'Jumpy' frame rates... any ideas?

[warboysastro]

Hi folks - bought Phoenix at Wings & Wheels yesterday... isntalled it last night.

My PC is fairly high spec... Athlon 64 3200, 4GB DDR2 RAM, ATI 256MB PCI Express graphics card, and the OS is Vista Home Premium.

I'm running at max resolution on my 20" widescreen monitor, and with everything turned up to the max, I get a bit of screen jitter/frame ripping, which whilst usable, is annoying.

However, if I go down in resolution, enable low quality scenery, disable anti-aliasing, no refletions etc... it's (wait for it) just the same. The same frame ripping/jitter.

So - I'm guessing it's not the usual 'machine not up to it' problem, but something else.

Out of interest, Reflex XTR exhibits the same problem on this machine, and it was fine on my (much) lower spec old XP machine.

Any thoughts?

Thanks - Rob.

[moyesboy]

My spec is not dissimilar to yours and it only stutters when my mail checks in - but I am on xp of course.

I'm sure your problem in vista (windows millenium edition v2) - it is using up all your system resources. This is illustrated capably by the fact that your xtr is jumpy when it wasn't on XP on a much lower spec machine - phoenix is actually supposed to be less machine demanding than xtr.

I have no personal experience of vista (I have heard too much bad about it to try it for now - and for the forseeable future no professional CAD system is going to run on it anyway - and thats my work!) - however perhaps there are some ways to minimise vistas strangle hold over your system resources by reducing the amount of pointless vista eye candy that is robbing all the graphics capability from your machine.
A search through gaming forums might reveal if anyone is managing to get high end games to run on vista - but I think all the serious gamers have stayed with XP too.

[Fixxxer]

I would have thought it is probably a gfx card driver issue, make sure you have the latest from ATI's website and remember that vista is a new OS which might be causing a problem but most others using it with vista seem to have had no problems.

Sencondly it might help to simply disable the 'V sync' in the options of phoenix.

Also locate "software explorer" located somewhere in the control panel. run this and it will give you a detailed overview of all currently running apps, go through them and turn off any that are not needed, you can also adjust what loads at startup through this.

I doubt it's your machine as my current spec is a 3gh p4, 512 DDR & 256 ati 9550 which runs it maxed out and at full resolution with no problem.

[warboysastro]

Thanks for the replies guys - different strategies, but I'll investigate all suggestions!

I really don't want to have to buy ANOTHER graphics card. I have a feeling it probably is some kind of driver issue as this machine should be up to the task IMHO.

Interesting that Fixxxer's machine has no problems, with a slightly lesser spec??

I emailed Phoenix too, so will be interesting to see what they say.

Thanks again - Rob.

[Stuart]

Not sure about Vista, but on mine I went into Control Panel, then System then the Advanced tab and told the machine to run for best performance, this way it reduces the processes to give you maximum RAM and CP output. Worked for me but not sure as I said on Vista.

[Fixxxer]

I do run a very tight ship where my pc is concerned, only absolutely necessary stuff running in the background i.e mcafee & windows defender. If I need to use something else then I load it up as required, you'd be suprised how many apps load at startup and just sit there taking up resources when thier not used most of the time and I don't let anything install it's self without knowing precisely what it is before hand.

You could always do a defrag of the HD just to try and speed access time up and also make sure the virtual ram cache is configured right as a last option. This setting is located in the control panel>system>advanced tab> performance settings>advanced tab.

Make sure you have an adequate amount of disk space dedicated, usually windows manages this but if all else fails then have a look at a custom size if it seems small. As a quide I have mine set to 768mb. BTW, the location i described above is obviously using xp and will probably differ on vista but it should still be accessable, If you can't find it then just do a search for 'virtual memory' using help.

[Ade_Law]

im running a 3gig pentium with 512 ram and a 256meg grx card and it runs super smooth on 12xx by whatever with everything on...

this is XP tho... my bet is gfx drivers

Ade

[Edders]

Mine too only stutters when outlook kicks in

Edders

[warboysastro]

Thanks for the further info, guys. I just got an email back from Phoenix tech help - that was fast, literally only a couple of hours, and their thoughts are the graphics driver too, since I gave them the spec of my PC.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I didn't need to use my CD supplied with the graphics card when I installed it as Windows found its 'own'.

That might be the cause...

Cheers - Rob.

[warboysastro]

Fixed! I reinstalled the ATI Radeon new drivers, AND deleted then reinstalled Phoenix. With everything turned on to the maximum now, it's smooth as silk - wonderful to fly.

Cheers - Rob

[Fixxxer]

Glad you got it sorted, pc's can be a pain in the @ss at times