Post if you have a Sound Blaster of any type

Make of this what you will...

Top is before removing my Sound Blaster Audigy SE, bottom is after removing it and re-enabling my onboard sound:



I don't like to make judgments off a single attempt, so I'll be re-trying in a few minutes. Initially though it looks like my CPU usage is more balanced for some reason. The only different factor in my system is the presence of the Audigy. Both times I rebooted my computer, started the game, loaded my save, fought the battle for a while at roughly the same zoom level, then exited.

It sounds REALLY stupid to blame this on the sound card, I know, I wasn't born yesterday. But I didn't change anything else. Any ideas? I'm going to re-try the test a few times.

~~~~~

Edit: Tried the test a second time, fought the battle to its conclusion this time.



~~~~~

Edit 2: Tried the test a third time, this time forced "threaded optimization" to ON in the Nvidia control panel... interesting...

simple, on board sound doesn't have its own sound processor, everything is running on your CPU, but thanks to having a dual core processor the audio codec is running completely off your second core. Thats why it looks more balanced.

Also since its an audigy its actually offloading some work to the processor. Since those came out before dual core processors became real popular, they don't have any kind of dual core support built in, and its automatically unloading the little bit of extra work to the first core.

My recommendation would be to upgrade to an X-FI, problem solved. Those things don't offload anything at all. Performance increase between audigy and X-FI is about the only thing you'll notice(x-fi will do about 500% of the work that an audigy will, and will cover any sound processing you might have to throw at it on its own, w/o offloading). Actual sound quality difference between them is negligible. X-FI is slightly better, but you've gotta be an audiophile to even notice it.

EDIT: The threaded optimization will work better if you force the sins process to run off the second core... should be balanced out, since that nvidia thing is crap if you don't have a sound card and force the audio codec back onto CPU1

EDIT: forgot to mention that the X-FIs don't unload anything within reason... if you've got several thousand ships firing at the same time... don't expect it to process all of that on its own(though it might, not entirely certain where the upper threshhold is for it, haven't managed to encounter it yet)

How does Vista handle the Xi-Fi? Not that I ever intend to "upgrade" to that shoddy OS...

To update my above post, turning threaded optimization to forced OFF made the load balanced again, so I don't think it helps in this game.

In any case please still post if you have a Creative card, let us know what type you have and if you have performance problems.

ummm, vista handles the X-FI about as well as it handles anything... which means... depending on what other hardware you have installed... good luck.

Fortunately vista is going the way of ME. MS has windows 7 in the works now. They're FINALLY taking a page out of the Linux book and scaling the kernel down. This should make it much more stable, more secure and have less issues with hardware. Most of which should be fixable by a HW vendor driver patch rather than MS having to fix their own f***up(thanks be to joe pesci)


Also I've got the Creative X-FI platinum editon. Works wonders for performance on sound-intensive games.

X-Fi Gamer here and I get well over 100 fps easy with everything cranked up to max. Drop to 70 or so in major battles.

Intel Dual Core 3ghz
2 gigs RAM
ATI HD3750 512 meg
XP Home

Holy ****

I definitely have a problem if you get 70 fps in a typical battle. If I post a savegame can you try it out and see what sort of FPS you get when watching the battle? 70 fps... by my computer's behaviour that's nuts for a 3750 no offense intended. You have ALL effects turned up all the way?

Out of curiosity, What is it that makes you think vista is this shoddy OS you speak of. Is that statement based on personal experience with vista or are you just repeating things you`ve read on the net? I run a creative X-fi on vista home premium, It performs beautifully.



WTF does this mean? I`ve never had a problem installing any type of hardware or software on vista.



WTF...Do you honestly think microsoft is going to abandon vista at any point in the next 5 years?



I`ve been using vista everyday for four months. It hasn`t crashed a SINGLE time during those four months. It`s the most stable version of windows I`ve used to date. If you`re so against windows 6 at this point, How could you possibly be looking forward to windows 7 aka XP the sequel?

I apologize for comming off like such a prick, I`m so sick of reading these "Vista Sucks" posts. They stopped being witty and clever quite some time ago.

My contempt for Vista comes from personal experience. This experience alone would make me stick with XP until the next major OS comes out, but being helpless to stumble upon thousands of people who hate the OS just as much if not more than I do, cements this feeling in me: Vista is the new Windows ME.

