofreak]

...or take advantage of a 64-bit processor's 64 bit processing ability. My main point earlier is that having more than 4 GB of RAM has little or no impact on the performance of a game like PlanetSide, which doesn't load over a gig or so of textures into RAM at any time. The game pre-loads textures for each continent. The only way it might use anywhere near 4 GB of memory is if you could force it to preload all the continents at once. (Even then I doubt it has that many textures.) In addition, using large memory modules like 1 GB modules have slower latencies than running some 512s in Dual Channel. However, Windows XP 64 should provide some benefit.

64-bit CPUs handle things like physics computing and complex calculations significantly more efficiently than 32-bit processors. When running in 32-bit compatibility mode, a 64-bit processor still needs to break down its data stream into 32-bit pulses of data. Using Windows XP 64, it doesn't need to do that, which improves performance when handling complex data (like long integers). Of course, the software needs to be 64-bit compatible as well, which is the major limitation currently (at least when we talk about gaming).

[Rbstr]

I was talking about windows 64bit, which doesn't do anything special but address more memory(in it's various forms).

You said you didn't knwo how he had so much memory, I said it's a server box.
You said he needed a server OS to refference that memory. I said its XP 64bit(that handles up to 128gb of mem).

Windows

x64 editions of Windows client and server, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 SP1 x64 Edition, were released in March 2005. Internally they are actually the same build (5.2.3790.1830 SP1), as they share the same source base and operating system binaries, so even system updates are released in unified packages, much in the manner of Windows 2000 Professional and Server editions for x86. Windows for x64 has the following characteristics:

* 8 tebibytes (243 bytes) of user mode virtual address space per process. A 64-bit program can use all of this, subject of course to backing store limits on the system. This is a 4096-fold increase over the default 2 gibibyte user-mode virtual address space offered by 32-bit Windows.

* 8 tebibytes (243 bytes) of kernel mode virtual address space for the operating system. Again, this is a 4096-fold increase over 32-bit Windows versions. The increased space is primarily of benefit to the file system cache and kernel mode "heaps" (nonpaged pool and paged pool).

* Support for up to 128 GiB (Windows XP) or 1 TiB (Windows Server 2003) of RAM.

* LLP64 data model: "int" and "long" types are still 32 bits wide, while pointers and types derived from pointers are 64 bits wide.

* Device drivers and system services must be 64-bit versions; there is no support for running 32-bit kernel-mode executables within the 64-bit OS.

* Support for running existing 32-bit applications (.exe's) and dynamic link libraries (.dll's). A 32-bit program, if linked with the "large address aware" option, can use up to 4 gigabytes of virtual address space, as compared to the default 2 gigabytes (optional 3 gigabytes with /3GB boot.ini option and "large address aware" link option) offered by 32-bit Windows.
* 16-bit DOS and Windows (Win16) applications will not run on x64 versions of Windows due to removal of NTVDM.

* Full implementation of the NX (No Execute) page protection feature. This is also implemented on recent 32-bit versions of Windows when they are started in PAE mode.

* As in x86 versions of the Windows NT family, the FS and GS segment descriptors are used to point to two operating-system defined structures: the Thread Information Block and Processor Control Region, respectively. Thus, for example, [FS]:0 is the address of the first member of the TIB. Maintaining this convention made the x64 port easier, but required AMD to retain the function of the FS and GS segments in long mode***8212; even though segmented addressing per se is not really used by any modern operating system.

* Early reports claimed that the operating system scheduler would not save and restore the x87 FPU machine state across thread context switches. Observed behavior shows that this is not the case: the x87 state is saved and restored, except for kernel-mode-only threads. Nevertheless, the most recent documentation available from Microsoft states that the x87/MMX/3DNow! instructions may not be used in long mode.



64 bit cpus (in the AMD64 bit incarnation) only offer ways to do things more efficiently, it doesn't just do them. The program has to be built(or re-compiled) taking those new things into acount.(in reference to windows 64 bit advantages, it really has no point, yet).

Otherwise your basicaly right.

However. AMD64 does not emulate a 32bit environment. In Legacy mode, the CPU for all intents and purposes is just a plain old x86-32. In Long mode, it has a sub mode that handles 32bit w/o emulation.

