the march of progress

[Hylie Pistof]

It had to happen sooner or later and it finally did. POTC is now becoming obsolete hardware wise.

I just got a new video card that runs twice as fast on new games as the old one. But on POTC it runs worse. I just got done flashing the video card bios in an effort to get some performance back with no luck. FPS used to be 30-60 at sea and now it is 10-50fps.

DX8 is being left behind it seems.

 

[Skyworm]

Arrghs - too bad mate.
I'll have to keep that in mind when buying my next graphics card.

Thanks for the hint.

 

[Levis]

try disableing hardware acceleration for your videocard.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Disabling hardware acceleration? I remember that from years ago. Dunno where to find that now.

 

[Levis]

dunno what kind of videocard you have but often in the control panel of the videocard you can set multiple options for different applications. See if you are able to disable that for POTC. Else see what other options there are. Probally it uses some new functions which aren't really DX8 compatible so these have to be disabled.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It is an AMD card and the control center is very basic. There really isn't anything to disable. All it has is AA, AF, and texture quality settings.

What is happening is that POTC doesn't put enough load on it so it drops into energy saving mode with low clocks and performs badly. That is why I tried a different bios, because that is where that stuff is located. HMM. There is a guy on one site who makes custom bios.................

 

[Levis]

Check your power settings (the advace power settings). Maybe AMD put something there. I know ATI does. For example for my laptop it will turn down the GPU if I'm on the battery. Maybe it has some options there you can tweak.

 

[Armada]

Somehow, this doesn't surprise me. This game engine has already lasted far longer than it should have been allowed to, so hardware was bound to move on eventually.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

This is NOT a laptop but a real computer with an 8 core cpu @ 4.6 ghz, 16gb of ram, and a video card as long as your fore arm that can use 200 watts of power, with a gpu @ 1.05 ghz. I have seen this thing suck over 700 watts from the wall when it is really working.
The power settings are high performance. That means everything is always on and there is no power saving mode or sleep mode. Except for this new MSI R9 280X which still has power savings built into it. Maybe a custom bios can fix it.

 

[Exiffa]

Have you tried newer/older/beta versions of drivers for the gpu? I'm running an AMD card of similar power and mine runs fine at sea.
I'm currently on Catalyst version 13.10 Beta.

Also, have you tried turning the power control setting to 20% under "AMD OverDrive"? Before I changed mine, my card would clock up and down in the middle of use.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I have tried drivers 13.4, 13.10 beta, and 13.9 whql and noticed no difference. I stay away from AMD Overdrive except for presets and use MSI Afterburner for overclocking. I have run that slider to 20% and back. Nothing I have tried yet makes any difference except that no AA & AF makes it look ugly.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Update: It seems these new video cards need some time to "burn in". Its performance is increasing daily and is almost back to where it was with the old VC as far as frame rates and the video quality is better.

I wonder what next week will bring.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Uh? So is it OK-ish again now?

And did I understand correctly that performance is bad BECAUSE it doesn't ask much of the GFX card???

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Indeed it is ok. Not quite as good as with the old card, but ok. And yes it is because the card isn't being used enough, so it drops back into a low power state.

I am still exploring the different settings, but with everything set to max except supersampling it can sometimes hit 60fps at sea. With supersampling on instead of multisampling it hits the mid 50s in fps at sea and looks great, but something happens when in the jungle and fps drops to 30 fps or so and looks really choppy. This is with 24x AA & AF. This VC has a processor that is running at 1.05ghz and can be overclocked, so yes POTC with DX8 doesn't stress it at all.

More testing needed.