There were a few people like you who loved ME as well, and there's probably still a handful of them around... I could list off dozens of things in Vista that were done wrong but I have to assume you've already ignored a hundred others like me, since absolutely anyone in their right mind would ridicule you for your choice of OS.

The reason we're looking forward to the next version of Windows despite Microsoft's butchering of "Windows 6" is that, for all their mistakes, we still recognize that Windows is the platform we're used to and we'd like to continue using it for the foreseeable future - just, we'd like a version that's not a trainwreck and an unmitigated disaster for all parties involved.

I too have been using an OS for months without a crash, and it's called Windows XP. You can achieve this by not installing things that are blatantly illegitimate or by generally exercising good sense. I also have a complete library of stable, high-performance drivers at my disposal, I can plug in any device from the last decade and it can be made to work with minimal hassle, I can watch movies any way I want, and I'm not harassed by absurd DRM that only slows down legitimate customers. I can play any game or use any software developed for what's remained the standard for the last 7 years, and emulate virtually any other environment required for software developed in the last 10 years or more. It's not even a matter of familiarity - as Mac users are so proud to say, "It just works", only not by virtue of there being almost no software available, but because it's the best consumer OS to date. If I have problems, I can fix them, because XP has such a high adoption rate that everything MUST be able to work on it.

I apologize for coming off like such a prick, but in my mind defending Microsoft's choices in developing Vista is inconceivable. It's not about being witty or clever, it's not like we're criticizing something to sound cool, it's about refusing to give any respect at all to such a shameful waste of time and money. Vista adds nothing new that is worth having. It gives you DirectX 10, however this has no appreciable performance or quality improvements over version 9. It is simply an excuse to sell more copies of a bad product, as evidenced by the fact that "Halo 2" for PC for instance, is advertised as requiring Vista and DirectX 10 to work, but in fact will work under Windows XP and DirectX 9 by simply modifying the installer. Rubbish, just rubbish. I'm not going any further with this since I'd be going on all night.

Since this thread isn't about discussing one's OS preference, I please take your crusade somewhere else where everyone hates Vista, namely, the whole of the internet besides this thread.

Sure, I can try it. Now I admit that I haven't played a whole game thru yet on this new computer because I've been sucked back into Oblivion (which never drops below 70 fps all maxed and some high res texture mods installed). And for Sins I have everything turned on to highest, all effects turned on except bloom (I don't like bloom) and I have AA set to 4x and AF to 2x.

I'm going to try to play Sins today and get later in a game with massive fleet battles to see what I get. But the latest battle I had was about 30 per side, Advent vs. TEC, couple capitals on both sides and never had any slowdowns.

No offense on the ATI. Oh, I have the 3870, my bad on the numbers. It's the top of the line ATI and I have the Sapphire Toxic version which is factory overclocked. I don't have the X2 version which is 2 cards in one. But the top end ATI's right now kick total butt and the drivers are very stable. Almost everyone I see with problems in this game and others all have NVidia and/or Vista. Drivers just plain suck right now for NVidia. Can have all the great hardware in the world but if the drivers suck it doesn't matter.

Here's the save:

http://www.aaspring.com/test1.zip

Watch the battle between light blue (me) and purple. It's at one of the volcanic planets, probably doesn't last very long since they'll immediately shit their pants and run when they see the size of my fleet.

So I loaded up your test save and ran 3 tests.

First off, holy crap I have never seen so many ships! That was the coolest battle I've seen.

Settings:
1440x900
AA 4x,AF 2x (set by ATI Tray Tools, not in game)
Everything cranked to "highest" quality, all effects and graphic options turned on except bloom.

Frame rates run 30-40 with the game in general. Sometimes 45-50 if I'm in a more quiet sector.
In the midst of that battle at the volcanic planet frames dropped to between 20 and 30 with a couple hiccups down to 18 or so. But it still ran smooth, no choppyness.
I also played the game for a bit and encountered another big battle with the purple guy at the planet called "It's a trap" (nice name). Again, frames in battle stayed above 20 for the most part, 25-30 was the common range.

I also set AA in game and got the same frame rates.

Hope that helps, again, no idea what frames you're getting.

