Lag

[forte712]

C:\ drive busted during the weekend due to a virus, formatted and started fresh..
Reinstalled Windows, and Warband.
And what do you know, the stutter is STILL THERE.
Only fighting against 9 looters, hitting any of them cause the game to stop for a half second. (Ragdoll = 0, tried turning on ragdoll, no difference).
So I'm guessing battle size is not the issue.
Again, not game breaking, but frustratingly annoying, especially when battles get bigger.
Dude, whatever low settings that will fix this, it is still a problem.
When Warband came out or even in the Beta version, I did not have this issue.
I have a freshly installed Windows XP, so it is not because a background program making Warband slow.
Tried turning off Load texture on demand, force single threading, and all combinations (on, off, mixed), stutter STILL THERE.

System Specs:
CPU: Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz
Memory: 2Gb
Graphics: GTX 260 SP
OS: Windows XP Pro

 

[Sheena]

Like forte712 said, the performance issue with warband have nothing to do with viruses or other programs taking all the RAM. I just installed 1.113 and i get around 50% more fps compared to 1.126. You'll tell me my computer is full of viruses/spywares or just badly optimized ONLY when i install 1.126 ? WB 1.113 is the best tool ever to fix pc's then ? Sorry but since 1.125 it's just a barely playable stutterfest.

Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.6ghz
2GB DDR2-800
Nvidia GTS 250
Windows XP SP3

 

[forte712]

^
Indeed it is..

I just confirmed with my cousin who just upgraded from 1.113 to 1.126, and he experiences the stutter as well, only fighting very few looters just like I was. No such issue on 1.113.

 

[Tzukasa7]

Yeah guys I've had this same problem. I used the 1.113 Impulse version up until last week when I decided to go ahead and update to the 1.126 Impulse version (don't think Impulse has anything to do with it but just thought I'd note that). Now with 1.126 when I went into med-large battles with 30-50+ on each side I was getting totally unplayable frame rate studders IE lag that simply was not happening with 1.113 on the same type fights with the exact same graphic settings. Also I've made no changes with my comp or drivers ect that could have thrown it off nor is there any spyware/viruses making things go awry. Simply put the only change that was made to my comp was changing from 1.113 to 1.126 and my game settings were identical so the problem lies with the 1.126 version and nothing else. Now that being said, I have been messing around with the games settings trying to make it playable again and I think I've found a solution that works for me and it might work for you too.

Before you load the game go into Configure then on the video tab make sure that Force Vert Sync is Unchecked and also Uncheck Load Textures on Demand. This seemed to help quite abit and stopped the half a second of blurry textures that starting happening with 1.126 upon loading into a battle or town center before the textures were rendered properly. It still didn't fix the frame rate drop completely, so in the game I had to play around with the settings there and found that with HDR turned off and Antialiasing also turned off, as well as turning off plant shadows and character shadows got me back to the stability of frame rate that I previously had with the 1.113 version with all those things turned on. Now granted the game doesn't look near as good with all that turned off and one could arguably say that any graphic boost that Warband had over the original is negated by turning those things down it at least is playable again for me. I hope this helps some of you that are also having these same issues and I also hope that the next patch returns the game back to the frame rate stability it had in 1.113 so I can at least turn the antialiasing back to 4x!

Also as a side note here are my comp spec's if anyone was wondering. I know its abit outdated but my comp is plenty powerful enough to play oblivion on max settings and it definitely Should be powerful enough to play This game on Max settings!

Intel P4 3.8gh [single core  ]
ATI 1650x 512 Mb PCI-X graphic card (drivers are up to date)
4 Gb Ram
Running on WinXP Pro service pack 3 (32bit version)

 

[Hatonastick]

My experiences mirror Tzukasa7's to be honest.  Was just writing how things hadn't been totally fixed by turning off 'Load textures on demand' since my last post but had definitely improved performance a lot -- battles have to be much bigger before I get stuttering since the configuration change, but unfortunately still smaller than battle sizes I used to be able to have with 1.113.

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz laptop which is admittedly getting on a bit now.
GeForce 8600M GT PCI-X 256Mb (dedicated)/512Mb (with system -- I prefer not to use that option if I can force a game not to though).
3Gb RAM.
Running on WinXP Home SP3 with all latest patches and all drivers up to date.

