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Solved Windows 10: Low Frame Rates Despite (BECAUSE OF!) Good Hardware

Levis said:
@Hylie Pistof if you aren't using enb or reshade could you extract this to your potc folder (not program, the folder where the exe is located) and use the LAUNCHER.exe to start the game.
Please let me know if this works. It should cap your fps at 60
Click to expand...
The file I posted here should limit your FPS to 60 also but I must have done something wrong .... But atm I just dont have the time to look into it agian.

@Armada could you take a look if you can get this utility to recognise potc in W10 (I dont have a W10 pc yet I can test thigs on, my hobby pc's are all still running w7 due to compatability issues) FPS_Limiter_0.2
 
Levis said:
The file I posted here should limit your FPS to 60 also but I must have done something wrong .... But atm I just dont have the time to look into it agian.
Click to expand...
Didn't @Hylie Pistof already try that? He said he just got a Command Prompt box (Jay, I said it right! :razz) but it didn't actually do anything.
 
I used to use Rivatuner for years. It was a great utility but eventually became obsolete and I only use MSI Afterburner now for overclocking the video card. POTC puts too much of a load on it so I had to stop doing that too. The 290X started making bad noises...........

So how do you activate Rivatuner in Afterburner? I have been looking and find no way to do it. I am having a bad eyes day and everything is a blur.
 
You can launch RivaTuner separately if you search for it from the Start menu, which will bring up the interface in the screenshot above.
However, to use the on-screen display (thus activating the FPS limit), you need to configure that in Afterburner's settings dialogue. If you need to know which settings to adjust, I can go over that tomorrow when I'm at my main PC.
 
Hmm, I see nothing like that anywhere. I will reinstall Afterburner and see if it shows up.
 
Ah, it might be an optional extra when installing Afterburner... I can't quite remember, but that may be why it's not there.
 
Rivatuner seems to be working just fine so far. I set the fps limit at 150 as that doesn't slow down the game and the higher frame rate makes the mouse work a lot smoother.

It's too bad that Bandicam didn't work out as it would have let me use just one utility for fps, movies, and screenies.
 
So the solution is Bandicam? I ask because later in this thread Hylie mentiones it stopped working! Then we have the suggestion from Armada to use MSI afterburner to limit the fps................and that tool that Levi made that seems to have been forgotten (like did it work for you Levi and if so on what windows? do you think it will work in XP?).

I ask this as i'm currently running Beta 3.5 as Beta 4 just is changed so much (in the engine.exe) it no longer runs well on the native hardware/OS that PotC did. Problem is that as Hylie mentions things are a bit choppy in Beta 3.4-3.5 and being able to limit the fps should fix that :)

So chaps what solution for the longterm?

Bandicam, MSI afterburner or Levis DOS-BOX ( ;) ) erm command prompt tool?
 
For me Bandicam quit working and and Levis's app never did work, but Rivatuner in MSI Afterburner works great and is on all the time as it works in other games just fine too.
 
I think @Black Bart is having the reverse problemfrom that described here.
This one is about performance is TOO GOOD in Windows 10 so it becomes bad.
But he uses Windows XP with, by now, quite old hardware.
I'd be very surprised if the same solutions would work.
But of course, feel free to try.

@Levis did not test that tool of his on Windows 10.
Apparently it does work in earlier Windows versions, but not actually in the version where we really need it. :facepalm

(Please correct me if I'm wrong here; I haven't fully been keeping up with this.)
 
Trudat. I doubt he is getting 1200 frames per second and is in danger of burning up his hardware. While I sympathize with his plight as I spent decades playing catchup with the latest games, sooner or later we all need to spend some money upgrading obsolete hardware.
 
I would love to be able to tell you all what my fps is! :) sadly i can't seem to find a way to get that to display (i've turned 'show_fps =1' 'on' in the ini but that does seem to do anything) i've also tried fullscreen and the OSD fps readout thing in RivaTuner Statisitics Server does not seem to produce anything in PotC for me so far.....there are a number of settings for that, and i've tried vector 2D, vector 3D and Raster 3D on 'viewport' but not had it show yet. I guess the bottom righthand corner is the best place for it (as Armada had it on his screenshot of the utility)?