Again my specs:
Intel Dual Core 3ghz (not overclocked)
ATI Radeon HD 3870, 8.4 drivers
2 gigs RAM
Sound Blaster X-Fi Gamer
XP Home with all latest patches

So all in all your save was pretty smooth playing for me, no stuttering or any other problems. If I turned things down a bit I'm sure it would get higher frames but no need to if it's smooth, even if it says it's "only" 20 fps.

I typically play with less players and thus probably why I'm seeing frames of 50+ and more toward 90-100. When there are 8 players with so many ships the game will slow down. Heck, Civ 4 or Gal Civ 2 slows down for me late game with 6 civs and tons of units and that game is by no means has cutting edge graphics. It's the CPU having to handle all those units and AI that slows things down, not so much the graphics.

On my old computer the most frames I could get with Sins was 25-30 and usually down around 10 in big battles. Your save probably would have turned it into a slide show. But overall it was pretty smooth even at medium to high settings. I upgraded more for Oblivion then anything else, better Sins is just a bonus.

HAHAHAHA, I forgot that was there... oh, good story behind that one... was that planet still one of mine at the time I sent you that save? What happened was, I built a bunch of warp interdictors around it and then lured an enemy fleet into the area. Just as they got to the far side of the system I jumped in behind them - they by nature retreated in the direction of their homeworld, right where my fleet was. It was an absolute massacre. I was taking screens for some other people so I couldn't resist renaming the planet.

I'm surprised to hear that our performance is pretty much on par. 20-30 FPS is about the same as what I get in those situations, and I reach about 45 in that savegame when I'm not looking at a battle. Even if it's the low-end 8800, the GTS 320 is theoretically far more powerful than your card, and I've got a dual core CPU, the same amount of RAM, and about 4x the HD transfer speed as you'd have without a RAID array. Confusing, confusing.

My CPU is not at its limits - both cores average around 60% usage. My GPU is not at its limits, since changing detail levels has almost no impact, and my GPU's onboard RAM doesn't get fully utilized either. My main RAM tops out with about 200 mb to spare. I'm just at a loss to say what could be holding me back. It's not the CPU, it's not the GPU, it's not the RAM...

What resolution are you running it at and what AA and AF are you set to? That can make a big difference.

As for speed, actually the 8800 GTS 320 and the HD3870 are pretty much on par with each other performance wise, 3870 probably a bit better.
Check this review of the 3850 which is a step below my card: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/videocards/article.php/3723966

It's pretty much on par with the 8800 and actually does a good bit better with AA and AF turned up.

So I don't think it's surprising at all that we get very similar performance. All in all good performance in my opinion.

It comes from personal experience of dealing with the crappy OS. You say you haven't had any problems... then A) You don't actually use your computer much, you haven't tried installing anything other than common on-board sound codecs or much in the way of peripherals at all(or a pioneer/liteon dvd drive, theres others, they just sprang to mind the fastest), you haven't a clue as to what you're talking about anyways, and you don't mind useless processes making your ram beg for mercy; or you're the luckiest person alive. Its one or the other. Most of the people arguing that vista is AOK fall into the former category. There are still NETWORK CARDS that dont function properly with vista... come on, its probably the simplest thing you can put in a computer to write a raw driver for, yet a lot of models still don 't work w/ vista.

And I already explained why I'm looking forward to windows 7... they're changing how windows is done completely(supposedly) the only thing they ever admitted to changing completely with vista was how security was handled. They DID improve security for vista over XP(somewhat) but basically trashed a lot of other stuff in the process... Windows 7 is a ground-up redesign, which is what they initially intended to do with vista but instead decided to release a quick money grab.

They're stripping the kernel to the bone and then rewriting the networking, drivers, interface etc to be seperate addon modules(which is how it should be). The way it is right now tracking down problems is like trying to find a needle in a haystack... one thing crashes, the kernel reboots, and MS gets a report about how the kernel is screwed up(if you even bother to send those, or if it even does one, depending on what caused the crash) even though it was an issue with your video driver attempting to access the wrong part of the kernel or some such. HW vendors have to do so much trial and error writearound bug fixing right now its ridiculous.


Please, actually understand what you are talking about BEFORE commenting... it would make the world a much better place.