 

[forte712]

Another information that might be relevant..
The stuttering never happen in a tournament, even in a 8 vs 8 vs 8 vs 8 (32 total).
But in the field, even fighting against only 10 looters, stutter happens.

Also, even though turning off Load Textures on Demand make things better for some, but as Hatonastick said, there IS an overall performance degradation since 1.113.
In my Warband, I don't have a low fps issue, but every time I (or someone) hit something, there is a chance the game decides to stop and think for a half second or so.

Bottom line, this is still (IMO) a very crippling bug that needs to be fixed.

 

[waggywags]

I guess this is out of our depth, then. Wait for a 1.127 or go back to 1.113, I suppose. I'm staying on 1.125, so I haven't had any problems as of yet.

 

[Kenkage]

I hope 1.127 comes soon.

 

[forte712]

I think I've found what cause the stutter...
Blood.
Turn off blood from the Config page (and from the Options->Video page in game, just to be sure).
I just tried fighting against 8 looters, 21 desert bandits, ZERO stutter  (this is with blood off, but Load Texture on Demand on)
I hope someone else can test this to confirm.

Yes, this is only a temporary fix, at the cost of having to play a PG version of Warband, but I personally prefer PG Warband than stutter fest Warband.

 

[Kenkage]

I think I've found what cause the stutter...
Blood.
Turn off blood from the Config page (and from the Options->Video page in game, just to be sure).
I just tried fighting against 8 looters, 21 desert bandits, ZERO stutter  (this is with blood off, but Load Texture on Demand on)
I hope someone else can test this to confirm.

Yes, this is only a temporary fix, at the cost of having to play a PG version of Warband, but I personally prefer PG Warband than stutter fest Warband.

I will test it after the game stops crashing for me now that 1.127 is out.

 

[dragon997]

I have the same problems, I load up the game, get into a battle and the game immediately(NO MATTER HOW BIG OR SMALL THE BATTLE IS) begins stuttering, this also happens with the game's audio. This lasts for only about a minute or so of the battle, and then roughly smoothen out with a few hitches here and their. During sieges, I also get a stutter In where the game's screen repeats itself endlessly unless I move the camera. It's very annoying. I don't really know what's been going on as well. These problems have happened with other games as well, specifically Counter Strike 1.6, which I never used to have... :\

Any solutions?

EDIT: It isn't DX 9 either, I have been using DX7 settings for the past 2 years that I've been playing this game, and I have NEVER encountered something like this 

 

[tg122]

I have the same problem... when I hit an enemy or when the troops draw/change their weapons, there is a brief stutter in the animation.  I was testing it out on a 51 vs. 51 custom battle (v1.127) and noticed that the first battle is always smooth, but then when I try to start another custom battle after finishing the first one, it stutters.

 

[BeanyUndead]

I think I've found what cause the stutter...
Blood.
Turn off blood from the Config page (and from the Options->Video page in game, just to be sure).
I just tried fighting against 8 looters, 21 desert bandits, ZERO stutter  (this is with blood off, but Load Texture on Demand on)
I hope someone else can test this to confirm.

Yes, this is only a temporary fix, at the cost of having to play a PG version of Warband, but I personally prefer PG Warband than stutter fest Warband.

You've got it.    It is the blood that is causing most if not all battle lag. When warband is forced to load textures on demand, it is forced to load the blood decals during battles. When you have upwards of twenty men a second getting hurt, it taxes your CPU or graphics card to load those blood textures. After all this time and all those months pulling my hair out to find this simple fix is both frustrating and delightful. While I love bloody battles, I love battles with FPS above 2 more. This explains why there is no lag in tourneys - no blood. This explains why some battles lag and others don't - variations in blood texture load frequency.

For the record, I have tested this by repeating several battles over and over with different settings. I can run warband on full graphics without blood totally smooth. Turn blood on however, and even the lowest settings do not stop the lag. This is also why turning down HDR and troop numbers helps FPS - because there is less blood being generated at once.

Here is my question however.  What has changed since Warband was first released? I never, in the early days, had this problem, and it was unheard of in the Original Mount and Blade (to my knowledge). Anyway, look forward to a fix, but at least it is smooth once again. Hope this post offers some relief to other experiencing this game destroying problem.