There are two primary modes of operation for this architecture:

Long Mode
The intended primary mode of operation of the architecture; it is a combination of the processor's native 64-bit mode and a 32-bit/16-bit compatibility mode. It is used by 64-bit operating systems. Under a 64-bit operating system, 64-bit, 32-bit and 16-bit (or 80286) protected mode applications may be supported.

Since the basic instruction set is the same, there is no major performance penalty for executing x86 code. This is unlike Intel's IA-64, where differences in the underlying ISA means that running 32-bit code is like using an entirely different processor. However, on AMD64, 32 bit x86 applications may still benefit from a 64-bit recompile, due to the additional registers in 64-bit code, which a high-level compiler can use for optimization.

Legacy Mode
The mode used by 16-bit (protected mode or real mode) and 32-bit operating systems. In this mode, the processor acts just like an x86 processor, and only 16-bit or 32-bit code can be executed. 64-bit programs will not run.

this is the link for teh quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

[OneManArmy]

I think once you take your penis out of the firewire port everything should sync up.

please let us know if this clears up the problem with your gameplay.

sincerely,
fuck-u tech support.

[Electrofreak]

I was talking about windows 64bit, which doesn't do anything special but address more memory(in it's various forms).

You said you didn't knwo how he had so much memory, I said it's a server box.
You said he needed a server OS to refference that memory. I said its XP 64bit(that handles up to 128gb of mem).



64 bit cpus (in the AMD64 bit incarnation) only offer ways to do things more efficiently, it doesn't just do them. The program has to be built(or re-compiled) taking those new things into acount.(in reference to windows 64 bit advantages, it really has no point, yet).

Otherwise your basicaly right.

However. AMD64 does not emulate a 32bit environment. In Legacy mode, the CPU for all intents and purposes is just a plain old x86-32. In Long mode, it has a sub mode that handles 32bit w/o emulation.



this is the link for teh quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

I'll admit I didn't know XP 64 had all that extra memory support until I went and checked it out the other day. I downloaded a beta for it a while back when it hardly had any features aside from 64-bit compatibility. There was virtually no driver support so I ditched it and forgot about it for the most part.

I don't remember mentioning that it emulates anything however. I'm pretty well versed in how the CPU functions. Obviously a 64 bit CPU cannot provide 64 bit output when the software is providing it with 32 bit input. This is why I'm waiting until we get some real 64-bit compatible software before I go crazy with Windows XP 64. Since Windows Vista will be packaged with a copy of Vista x64, I might as well wait until I upgrade my machine for Vista to worry about any of that. Once Vista is released and a 64-bit OS becomes more commonplace on the computers of the general gaming public, I forsee a lot more 64-bit compatible software being developed.

[Rbstr]

You said that "a 64-bit processor still needs to break down its data stream into 32-bit pulses of data."

To me that sounds like the cpu is converting it or initialy useing 64bits to compute things, then it has to break it down, the athlon doesn't do that, it works 32bit just like a regular 32bit cpu.

Missunderstood you then.

[Electrofreak]

As far as I'm aware, the processor can handle 64-bit pieces of data internally for processing purposes, despite the fact that 32-bit data is outputted. This is why the AMD 64 processors will outperform Intel 32-bit processors in hard calculation tests even on a 32-bit platform. While the output has to remain 32-bit, and the input is 32-bit, the bus within the chip is still 64-bit, allowing it to move large integers that would normally have to be broken down into 32-bit increments all at once. I read this somewhere, if you've got material proving it wrong, please post it.

It's been a good year or so since I read on this, but I did quite a bit of research back in the day when I was building my current AMD 64 system.

EDIT- Oh, btw, heres the fix regarding the original post... if the poster is still paying attention to this thread.

http://psforums.station.sony.com/ps/board/message?board.id=pstechsupport&message.id=68000

[Sarak De Mir]

Still paying attention

Have emailed techies @ Sony in hope of help. Have tried bat files to launch game (thanks to Neverwinter nights forum) but still seem to get nowhere.

Have restricted in game play to enigineer and medic duties after an embarrassing Ant run when I managed to outrun two attacking enemy mossies and a harrasser. I can see me on galaxy duties before this ends.