McKey35

Join Date 02/2009

Unexplainable lags

Hey guys,

I have a problem with sins. Everytime I play, the game gets pretty laggy after let´s say 3-5 minutes. I can get rid of those lags by sending the game to the tray and taking it back but the problem comes back every time after a certain period of time.

I play on 1280x800 with no anti-aliasing. I tried lowering the resolution to 1240x768 but the problem doesn´t go away.

My specs :

AMD Sempron 3600+ 2Ghz

3 GB RAM

GeForce 7000M

I´m well aware that it´s not really a gaming pc, but I can play lag free from the beginning and after sending it to the tray each time so I think my pc should be able to handle the game.

Does anyone have an idea about what to do?

Thanks folks

technical

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oh come on people, every post gets like 5 responses daily....

any ideas?

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I too am having issues with lag with Entrenchment.. Seems to happen to me after about an hour or so on a large map. It is really, really annoying..

Never happened prior to the Entrenchment update.

I also get minor lag on medium size maps after about an hour.

System:

Windows XP SP3

CPU: AMD X2 6000

RAM: 2gig DDR2 - 800

Hard Drive: 2 Wester digital Raptors 10,000k drives set-up in a RAID 0 config

Video: 2 ATI 512MB X1950's in a crossfire setup - lag occurs regardless of Crossfire being turned on or off.

Video Driver: Catalyst 9.2

I run the game in 1920x1080 resolution. The lag occurs regardless of which graphic settings are on, high/low..On or Off

System is clean, free of HD errors, defragged and XP is trimmed down/optimised for gaming.

There has to be a solution for this issue!

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Blair Fraser

Join Date 10/2006

+292

As a test, drop all your texture details to low. Turn off all sound. Turn off Multisampling. Turn off bloom. Verify you have no background processes running that would eat up a lot of CPU (defrag, search indexing, antivirus, mail checking, etc)

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I'm well versed with XP, how the registry works, the real in's & out's of the windows O/S. I used to program on the Commodore 64 in assembler & basic. I Build, repair, network, trouble-shoot PC's since around when the 286 was the king, So I've been doing this a while I think my feedback would be solid on the issue.

The release of the Entrenchment beta 3 is when the sutturering and lag started becoming an issue; however, Entrenchment 1.0 showed improvement with the issue.

I turn off ALL unnecessary XP services, Anti-Virus kernel, Firewall, etc. So I'm running a very lean ship when I play the game. Indexing is off, COM, Terminal services, web client. I run only the vital services.

I've just updated to the newest patch that was released today. (2/26)

I did fail to mention earlier that I am running the games sound with my PC's Realtek ALC883 built-in sound. (Yeah, I know.)

I'm going to play for a few hours right now and and test your suggestiosn, and will report back.

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Well, I already tried to play with all the details on minimum but it doesn´t change anything. About the programs, I always turn everything off when I play so I don´t think that that is the problem.

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You have updated drivers and such?

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of course i have

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Ok,

I can confirm that lowering all graphics settings, turning off bloom, and sound does not work or help improve performance..

I played two large maps with my self & 7 AI players on unfair random to put your suggestions to the test Blair. Both for a few hours.

The threshold point when the lag sets in, starts around when every player has about 5 planets.. It's all down hill from there.

If I pause the game. i can navigate without issue.

unpause, it's lag city..

it's safe to say it slows down to aprox 15-20 FPS. Zooming in & out becomes a real issue.

For further info on my system: DirectX 9 is updated to the newest version - as well as all other drivers.

I have no other issues with other apps or games.

I hope you guys can develop a solution to this issue, it never happened prior to updating to Entrenchment.

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anyone else having this problem?

I really can´t play the game normally and I feel like if I trew 20 bucks away...

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[Bump]

C'mon this issue needs to be addressed

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Well... SInce it only occurs when unpaused, I wouldn't be suprised if it was a problem with your CPU. AI, especially on higher difficulty settings, can be quite the CPU hog. I assume you have Impulse, since you have entrenchment, so I would suggest first trying to reinstall the game. If the problem persists, try running some benchmarking tests to make sure your computer is working properly (specifically make sure the CPU is working as well as it should be).

Also, [grammar nazi] this is a computer program, and so there are unexplained lags, not unexplainable lags. Computers are logical and predictable if you know exactly how they work. [/grammar nazi]

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Oh, good. At least I am not the only one to notice this. This game can't be this much of a hog. It has to be a optmization issue. Scrolling in and out to the planets is so annoying because it is so sluggish. I know, everyone always wants to point at the computer right away but in some cases it is the game...like here I believe.

