[0.893] Poor Performance & Stability

[Instag0]

The game freezes and usually unfreezes within ten seconds both in and out of combat, and it seems very random. Sometimes it'll freeze/ unfreeze three or four times in rapid succession and other times it'll freeze/ unfreeze once during an entire battle. Freezing & unfreezing multiple times usually results in a freeze that sticks-- one that does not fade away. Usually, control+alt+deleting can get me out of this. However, occasionally I am forced to restart my machine. Just to clarify, the "Poor Performance & Stability" refer only to the problems I've just mentioned. If I don't experience the odd stuttering through freezing, things go quite well.

I've been messing with a few BIOS settings recently and have upgraded some drivers. I've also been playing with various settings in MNB itself, such as enabling AA and AS. I don't think the drivers and BIOS are culprits though, as Windows and other programs and games are performing better and without error.

I've uninstalled my previous MNB install and then downloaded and installed the full .893-- it helped as so far I haven't had any hard-locks where I've been forced to restart. I've also forced single-threading, and that actually has helped for some reason. The fact that forcing single-threading actually helped me is the most intriguing bit which may point to a problem with my CPU overclock or BIOS settings, even though I'm Prime95 stable and have no problems with other applications.

Oh, and I ran memtest ages ago, so unless my RAM has spontaneously combusted, I don't believe there's a problem there .

OS: Windows XP, 2.0 GB Ram, Intel Core 2 Duo E6300, ATi X1950PRO 512mb AGP, Soundblaster Audigy 2

 

[Archonsod]

Try moving back to the standard clock speed and see if you still get the problem. If forcing single threading is improving it I suspect you may be running the core's a tad faster than they're designed to swap information

Check the obvious first though - no antivirus or something scheduled to run scans while you're playing, or similar. Also, could be related to the soundcard too. Try deactivating hardware acceleration on there and giving it a try. If that works, going on the information I'd suspect it could be overheating.

 

[Instag0]

I've narrowed it down to something in the MNB settings. I loaded the defaults for my BIOS and turned off the very slight overclock on my video card. I loaded up MNB immediately afterwards and continued having problems.

However, when I tuned all the MNB settings down as far as possible, except for resolution, my problems disappeared. I've been steadily enabling each in-game, including Anisotropic Filtering. The below settings are currently with all in-game settings maxed.

EDIT: When I relaunched the game, the problem restarted. I assume that's because certain settings in-game only take affect after the game has been restarted, and I hadn't been restarting with every change =/. I also got an RGL error at some point that said something about shadows being buggers.

Current launcher settings:

Video
Use Bump Mapping = unchecked
Use Pixel Shaders = unchecked
Start Window = unchecked
Show Framerate = unchecked
Faster Water Reflections = checked
Texture Detail = 10
Max. Frame Rate = 100
Screen Resolution = Use Desktop Resolution (1280x1024)
Shadow Quality: Ultra High
Render Method: DirectX 9

Audio
Enable Sound Variation = unchecked
Disable Sound = checked
Disable Music = checked

Game & Audio
Only Enable Cheats = checked

 

[bravesirknight]

Personally I think it's close to a crapshoot how this game will perform with any update.  It's just not that stable yet... versions end on a 'as stable as we can get' release but you don't know if that's going to leave you with long loading times or weird fps drops or what. And if you get some problem, unless you're talking a very bad system where the answer is upgrade, there's not much you can do to fix it. Oh well hopefully 1.0 will be here someday and they can work on getting it as efficient as possible.

 

[Instag0]

Yea, I'm tempted to just leave MNB as is until the next update comes around.

EDIT: Through more random tinkering, I seemed to have fixed whatever was ailing MNB. Things are working fine now with all options turned on to the highest setting. 

Well, things are working relatively fine. I still have some problems-- loading times are much longer than usual, and sometimes there are long loading times when I hit go between menus (mostly the main one accessible while playing the main game) and the game. There's also another bit of loading once the bar has completed- everything goes for about .01 seconds (even with galloping sounds and such) and then the game freezes for about 10 seconds. After that, things go alright.

 

[Archonsod]

Ty knocking shadows down a notch

 

[Instag0]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I wonder why I'm having this problem with the most recent version. I haven't had it with previous ones.

EDIT: Looks like your suggestion worked. Everything is back to normal-- runs quite well, now . That "Ultra" setting is a bastard for some reason.