So how do you guys see your fps in PotC? I'm sure i've done it before, from within the game files too iirc.....very puzzling.

I can report that setting the framerate limit to 100 (in RivaTuner Statisitics Server) has resulted in a more smooth, and general better performance in 3.5 for me (in menus, tradeshops, at sea etc), i've also added some antialising (4x and some ansiotropic x2) that might help reduce the fps, and thus 'stutter' also, it seems to be working, but until i can report on my fps i can't know for sure, but i'm 80% certain my game smoothness has improved to normal Beta 1 and earlier performance :D

In relation to my 'ancient' hardware.....well really......rude much?! ;) Old games often work best on older hardware, guys like GOG do a great job making these old games playable on new hardware and OS, but still you get (in general) the best performance on hardware from the era of the specific game. I had even been keeping a W98se based p166 around for a few old classics (like Daggerfall) that just would not run well on newer systems(on XP and above the dungeon quest items are invisible in Daggerfall!).

Now thanks to GOG i just have this XP based machine for older games, and it is my main gaming platform as i prefer older games in general. And this machine is no slouch! It is a dual core AMD machine @2.6Ghz and it sits in the 'low midrange' of passmark cpu ratings:

PassMark - AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Dual Core - Price performance comparison

Sure my i5 is about 7x as powerfull in terms of the CPU mark rating, but in terms of practical games playing they are not that far apart IF i'm not playing the latest AAA games (which i don't enjoy often, so i mostly don't).

The GPU, that Nvidia 9600GT (it is a passively cooled one too, i like silence when i game/use a computer!) is not 'bad' either. It sits somewhere in the 'mid to high range' chart with a score around 500 i suspect (this link is for the less powerful GS version):

PassMark - GeForce 9600 GS - Price performance comparison

Sure even my not-really-a-gaming 750Ti rated around 3600 is, like with the CPU difference, about 7 times as powerful as this older card, but depending on the game, there is not that great a difference in play (CivIV for example or SMAC etc).

So what i'm saying is older hardware is fine (and even better in some cases!) for playing older games, and the issue we seem to have here is less related to what hardware is running PotC, but more the way Engine.exe is running and the changes the Build Mod have made to that.

It would seem if PotC has a tendancy to 'race' in terms of fps, as in no in-engine method to throttle the fps, then THAT is what is behind peoples performance issues much of the time (unless they are running it on their laptops with weak on-die GPU choices).

On this rig even stock PotC would have those moments, going up the stairs in the tavern in Oxbay (to use it's original name) always caused me some mouse lag, even in the stock game, and likely it was due to too high fps at that point in the game (i'm right up close to a wall with low textures, so the fps probably spike upwards until i get around the stairs to see the whole room again etc).

PotC was DESIGNED to run (so the ENGINE.exe was also) on Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, and a Pentium III 800 or better, with 128MB of RAM, the card was any 32MB Direct X 9.0 compatible card.

My specs on this XP rig smash THAT to pieces, and i'm very happy and proud of this great old gaming machine, and i've never had a performance problem running the Build Mod until after Build 14 Beta 1 (it seems) ;)

So what i'm saying is my hardware is (WAS) fine, and it is only the changes to the ENGINE.exe that have made it not so because those changes now seem to have changed how memory is used in the game, even if i have plenty spare on my hardware it is not being 'seen' and used.

Beta 3.5 is perfectly functional, no CTD's at all so far, but it does have the issues this thread talks about, for whatever reason, and it effects my rig as well as more powerful ones, having an FPS limiter in the Build might be a good thing to try to get working going forward perhaps? If for no other reason than to protect peoples super powerful hardware?

Anyway if you guys know how to get PotC to display the on screen FPS that will be my next thing to try to sort out :)
 
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I have no doubt the game without mods can run fine in your computer.
But so many things have been added and changed that the system specifications are no longer the same.

Especially some recent additions, mainly the PostInit system for Leveling, put a LOT of extra strain on everything.
Ideally, of course that shouldn't be the case. But it is anyway.

What is the most recent game version that runs smoothly and reliably?
The Beta 3.5 WIP version that is still available from the forum?
Because I'm beginning to wonder if we need to revert to such an earlier state.

I'd really rather not have to do that, but if 3.5 is still OK for you and 4 isn't, that proves the added stuff is still a bit on the "too heavy" side.
 