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It's not a CPU issue.

The AMD X2 6000 runs @ 3.0ghz per core and has 2MB L2 cache. I realize sins doesn't take advantage of having multiple cores at it's disposal, but the 3.0 GHZ & 2MB l2 cache should handle this app with no problems. Prior to the Entrenchment update it ate this game for breakfast. The AMD X2 6000 is not a bottlenecker, and never has been. I will agree that it's not the, "Newest." technology available, but it certainly can hold it's own, and works very efficiently and effectively for gaming. I play Crysis, Crysis Warhead (Gamer level graphic settings, NO AA, NWN2 - Maxed, World in Conflict - Maxed (of course no DX10), Oblivion/Fallout 3 - Maxed) Plus many more, all run great @ 1920x1080 resolution as well. So I can say with confidence, the system is not the variable in question here.

Besides that, SoASE tech specs are:

Recommended Requirements:

2.2 GHz Dual- or Quad-Core Processor
1 GB RAM (2 GB for Windows Vista)
256 MB DirectX 9 3D Video Card (Radeon X1600 / GeForce 7600 and above)

So CPU needed 2.2ghz - available GHZ = 3.0

RAM needed: 1 GB - 2 GB are available

Video needed: 256 MB - 512 MB are available + plus I have 2 ATI X1950 pro's that I run in a crossfire setup. But from testing, I've ruled them out as the culprits also; simply, because I've tested by turning crossfire off & even taking one of the cards out of the mobo.

I have also reinstalled the game, etc. Tried playing on easier AI setings, etc. No improvement, so it's definitely a problem with Sin's coding.

All in all, I love the game, don't get me wrong. I would easliy say it's one of the best RTS Strategy games of all time. And Ironclad deserve some hefty kudos for their effort and continued support for the app. Right now I don't think it's running at it's full potential.

Others have mentioned having this issue as well, so hopefully it will be addressed in the next patch. =]

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I have had this issues since the game came out. It is like a million patches ahead my friend. They don't seem to care and/or want to fix the issue. Maybe they believe we are lying since some report no issues. I have a 6000+ AMD 64 as well with 2 gig of ocz 1066mhz high performance ram and 800(something) mem on the GTX 260. All on a performance mobo. It is not the PC at fault in my case. I run Crysis WH when I clock up my CPU at 50+ fps on FULL enthusiast settings and 4x AA turned on at 1680x1050.

They won't fix it specially since they know it won't stop us from playing this aweome game anyways

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actually, my game runs better now under entrenchment than it ever did during the betas. granted, im playing a 2v2 with 3 AI's, and 2 of them are gone(i'm on keep playing) but i have a max supply fleet well diversified advent with full squadrons (80) and ship detail (but not bump or extras) on highest and exhaust detail on max. everything else on minimum. 1280x800. runs great while not fighting. haven't found a large fight yet, so i can't comment on that, but i imagine it would be quite tolerable-and the ships would kill each other off fast enough anyway..

AMD Turion x2 64 2.0 GHz

4 GB Ram

ATI Radeon Mobility 3450 HD 512MB

Windows 7 x64

Sins 1.15/Entrenchment 1.01

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I get this issue too since Entrenchment, I play pretty much with recomended requirements, except I have a heap of RAM

AMD Athlon64X2 4200+(2.2GHZ)

GeForce8600GT(256MB) [Texture Quality settings: Planet: Highest, Ship: Highest,High,Medium, Structure: Same as ship]

Doesn't seem to be a graphical thing though, turning to lowest and turning to highest maybe yields some performance increases in huge battles but other than that.

4GB of RAM (3.66GB on 32bitOS Windows XP SP:3)

It's peculiar cause even after killing off all but say 1 planet of 9 AI's, the game is still incredibly laggy, which in theory doesn't make any sense. I only have basic programming understanding, so I'm not even gonna bother to theorize.

One thing I'd suggest is making more use of at least a second CPU core for "nonessential" tasks. The second core handles some of the texture loading when zooming in an out I think, but it should also handle stuff like Civilian (Refinery and Trade) Ship movements. Dual Core CPU's are more common than Single cores in gaming PC's and it's a shame to not use them to free the load a little. As someone stated, this issue is quite urgent and requires attention, because at one point in time it didn't exist (Original Sins).

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Quoting djjimmyswift,

reply 8

Ok,

I can confirm that lowering all graphics settings, turning off bloom, and sound does not work or help improve performance..

I played two large maps with my self & 7 AI players on unfair random to put your suggestions to the test Blair. Both for a few hours.

The threshold point when the lag sets in, starts around when every player has about 5 planets.. It's all down hill from there.

