Doing circles around me....

[kheraic]

OK, i am having some major issues in PS. It seems that whenever I begin playing on a continent with more than 20 people in my near vicinity my framerate goes to about 2 fps and my character's movement also slows down b/c I can see enemies just running laps around me. Otherwise the game runs smooth. My system spex are as follows:
AthlonXP 2200+
512 mb ram
asus a7n8x dlx mobo
gforce4 ti4200 128 mb ram
80 gb WD hd w/ 8mb cache
cable modem connection
swap set at min 1 gb max 1.5 gb
win xp pro

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing the slowdown?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

[OmnipotentKiwi]

Sound like a load problem, since you only get it when you have a lot of people on screen. There are a three things you need to do:

1. Set your pagefile to 0. Min and max. Say yes to restarting your computer. When it comes back, set your pagefile to 768MB, min AND max. That's VERY important. Your pagefile ends up fragmenting otherwise and that is a very bad performance hit to something that isn't great to performance to start with.

2. It's distinctly possible you just have your settings and/or resolution too high. This game is as high end on the computer as you can get, and to top it off there are memory leaks. Don't have everything on high, turn it all down some.

3. Change your drivers to the 40.72 Dets if you haven't already. They are the supported drivers for Planetside.

[kheraic]

thanks man!
I'll give that a try and see how well it improves my situation.

[OmnipotentKiwi]

Thanks, report back if it doesn't all work out.

[kheraic]

Well I do think that your advice fixed the problems :) It runs a lot smoother now. Maybe now I can play without dying before I even see who or what killed me!
Thanks a bunch

[OmnipotentKiwi]

Glad to hear. Have fun. :)

[Hunter83]

Originally posted by OmnipotentKiwi
Sound like a load problem, since you only get it when you have a lot of people on screen. There are a three things you need to do:

1. Set your pagefile to 0. Min and max. Say yes to restarting your computer. When it comes back, set your pagefile to 768MB, min AND max. That's VERY important. Your pagefile ends up fragmenting otherwise and that is a very bad performance hit to something that isn't great to performance to start with.

Just a suggestion for next time, you can defrag your pagefile and other system files.
I use this: http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedefrag.shtml

I find it to be of great help :)

[OmnipotentKiwi]

Yeah, the Windows defrag tool is absolute crap :p

[Sentrosi]

Question: If you're using NTFS as your file system, should you still defrag your hard drive? I thought I read somewhere that it could damage your filing system.

If this is a stupid question to you remember, the pursuit of knowledge should not be ended by saying, "That's so stupid."