Performance Question

[OTHG_GOOSE]

     Hey everyone i have a quick question here are my pc specs   3.3 ghz dual core 2 gigs of ram nvidia 8800gt best i ever get is 25 fps and 18fps if there are more than 4 people or some of the outdoor track's. I have used the original exe's i have run with v sinc on and off lower resolutions nothing helps. My first thought is bad/quick coding porting it over to pc? xbox 360 is a 933 mhz processor now i realize xbox has the same hardware which fine tuning the game would be easier but it wont play on a machine that is over 3 times faster? Something is wrong here i have posted on there forums all you get are flames and no answers. Thought i would come here and ask you guys for suggestion or possible fixes you have heard.

[Scawn7]

While you do have a very healthy CPU, your GPU and ram is matching the minimum requirements to even play the game. Basically, any card below what you have should not even be able to run Reflex so you shouldn't expect to see blazing FPS. Trying the original exe's was a very smart first step. They do only affect online FPS but since you're never getting 30+ fps, I can understand why they didn't make a difference although it was worth a shot to make sure they were not the limiting factor. Answer the following questions and I'll try to assist you further:

1. What drivers do you currently have installed?
2. What is your monitor's native resolution?
3. What are your current MX vs ATV Settings?

[OTHG_GOOSE]

   Desktop is set at 1280x1024, In Game1024x768 on a crt monitor running 75 hertz refresh rate. Current setting in game are shadows off, vsync off and motion blur off. In the lobby I easily get 80+ fps, even when i watch someone I get 40+ fps. I have the latest drivers on the nvidia site.

[Scawn7]

I would suggest you stick with the patched exe's that cap you at 30fps, and make sure you use the same settings and turn off AA. That exe is much more stable for FPS and you aren't going to run much above 30 FPS online anyway with other players. Also, go to the nVidia control panel and make sure all settings are at default, and then set "Vertical Sync = Force Off" as the only adjustment. You have it turned off in the Reflex settings, but this just makes sure it is off.

[DirtTwister]

I would recommend running at 1280x720 until you get a better video card. 8800 GT doesn't tell the full story.  I have an 8800 GTS and get a consistent 30 FPS at 1280x720, except on Grasslands and Headshake.  I run with the patched exes, VSync on, but I run with refresh at 60hz, motion blur off, Texture Quality High, Shadow Quality High, and Antialiasing none. .  Your video memory, video card bus width, and number of cuda's seems to be the biggest factors.  The 8800 is working to keep up with this game.   

[Xtrem]

  Im running a 5870 with 1600 Stream Processors  and i still get lag on grass and headshake..... 


  Im a firm believer that this game barely uses the GPU and instead runs heavy on the CPU which is why your 3.3 Dual is having problems running the game.    I own an Intel 3.4 Dual (Not a core2 or Duo), 3GB ram with an 8800GTS and its slo-mo city....   Ive put my 5870 in and had the same result.   Its not the Graphics cards that are lacking... its the CPU.  The difference in the 3.4 and my gamer system is an AMD 3.0Ghz Quad......   

   The Intel system should by all means run this game....   I also think the game was build to run on a system with a very low demanding OS alot like the Xbox and PS3 use.   Not the Resource hogging Windows we all use on your gaming PC's.   

  I also believe new User created tracks will solve alot of the lag issue with less objects and less animation which i think is the main culprit in the sh!tty frames we get hardware that should atleast run the game fine on low settings.

[Fixer]

Your OS will definitely make a difference I get 50% better FPS on XP over Vista on the same machine.

Dual Boot is worth the effort, also Vista and Win7 don't support hardware-sound cards

[DirtTwister]

The reason that grassland and headshake work your system hard is the amount of detail on the dispmap in combination with how the shadow map is built.  The little rough areas all over the place create a lot more triangles to process.

http://dirttwister.com/images/reflex/GrassLandDispMapInLeveller.png
http://dirttwister.com/images/reflex/GrassLandShadowMapInLeveller.png
http://dirttwister.com/images/reflex/GrassLandShadowMapInLeveller2.png

The game relies on a really good video card.  The number of cudas (or whatever ATI calls theres) is important.  The memory bus width is also important.  So 1 gig of memory, 512 bit memory width and lots of cudas.

On my system (I have an AMD 6400 X2) and it is not cpu bound when playing the game. I am limited by my video card.

Bruce (DirtTwister)

[Xtrem]

  The 5870 runs on a 256Bit width memory....  which is fine with DDR5.    It should by all means run this game at maximum settings..  I refuse to believe that a consol graphics system is more powerful than my dedicated graphics card.    Im running a 2.6Ghz Quad with 4GB DDR2 1066 ....   my 8800GTS 640MB ran the game basicly the exact same.... UNTILL i deleted the savegame.bmxl file.   Now the 5870 is actually running the game a bit better.

   I recently purchased Alive..... and can say the tracks and game world look amazing...  but i feel Reflex is a better game.   


  I run my settings pretty much the same as you bruce....  but 1440x900 @ 75Hz

[DirtTwister]

My 8800 GTS has a 320 bit memory interface.  Cards with 512 seem to work better.  The 8800 GTS has 96 Cuda's.  I don't know how to compare Streams to Cuda's.  The 5870 lists that it has 80 Texture units.  Reflex uses shaders extensively and it definitely does multiple levels of processing of textures.  I only have 320 mb of video memory, which hurts me in other games, but doesn't seem to matter with Reflex.

I think if you watched your cpu utilization you would see that it is probably about 50% or lower and the bottleneck is your video card.  My cpu utilization is 80% and I have an AMD 6400 X2.  In order for you cpu to be the bottleneck it needs to be running at 100% or at least a single core needs to be running at 100%.