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Massive performance loss with new smoke1.dds


Flanker15

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Ok since I got the new upgrade I've been trying to figure out what has been causing the new performance drop in some missions. I've narrowed it down to smoke1.dds (removing smoke1.dds fixes it).

Whenever you have a big bunch of vehicles making dust trails (big or small) as they drive along a road the FPS will drop if they're in your cone of view. Not just if you can see them but if they're way off behind 3 hills and a forest.

It's easily spotted by just panning around and noticing a sudden FPS drop when looking in one direction.

Anyone else seeing this?

I've got a top of the line PC and this didn't happen before the upgrade where SB ran flawlessly.

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OK... After taking away this smoke1.dds-file my framerates are steady between 40-60 depending on the position im playing. Thats a completely different story than to get 15-20 with the same settings when SMOKE is on the battlefield.

Ssnake, please take a look at this file. It seems like its causing all the masive performance-problems many people have.

Thumbs up flanker!

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The problem with the smoke is that it uses eight bit transparency (it has to use it in order to achieve gradual transitions in density). Now, if you have activated certain driver features like transparency antialiasing, this is going to cost a lot of computing time. The smoke1.dds is insofar only an indicator, but not the root of the problem. You should check the antialiasing settings (I recommend the multisampling method).

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Yes, depending on the card the transparency anti-aliasing could be called "adaptive anti-aliasing" -- make sure that is always turned off. I ran into a problem with this on another game recently. I turned it on in E:TW and it tried to antialias every blade of grass because those were part of a transparent texture.

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Transparency AA makes a lot of sense if the game uses single bit transparency for foliage, and little to no smoke and dust effects with eight bit transparency. Otherwise the image quality benefits are insignificant, with severe frame rate penalties.

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Actually, it seems like the older NVidia drivers provide the cure (at least for Vista 64). Hopefully, one day, the new ones too.

The latest driver, released like may 6'th, improved SB in general for me (x280). It also improved for users with older cards like 6600 and 6800 (cept for GH Lieste apparently). I cant say if it changed things with the smoke texture in particular tho, but it's absolutely a driver thats worth trying out.

Edited by Wahrborg
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Moving from 156 era driver to 185.15 (May 6 2009) I noticed no performance increase. If anything it is slightly slower, but not enough to warrant reverting to the older version. The IQ seems a little higher, and shaders work correctly in VBS2, which was the reason for the updating.

I did need to turn on nearly all performance optimisations (some of which sound innocuous enough in their default state) to recover performance to this level, as the initial driver state (performance) had frame rates about 30-40% lower.

Anisotropic filtering especially seemed to hurt the card in 185.15, and I eventually settled for x2 (off looks a bit too fuzzy even for my tastes), accepting the small loss of performance. x4 was one of the bigger culprits for poor performance, but was not a problem with the earlier driver.

6600 256MB card AGP 8x

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Tried the newest driver and some older ones I had, didn't seem to change my FPS in anyway so I've gone back to the one I started on.

I guess something just doesn't like my computer, probably just a case of newer hardware with older engine.

Maybe when I update to Win 7 it might go away?

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I hab some graphic problems with Win7 64 bit and 185.85 drivers. I have a drop when looking at a arty barrage (from 60 to 9! fps) from external view (F8) or from TC oustside (F7 and Q). No major drop (60 to 30-40) in other view.

On Platoon Attack01-HV.sce map (grid 6114), I have a strange problem too: some trees disapear and flick in external and internal view. Part of the problem fixe itself when I go to driver position and get back to previous view (except external view).

The problem appear on 8800GTX (driver 185.85), and ATI 4870 (latest driver) but not on GTX 295 (driver 180.87).

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I hab some graphic problems with Win7 64 bit and 185.85 drivers. I have a drop when looking at a arty barrage (from 60 to 9! fps) from external view (F8) or from TC oustside (F7 and Q). No major drop (60 to 30-40) in other view.

On Platoon Attack01-HV.sce map (grid 6114), I have a strange problem too: some trees disapear and flick in external and internal view. Part of the problem fixe itself when I go to driver position and get back to previous view (except external view).

The problem appear on 8800GTX (driver 185.85), and ATI 4870 (latest driver) but not on GTX 295 (driver 180.87).

It sounds like you need to set your detail sliders (ALT+D) to default. A problem was noticed with the sliders recently where trees will disappear and flicker if the sliders are set to anything other than default. This should be fixed in the next update.

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It sounds like you need to set your detail sliders (ALT+D) to default. A problem was noticed with the sliders recently where trees will disappear and flicker if the sliders are set to anything other than default. This should be fixed in the next update.

Another thing to check is mouse trails - I was getting flickering and 'lagging' from the mouse pointer in the static menus after moving to the 185 drivers. Switching mouse trails off eliminated this. I doubt it has much to do with the issue in your case, but flickering isn't always from the detail menu - I do run mine at 100,100,(1-30) depending on clutter size and density (I basically switch it off if it looks overdone - especially as it doesn't affect AI or long range return fire).

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It sounds like you need to set your detail sliders (ALT+D) to default. A problem was noticed with the sliders recently where trees will disappear and flicker if the sliders are set to anything other than default. This should be fixed in the next update.

Correct!

(The GTX 295 (driver 180.87) had the detail sliders to default.)

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