3.4 from the MoDdb site with the zip patch file that makes it the 3.5 version is fine, in terms of no CTD on sea/town and land/town transitions. I also have that version running fine without needing to set compatibility mode to 'Win98/ME' on the ENGINE.exe (running under XP off course).

It seemed that to avoid the issues under Beta 4 i HAD to set it to compatibility mode to avoid the CTD's but still had the graphics icons and sea textures issues. Even using the older ENGINE.exe did not get around all those kind of issues sadly (for some reason?) in that build, and i'm not exactly sure why. But aside from those issues Beta 4 runs more smoothly than Beta 3.5, even on my rig.

The problem with this 3.5 (and what....3.4? was 3.3 ok?) version is the performance as Hylies thread here goes into, and it seems it is not just related to fast hardware as my creaking 32bit 2.6Ghz dual-core 3GB RAM XP based PC and 9600GT 512MB GPU also has shown large performance improvements by limiting the fps with an external utility.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Because I'm beginning to wonder if we need to revert to such an earlier state.
I'd really rather not have to do that, but if 3.5 is still OK for you and 4 isn't, that proves the added stuff is still a bit on the "too heavy" side.
Click to expand...

I'd say i'm an outlier in terms of what system i'm running the Build Mod on! How many people do you know that still use an XP based machine as their main gaming rig!!! Not many, if any (except myself off course). XP is no longer supported, so it has to be kept off line, and most people do quite a bit of on-line gaming these days (Steam etc), so i would not revert all your work just for maybe one guy :)

Beta 4 seems to run well for people that had issues with Beta 3.

Hmm if i had any concerns for Beta 4 i would say it is that maybe during all the changes you 'might' be loosing or decreasing some of the great parts of the Build Mod? Like i notice Direct Sail has bits split across a couple of files now (NK.c has bits that used to be in just CCCdirectsail it seems?) and i worry that the more slow sim-like aspects of the Build might be getting degraded or overlooked for new content etc? I'm not sure this is the case, but the slow sim-like part of what the Build Mod was at it's best, most smooth and stable versions (whenever that was!) is it's main unique feature set, especially these days where you can drown in all the simple arcade like pirate themed games out there.

Anyway in short DO NOT CHANGE stuff just for me, just keep the soul of the Build Mod strong and keep looking for those improvements it has become so loved for :)

Pieter Boelen said:
Oh, with 3.5 you mean the ModDB version plus the small zip?
I normally refer to that one still as 3.4, so I thought you had meant maybe this one:
Mod Release - Build 14 Beta 3.5 Internal WIP For Testing | PiratesAhoy!

What performance problem do you have?
The last ModDB release still had the "1 second stutter" in 3D sailing mode.
Click to expand...

Yeah the stutter, in the interface screens when in stores, in 3D sailing mode, all the stuff Hylie talks about in this thread (and sorry to semi-derail it!). His fix for high end hardware under Windows 10 also seems to be a fix under low end hardware under Windows XP, in relation to that stutter, it does seem to be related to limiting FPS to improve performance.

And anyone any idea how to show my exact FPS on screen while i play PotC? Still trying to do that :)
 
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Black Bart said:
So how do you guys see your fps in PotC? I'm sure i've done it before, from within the game files too iirc.....very puzzling.
Click to expand...
You need to set which statistics to display (in this case, just FPS) in Afterburner's Settings screen. In the Monitoring tab, scroll down and select Framerate in the graph list, and then tick "Show in On-Screen Display" further down the page.
Afterburner Settings1.png

Now, when you turn on the OSD, it should display the FPS in the position and colour you specified in RivaTuner.
 
Huzzah! It works :) ok well at the first land location looking towards Speightstown from the wharf i'm getting around 55 fps and sailing around the French ships at port 30-40 fps (all smooth, no constant micro-stutter).

He he...so not 1,000's like Hylie had!! But it is definitely smoother vs when i first started playing Beta 3.5. I might need to reduce the anti-alising!!! :sail
 
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@Black Bart: in what ways do you feel we're losing functionality that we had before?
That isn't meant to be happening, but it is difficult to judge what effect our changes have on how the game plays.
So your feedback on that would be much appreciated.
 
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