If I pause the game. i can navigate without issue.

unpause, it's lag city..

it's safe to say it slows down to aprox 15-20 FPS. Zooming in & out becomes a real issue.

For further info on my system: DirectX 9 is updated to the newest version - as well as all other drivers.

I have no other issues with other apps or games.

I hope you guys can develop a solution to this issue, it never happened prior to updating to Entrenchment.

That's a very accurate description of what I had been experiencing in my games with large maps and lots of AIs. Didn't test it yet with Entrenchement though, but you make it sound like not much has changed.

It has nothing to do with graphics and sounds, you can reduce everything to minimum and have it look like pixelized peasoup, it's still gonna be a slideshow.

And no it's not background services, hard drive fragmentation or Satan.

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Quoting DrAsik,

reply 17

Quoting djjimmyswift, reply 8Ok,

I can confirm that lowering all graphics settings, turning off bloom, and sound does not work or help improve performance..

I played two large maps with my self & 7 AI players on unfair random to put your suggestions to the test Blair. Both for a few hours.

The threshold point when the lag sets in, starts around when every player has about 5 planets.. It's all down hill from there.

If I pause the game. i can navigate without issue.

unpause, it's lag city..

it's safe to say it slows down to aprox 15-20 FPS. Zooming in & out becomes a real issue.

For further info on my system: DirectX 9 is updated to the newest version - as well as all other drivers.

I have no other issues with other apps or games.

I hope you guys can develop a solution to this issue, it never happened prior to updating to Entrenchment.That's a very accurate description of what I had been experiencing in my games with large maps and lots of AIs. Didn't test it yet with Entrenchement though, but you make it sound like not much has changed.
It has nothing to do with graphics and sounds, you can reduce everything to minimum and have it look like pixelized peasoup, it's still gonna be a slideshow.

And no it's not background services, hard drive fragmentation or Satan.

What is it then?

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Quoting McKey35,

reply 18

What is it then?

It's Sins of a Solar Empire being greedy with CPU time, that's the only way I can explain it. Either it has problems maintaining a large, fluctuating number of ships in memory, or updating AI logic for numerous player once the game has attained a certain degree of complexity... I don't know. But it's out of the control of the player.

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Quoting DrAsik,

reply 19

Quoting McKey35, reply 18What is it then?It's Sins of a Solar Empire being greedy with CPU time, that's the only way I can explain it. Either it has problems maintaining a large, fluctuating number of ships in memory, or updating AI logic for numerous player once the game has attained a certain degree of complexity... I don't know. But it's out of the control of the player.

Do u think that they will ever make a patch to do something with this?

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I have major lag also after getting a few planets into the game and even with all the effects off and settings as low as they go it just slows to a crawl.

My system is about 3 years old give or take a bit but at the time it was a good one. God i hope i dont have to get a new tower again.

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Quoting Matthew the Mage,

reply 21

I have major lag also after getting a few planets into the game and even with all the effects off and settings as low as they go it just slows to a crawl.

My system is about 3 years old give or take a bit but at the time it was a good one. God i hope i dont have to get a new tower again.

You should be ok. It is something either with the game or with the Operating System. Maybe Vista does something to the game at some point. Maybe video card drivers fail that high in the game but it seems like what the guy above said. Something with the CPU maybe.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Hey guys,

I have a problem with sins. Everytime I play, the game gets pretty laggy after let´s say 3-5 minutes. I can get rid of those lags by sending the game to the tray and taking it back but the problem comes back every time after a certain period of time.

same problem here too.

specifications are:

HP Pavilion dv6700
AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60 2.00 GHz
2.0 GB RAM
Nvidea GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M

What I do notice, is that we all have problems with AMD processors. If I'm wrong, correct me please, cos I'am not familiar with that.

If it's a problem in the code of sins, I would like to have it corrected, cos it's very frustrated.

I can't play a single game whitout being kicked out of the game, back to my desktop background.

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@bhereg : if you're kicked back to the desktop, that's a game crash, it's another issue completely, and a much more serious one. If the game always crash there might be a problem with your computer, because it's quite stable for me and most players.

Also, my CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo, so I think the lag issue has nothing to do with what company designed the CPU. My computer is up-to-date and it can run any game at the performance I would expect from it. Not Sins. Well, as I said I need to test that with Entrenchment, but it happened 2 weeks ago, so unless they've made a world of change to the performance I'm not too optimistic.

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Obviously this a reoccuring theme with this game with Entrenchment installed...

<p>
<a href="HREF="https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/341791">
Same problem, different thread.</a>
</p>

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