Frame Rate Drop

from Sins Forums

Hey guys, first poster here, just wondering if a frame rate drop is normal when zooming close into a planet. Actually its more of a tiny quarter of a second freeze. Then the game resumes at normal framerate. It only happens when i get rly rly close to a planet but i dont understand why seeing as how if anything there should be less stuff to render onscreen when all there is is a big planet with some ships moving around to render onscreen as opposed to many planets and fleets and building etc. I am runnning a 9800 gt with 2 gigs ram XP Sp3 and a 2.4 ghz single core processor. Thanx for any feedback.

technical
5,789 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Actually there's more when you zoom in. When you zoom out everything reverts to 2D pictures, thereby making it easier to process.

Zooming in renders ships, planets, and building in 3D.

So you zooming in and Framerate dropping momentarilly is it just loading all those 3D textures.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Nope, zooming in only taxes the video card a bit more. The stutter is caused not by the video card, but by the CPU and the RAM's speed and volume due to the huge amount of calculations made by the AI which all happen on the map at the same time.

Zooming in or out makes no difference in that case, especially in large maps.

apieceoftofu, if it's any comfort (and I know it's not), the Entrenchment beta causes my entire PC to grind to a halt mid-game, up to a point that it becomes completely unplayable - 1 second turns to 4 seconds, so research is pointless and fleet tactics is ridiculous. All those ships, fighters and buildings all around the map and now the starbases and mines as well? Not good. My system is: 8800GTX, 2GB 800MHz RAM, Core2Duo E6600 CPU.

I can't wait for the release of Windows 7 so I could buy a new PC already :\

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

I have a beefy gaming PC, and I too get that slight pause when I zoom all the way into a planet.

It's a universal thing, everyone gets it.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting ThaMahstah, reply 4
I don't.
End of ThaMahstah's quote

Really? What are your specs?

Given that my computer can run Fallout 3 on high settings at 60 FPS, I have to wonder how much processing power it takes to eliminate that pause... unless it's related to something other than processing/GPU power.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Well, I dunno. I do keep anti-aliasing off because of the dreaded White Dots Problem, but my specs are:

Duel Core Intel E8500 @ 3.16 GHz, 4gb of Ram, Vista 64-bit, and an ATI-4870x2.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

So basically what im taking from all of this is that i should upgrade my CPU? That seems to be the weakest piece in my machine and with everyone talking about processing power just not being there i should switch to something duel core maybe areound 3 ghz?

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
If that tiny quarter of a second freeze bothers you that much, I guess you should.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Well, my machine has a 3.0 GHz AMD dual core processor, 4 GB DDR2 RAM (3 useable), two GeForce 8800 GTS GPUs w/SLi, and the best mobo I could buy for my chipset. I'm running on Windows XP SP3. I keep background applications to an absolute minimum while playing games (i.e., 28 system-essential processes and nothing else), and I'm obsessive about scanning for malware.

The slight pause doesn't bother me, but the news that not everyone experiences it is curious.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top


Duel Core Intel E8500 @ 3.16 GHz, 4gb of Ram, Vista 64-bit, and an ATI-4870x2.
End of quote

With a $500 card I would hope you could run things with no skips :P

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

k yea.... you can run the game at full settings right and if so wat FPS do you usually get?