Strange FPS fluctuation

[rwkeen]

Getting a very strange problem on both my PC's with 1.31.

When I have spawned in, either on-line or off line, my FPS will fluctuate between my normal 50-60 FPS down to 5, then back to 50-60. It cycles like this every few seconds.

All my drivers are up to date, syste, virus/malware scanned, etc.

I've tried changing the settings to see if I can narrow down what is causing it, but so far no luck.

The really odd thing is this is happening on both my PC's, but then sometime it will just be normal when I spawn in and the FPS don't drop. This could be the 2nd, 20th 40th time I spawn in, no apparent patten.

The game is vey playable when it behaves, but this strange issue makes it totaly unplayble when it happens.

Any ideas/suggestions? That fact that it sometimes works fine has me stumped.

Specs:-

PC1

Athlon XP 3800+

4GB Ram.

Windows XP Pro.

Geforce 6800 ultra.

Creative Audigy 2ZS.

PC2

Athlon FX57

2GB Ram.

Windows XP PRo 64-bit

Geforce 7800GTX.

Creative X-FI Fatality.

[piercer]

In the nvidia driver, try turning off threaded optimization - its a long-shot but the game for whatever reason used to, and still has some issues with it. I noticed the other day that turning it off added more fps.

P-

[rwkeen]

Hm, found a solution to this, but not sure what is causing the initial problem.

To fix my problem all I have to do is spawn into the game, leave it for about 2 mins where the FPS will spike between 5FPS and normal, then suddenly it stop spiking and runs fine. Every spawn after this is normal.

Same thing happens on both my PC's, wether off-line or on-line.

My 1st guess was it was loading/cashing everything, but the HD doesn't access anything at all during these FPS spikes.

Anyway, at least I can play now, just have to remember to spawn in somewhere quiet where I can wait a bit 1st spawn each night.

[makrel]

I am guessing that this is caused by your video cards - both do not meet minimum requirements. Sounds like you are swapping renders back and forth on the video card because they do not have enough on-board RAM.

How much ram on them?

[rwkeen]

256 on both.

It's somehow time releated. No matter where I spawn in it takes about the same amount of time on both PC's for the drop to 5FPS to stop, then I can play for hours on end with no stutters at all.

At first I thought it was caching stuff, but it's not like I'm looking at every building/unit in game when I'm stood in a inf spawn. Plus I would expect to see hard drive activity but don't.

Anyway, I can live with this at the moment. Will try to investigate the cause at a future point.

[munchkin]

256 MB is a bit low on the vram side. Considering how much textures that needs to be loaded for this game I wouldn't recommend anything less than 512 at the minimum.

[skyfallr]

I get the same problem with a system similar to your #2.. and I have the same 7800GT card.

I have to spawn a rifleman the first time after loading game and it takes a minute or two to 'stabilize' .. even on an empty town.

My best guess is the game loading terrain and object stuff around you and setting it into cache which causes this... once it is done though, there is no fps stuttering until you switch to a town with unique buildings (aka the abbey in verdun) which it has to load up.

[GOPHUR]

256 on both.

It's somehow time releated. No matter where I spawn in it takes about the same amount of time on both PC's for the drop to 5FPS to stop, then I can play for hours on end with no stutters at all.

At first I thought it was caching stuff, but it's not like I'm looking at every building/unit in game when I'm stood in a inf spawn. Plus I would expect to see hard drive activity but don't.

Anyway, I can live with this at the moment. Will try to investigate the cause at a future point.

Yup that's it. We're just loading too much crap now. We have to basically load everything to play. you can try selecting the low memory option in settings and see if that helps. It probably should.