Computer specs / Curious how I compare

I doubt that.

I've got a Phenom 9500 (4 cores at 2200) with 8GiB RAM and a GTX 295 - and sometimes I get about one frame per 5 seconds.

Although the game is advertised as a multicore using game, it's only using one CPU core. My system therefore isn't doing much. I can run other apps without any further interference and even switch on the second monitor.

Looks like there's a very nasty bug and the game really should be updated to use multicore processors as advertised. I'm considering to return it, because it's unplayable slow, even at medium size random maps. My machine scores a 5.9 performance rating - thus also the performance requirements are wrongly stated.

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From my xfire profile:

..It's a decent system, and I have no major complaints. I can think of a lot of stuff I can upgrade, but my budget's pretty tight right now and not a lot of room for buying new parts.

I haven't tried playing on mendium maps, so I dunno how well it performs there.

Looking at your specs: You do need to upgrade Vista. It's a service pack 2 now. Also, check nVidia's website for driver upgrades.

Well there is no SP2 for the 64 bit version I believe...  Nothing comes up under my updates tab so I don't know about that.

Screet, looking at your cores running at 2.2, you may consider either over clocking your processor, or getting another one.  (Over clocking is of course more cost effective)  I've run on medium and large maps with little to no issue except in later tier games as I said. 

If it's true it really doesn't use all 4 cores, then that REALLY needs to be updated but I don't believe that's true.  I have a system monitor on 24/7 and all 4 cores are normally pushed to about 60 - 85% during game play.  My buddy and I will be over clocking my core soon so I'll let you know how that works out as well. 

What led to me to believe it was possibly a graphical problem was I turned on proformance mode under NVIDIA's settings and my FPS skyrocketted.  I'm also running at an insanely high resolution for this first gen DX10 card so I felt it was time to push the limits yet again.  Of course I'll update you all on the performance gains (if any) once my 295GTX arrives and I have ample time to test it out.

Thanks for the feed back though.  Much appreciated!!! 

That service pack is available for quite a while now. I'm running Vista Ultimate 64bit and got SP2 too long ago to remember. Maybe there's something wrong with your update settings?

It's really only using one of the four cores, that's why my system is so much idle and has enough power to run other apps without further slowdowns. I can even keep task manager open on the second screen to see that while playing

Typically, the game only runs on core 2 which is almost always at 100%, while the other cores are idle. The performance issue is so bad for me that mouse clicks register mouse down at different buttons than mouse up and thus lead to constant errors unless I do not move the mouse at all during the multi-second time the game needs to respond to a click. Horrible. In the beginning, the game runs nicely fast, but especially while playing advent, sometime into the game it becomes slower and slower. Even after ending the game, while sins still runs, it's user interface doesn't react any better, which is REALLY strange.

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Screet - It sounds like you may have a memory leak or something like that.  If you've tried turning your settings down and it bogs your system even AFTER the game is over, could be bad ram.  That has also been a problem for me in the past.  Could also be your system isn't getting enough power, or an over heating issue but I'm more inclined to think it may be your memory.  I would recommend you do a system test and see if any of your parts fail.  All of that sounds very strange indeed....

If you could, please link me to the SP2 for Vista 64-bit.  I can't seem to find it online so I'm kind of scratching my head at the moment...

I did reduce settings, without effect. It's dependend upon map size (appearing only later in the game!), but not upon the amount or size of enemy fleets, as it's even slow after eradicating all of them. I've got 8GiB installed and Sins is using a little bit over 1.4 GiB in these situations, which I believe is pretty much the maximum memory consumption possible for 32bit games under Vista.

I very much have the impression that the building of the large race dependend guns is somewhat linked to this problem. The more of them exist, the more extreme the slowdown has been on all occasions. However, that might have been a coincidence, but even with the same empire size, the slowdown increased when I did build them and enabled auto-fire.

I doubt that it's bad RAM. Except a few "IRQL not less or equal" bluescreens, obviously from a faulty driver after system reinstall (problem is gone now for longer than I have Sins installed!) there never was a problem. I've also had no problems with graphics intense stuff like Crysis Warhead which also uses a similar amount of memory and surely can be expected to be much more hardware demanding - but there was no slowdown there.

Another point to look at might be my installation via the internet: At first I had installed from DVD, but that one was german only (and although that's my mother tongue, I had much problems understanding it), so I uninstalled that and reinstalled from the internet. I did not notice such slowdowns with the version installed from DVD, but I was only playing small maps with TEC, while I now prefer medium-large and Advent, which is leading to a much more immense slowdown than playing Vasari or TEC on the same map size. Advent comes typically with much more fighters and bombers, but those should not really be a problem when there's no action going on.

I just googled up this page...looks good IIRC I got SP2 via a link from german tech news site heise to a M$ page. Since my installation was switched to english from german, I could update early. After the update, all the language packs were gone for a while, nothing which bothered me. Some weeks later they appeared back under download options, not that I need them anyway - I prefer english for computer systems.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=656C9D4A-55EC-4972-A0D7-B1A6FEDF51A7&displaylang=en

For 32 bit users with the same problem, this one might be interesting:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a4dd31d5-f907-4406-9012-a5c3199ea2b3&displaylang=en

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I just had task manager open while switching back to lowest graphics details. It doesn't affect the slowdown problem, but the memory consumption dropped from 1.4 GiB to 550MiB. As a result, low memory problems (from 32bit restriction on a 8 GiB 64bit system or leaks) can be excluded as the source. Again, it's only one core that is busy...and yet again, the slowdown did increase the most after building the typical 10-20 race dependend guns.

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Brand:Gateway FX530 XL (Yes, I got this when they still custum built PC's)
Stock Motherboard
Intel core 2 extreme runnng at stock 2.9ghz
Win xp service pack 3
4 gigs of ram(2x2gig pieces)
2 ATI Radeon x1950's running in Crossfire at 1920x1200


Just out of curiousity, how many planets do your games have on average? I usually have 600-1200 min/max with graphics maxed and ten players with no less then eleven systems with no lag until every player has maxed fleets, and even then it's still playable.

32 planets (medium-large random maps), no mods. The slowdown is not dependent upon enemies present or their strength. I once tried a large random map, but that was so bad concerning the speed that it's no fun. The user interface takes many seconds to respond to a mouseclick then, thus it's almost impossible to do anything.

600-1200 planets??? That's 10-20 times of the random large maps? I cannot see how that would work, nor can I understand how it can be fun, because the game is only difficult for the first few hours and then the player is strong enough so that it's only a matter of time to recapture the remaining planets?!? Indeed that is the reason why I build as many of those super cannons as possible: to reduce the remaining time and requirement to capture everything.

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The thing is that Sins wasn't build to accomadate people with insane computer system, most the game uses is 2gb

Self-built: 

Cooler Master HAF 922, with at least 8 fans (all 60 CFM and up)

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R

Intel Core i7 920 D0 2.66 Ghz, overclocked to 4.0 Ghz.

MSI GTX 260, factory overclocked

6GB Patriot DDR3 1333 Mhz RAM

Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme

Corsair 750W PSU

WD 640GB 7200RPM HDD

BENQ G2400WD 24" 1920x1200 monitor

Logitech G5 mouse/keyboard

Win7 RC1

On max settings, even in epic games, I never go below 60 FPS.