Extreme and unusual lag in certain battles.

[Rhineville]

Try as I might, I can't find a common element that links these laggy battles together... here's the story:

2.8 processor
1.5 gigs of ram
nvidia geforce 7600 gt
mount and blade battlesizer set to 150

I can run mount and blade great. No real slowdown. In most battles, regardless of the size, everything runs smooth enough to pick people's heads of with a bow running full tilt on a horse. No problem there. Every so often though, I get a freak case of lag during battles. 5 fps or less. USUALLY, they're in forested areas. Once the enemy team is down to say 10 men, I can feel it getting better, and once the last enemy is dead everything snaps back to normal.

It's just so damned out of place. Character detail and texture quality are both set to 50%, ragdolls and corpses are low (1 and 5) no grass, pretty much everything is checked off (for 125% performance)

It happens in native and in mods, tweaked and untweaked. I have absolutely no clue what to do. Any help is appreciated.

 

[Kleidophoros]

exactly samething happens to my game. forests kill my pc when it shouldnt; AMD 6000+ 3.0GHZ, 2GB Ram, GeForce 8600GT OC.

 

[Archonsod]

Make sure realistic plant shadows are off. Oh, and quick reflections is on.

 

[Rhineville]

Make sure realistic plant shadows are off. Oh, and quick reflections is on.

Thank you sir, I'll give it a shot.

EDIT: upon inspecting my game options, both of those were already done

 

[progrox]

Same thing here. Forests, as well as towns, castles and cities on occasion. Other times, they run smooth as butter. Partly, it can be explained by complexity of the scene.. but partly, it's just erratic.

 

[Kleidophoros]

Make sure realistic plant shadows are off. Oh, and quick reflections is on.

with my pc specs and looking at M&B requirements, i should be able to play the game with everything maxed. i dont think turning stuff off is a real solution here.

 

[Archonsod]

If you think it should be playing at max I expect turning off whatever crap is eating up resources would be the solution. MSConfig is your friend. Oh, and services. Particularly those Microsoft thinks should be on by default on the off chance you happen to have accidentally installed Windows to a networked printer on the third Sunday of the month while wearing traditional Morris dancing dress. There's a few guides for tweaking services, but to be honest some of them are blatantly pointless (like network printer sharing if you're neither on a network nor utilising a networked printer. That'll save you about 1.5 Mb of memory)

 

[Kleidophoros]

I dont think i am an expert but i do think my PC is pretty much crap-free and optimized. Latest drivers installed for sound, gpu, mobo and cpu (amd dual core optimiser), defragged a week ago or so, enough space for virtual memory and swap file, no demanding programs running in background; only NOD32 which goes real easy on system resources. With this setup i can play more demanding games (read: games with higher requirements than M&B) with no noticable lag/slowdown.
I think M&B is not really optimised seeing i am having problems with forest areas only. I dont have any problems with everything maxed with a battlesize of 500 on an open field or a siege, occasional slowdowns when reinforcements arrive only which doesnt happen much with that battlesize. But even with a battlesize of 100, forests kill the game.

 

[Archonsod]

What is the GPU? possibly more importantly, is it trying to apply AA or similar through the driver?

 

[Kleidophoros]

8600 GT Overclock Edition. i know its not state of art but it should do the trick with M&B.
i must have set AA and such to "let the program decide". but i will check again tonight just to make sure.

 

[Rinne]

What OS are you using? If you're using Vista the AMD DC optimizer could cause problems as you shouldn't use it with Vista..

How many troops are on your side?

If the game runs smoothly when all enemies are dead, I'd assume there's something about the AI eating up your memory/CPU cycles.. Would make sense if they have to deal with lots of obstacles (forest).. Doesn't make sense in that others can run 200+ battles without any lag at all, though...  probably a memory leak??

 

[Kleidophoros]

XP SP 3(not sure if its officially 3 now, did get some patches on top of 2)
its not about AI as far as i see. 300 hundred troops on an open field = smooth. 100 troops in forests = pc dead. AI is more concerned to kick my ass than avoiding obstacles i would think seeing they can hit the map borders in every battle.
how many troops on my side? mostly equal, 40X40, 150X150 etc.

 

[mercurous]

get the no trees mod, that might solve it temporarily.

 

[Salvar]

well if i where u id use msconfig as stated above, and yeah water refelctions button is kinda back to front, and reduce screen resolution

 

[Kleidophoros]

i am well aware of msconfig and as i said my pc is pretty optimised.
i did check gpu settings, set to let the program decide.
i will just stay clear of forests i guess. shame though i love forests

 

[Archonsod]

What's the shadow setting on the config screen of M&B? If it's on Ultra try turning it down a notch or two and see if that affects it.

 

[Gohda]

I have the exact same problem, except it only, ONLY, happens in certain battles.  Not always forests, but there are always at least some trees.  I think it might be a problem with one particular tree mesh, since it doesn't happen in every forest nor battle.  Usually I get 30-120 FPS depending on how much action is happening.

AMD Athlon X2 64-bit, 2.4gHz (Yeah, I know, need to update that when I get the chance...), 2gb RAM, 9800 GTX+, XP SP3.  Ingame settings are fast reflections, plant shadows to Quick, config shadows to Low, no AA, no VSync, Windowed, 80 troops per battle.

I've tried installing the No More Trees mod, but it doesn't work (Like, literally, it doesn't do anything to the trees).

 

[janlulhannes]

I have the exact same problem, except it only, ONLY, happens in certain battles.  Not always forests, but there are always at least some trees.  I think it might be a problem with one particular tree mesh, since it doesn't happen in every forest nor battle.  Usually I get 30-120 FPS depending on how much action is happening.

AMD Athlon X2 64-bit, 2.4gHz (Yeah, I know, need to update that when I get the chance...), 2gb RAM, 9800 GTX+, XP SP3.  Ingame settings are fast reflections, plant shadows to Quick, config shadows to Low, no AA, no VSync, Windowed, 80 troops per battle.

I've tried installing the No More Trees mod, but it doesn't work (Like, literally, it doesn't do anything to the trees).

its a long shot, but enable V-Sync

 

[Kleidophoros]

What's the shadow setting on the config screen of M&B? If it's on Ultra try turning it down a notch or two and see if that affects it.

nope.
i turned down almost everything to lowest, trees/forest still kill my game.

 

[Master OF Swords]

M&B the new Gothic 3 forsaken gods...

Did you try and disable all AA AF through the driver?