Stumped on Video Problem

Alright, I've tryed everything. I'm going through NCSoft support, but they aren't much help, so I thought you guys might be able to find out whats wrong. Whenever I play the game, I just get terrible video lag. Unbearable, unplayable, my framerate just drops to nothing. I've run every test imaginable including everything on Norton Systemworks, everything passes on DxDiag, everything is working properly, I've run virus and spyware checkers, used MsConfig to stop all my processes that start up w/ windows (which was the latest NcSoft suggestion), and that worked the first time I tryed playing for like 10 minutes just to test it, but then the next time I turned on my comp to play, it was messed up again. I play (hah, or try to) regularly with my roomate, who plays fine, so I would think it isn't a network problem. I recently reformatted, but the problem was there before as well, and somehow stayed after the reformat. I'm on a Dell Inspiron 9100, and my system specs are as follows.

Inspiron 9100
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.20GHz
1024 MB RAM
DirectX 9.0c
Radeon Mobility 9800 (256 MB)
Windows XP

Thanks for any help in advance, and if I missed any important info, just ask, and its a good possibility I did b/c the post didn't go through the first time, so I might have been a little quick on the second pass. =P
I'll check back often, and thanks again!

~Grant

Have you checked your 3D settings? Things like Anisoptric Filtering and Anti-Aliasing can cause problems if set too high for your card's capabilities.
Also, I doubt this would be the problem but... Find the ATI Truform setting and disable it. In the Half-Life engine it caused problems (absolutely terrible framerates on an X800 playing a god-knows-how-old game).

If you're using the Catalyst Control Centre, click View, change it to Advanced and then go into the 3D settings.
If you didn't install the CCC, right-click on your desktop and choose properties. Click the Settings tab and then the Advanced button. I've got the CCC installed so you'll have to dig around to find the TruForm and 3D settings.

Have you tried to turn off Vsynch in the ati control panel, I know it has caused me a few problems in the past with an old 9800xt

Anyone else have any ideas? I'm still in with NC support, no headway so far though. Could it be something physically wrong with my vid card? Everything is testing out right, its just not working to the level it should...

~Grant

Have you tried re-running MSCONFIG to see if any of the programs you had disabled are back?

You don't mention anything about updating your drivers for your ATI Radion 9800 card. Have you downloaded and installed them? Since you're running DX9c, you need to get the latest drivers from ATI to support it properly.

Try updating to the cat.4.11 drivers. I've heard great things about them, but i have no first hand experience.

Also, try using the Driver Cleaner after the uninstall of your old drivers. It is found here.

www.guru3d.com

Then, reinstall the 4.11 cat drivers and tell us what happens

Cat 4.11 are one of the stable driver sets before ATI Upgraded there card range to the X800 series and started with the Cat 5 series.
The 4.11 drivers just seem to run more stable on older cards and are a good way of testing for problems with the system etc.

Sorry about that, I was using the Cat... 5.5 maybe? I think they just released 5.6, so yeah, I was using the Catalyst 5.5 drivers, but after I post this I'm going to go uninstall them, run driver cleaner, then install the 4.11 drivers. Wish me luck!

It's definitely worth a try, but it's only an option. If it works great, if not. Back to the drawing board.

I am runnign DX9c, but I keep hearing people say to revert back to the 4.11 ATI drivers instead of the 5.6 for my 9800 pro. Would running the 4.11's with DX9c cause problems?

Heh, back to the drawing board indeed. =(

Didn't work, anyone else have any ideas?

~Grant

No, I don't think they cause any problems. The way I look at it, the cat 4.11 drivers were made for the 9xxx series ATI Cards, where as the newer Cat 5.xx series drivers were really made for the Newer X800 series of cards due to all the extra features these cards have over the older ones.

One of the things I think is happening, although it may all be theory, is that GW is trying to access features that don't exist in the older cards and the newer drivers are trying to compensate for either errors in the coding on GW's part or a fault with the drivers to work properly with the older cards.

With the older drivers, you know for sure they were meant for your card and won't try and do any fancy stuff that your card doesn't have the features to do. THat is the reason we always say to go back to Cat 4.11 to test it all out.

However, it's also good to use Driver Cleaner when doing this to make sure all the Driver files are removed so you don't get any conflicts.

However, this doesn't always work, but has worked on quite a few occasions so far, which sort of says something about the game code.

The other option that is worth trying, is to set all the BIOS settings to default and to turn down the AGP settings. Switch down to 4x AGP and turn off AGP Fast Write etc. It's all a test bed and a pain in the arse, but if things are tested and appear to work all the time, then letting GW Support know, that it has solved your problem, gives them something to look at.

Sounds like my old PC Support Job and it's a pain in the arse.

Did you uninstall the Cat 5.5 drivers and run Driver Cleaner before running the Cat 4.11 install?

If not, I would recommend you run driver cleaner, as this will clean out any driver files that get left behind and stops any conflicts.

Yeah, I uninstalled the 5.5 drivers, rebooted in safe mode, ran driver and cab cleaner, and did the 4.11 install, did all the steps in the driver cleaner readme pretty much. I also did the same thing and installed Omega drivers as per one of my friends recommendations, same problem. Maybe my computer is just cursed...

~Grant

Oh yeah, 4.11 install was not in safe mode, that was after another reboot.