How to improve frame rate?

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[cargohauler]

Hi everyone.
After a long absense from Ship Sim I came back and purchased SS08. To my suprise, I tuned down all the graphics settings and I am still getting VERY VERY low rates, around 1-5 I assume. Any way to bump these up a little? I have a high end gaming laptop, best on the market about a year ago...Any suggetsions would be great thanks 

[Captain Kool]

What are your specs?

[cargohauler]

Umm, I have an ATI mobility radeon X600 128MB.
1 gig ram
80.4gb of hard drive space

[slim]

Might want to get a 256mb graphics card

[Parsec]

Might want to get a 256mb graphics card

I have 512 MB on my card, and it helps in all the games I own except SS06 and SS08. I needed to lower the core clock speed and memory clock speed in order to get decent frame rates, but still, the game nearly halts when certain scenarios occur, eg. lots of objects. So it seems like the 3D engine doesn't fit very well with my computer...

If your ATI card has some sort of control panel, try adjusting the settings to "speed" or "performance" instead of quality. Turning off all anti-aliasing is a good starting point.

[Britannic]

Switch to 16-bit
minimize to 800x600
if you have two cores, untick the second
up your page file
look on your card settings and cache

Sky

[cargohauler]

Thanks I'll try that when I get home.

[captseaton]

Umm, I have an ATI mobility radeon X600 128MB.
1 gig ram
80.4gb of hard drive space

 
I really hate to rain on your boat parade but you are going to have a very difficult time running SS 2008 on a laptop. I tried running SS 2006 on my laptop and it was OK but I couldn't see the smokestacks on Titanic and horrible frame rate. This was the same laptop I used to play several MMORPGs on. This is not Flight Simulator with a little plane flying over buildings, this is a very intense graphical program and the minimum system requirements are the BARE minimum for the game to install and run. On my new rig, I have an 8800GTS with 640MB of DDR3 RAM and it gets toasty running SS 2008.

If you really want to try to get this running on your current system, you really need to take a look at background processes. If your system tray in the lower right hand corner is full of 4 or 5 icons, disable them all...antivirus too, and try again. Disable unnecessary services, tweak, tweak, tweak. If you don't know how,  find a geeky friend to do it for you.

Best of luck to you.

[[RWP]DJM]

If I can just offer my opinion here

I wouldn't recommend ever disabling every item in the Notification Area (System Tray).  A firewall for example, whilst surfing, this is a definite must, for security purposes of course

Always check before you disable something, you may disable the wrong thing

Regards.

DJM.

[captseaton]

If I can just offer my opinion here

I wouldn't recommend ever disabling every item in the Notification Area (System Tray).  A firewall for example, whilst surfing, this is a definite must, for security purposes of course

Always check before you disable something, you may disable the wrong thing

Regards.

DJM.

Windows XP SP2 has a built in Firewall. If you have a 3rd party Firewall such as Norton, you are just wasting system resources. Unless you go to sites that make you wish you did have a stronger Firewall.

I agree with you DJM, I was just throwing out some suggestions to try and get the software running at an acceptable frame rate. Don't disable everything, but don't try and keep a music player or something else running while trying to play SS 2008. I just don't think the Mobility Radeon is going to cut it. Much like my Nvidia GeForce Go 5200 wouldn't cut it in SS 2006.

I fix so many computers with Windows Messenger, Adobe Speed Launch, Sound Contol Panels, Winamp, Yahoo, and 20 gazillon other things that run at startup with a nice little icon in the system tray. I love the look I get from people when I tell them WeatherBug is Malware. You want weather? WeatherUnderground, I'll make you a shortcut and put it on your desktop.

Want to tweak your services?
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

If you go down the SAFE column, you will gain some speed and *shouldn't* have any adverse effects.

Caveat emptor: Tweaking your system should be left to professionals. Like me.

[[RWP]DJM]

Black Viper eh, that takes me back lol.

Not used that for ages, do it all manually now

I agree, some peoples startup look like a shopping list, I seem to alter them all the time too

Regards.

DJM.

[captseaton]

Black Viper eh, that takes me back lol.

Not used that for ages, do it all manually now

I agree, some peoples startup look like a shopping list, I seem to alter them all the time too

Regards.

DJM.

Well Blackie was down for a while, he's back with a vengeance. I love his rant on how he likes his food. I've had fun experimenting with my new x64 box, cause you can actually disable MORE than ever. Oh yeah, for god's sake, turn off that indexing service...lol 

[[RWP]DJM]

LOL @ Indexing Service.......definitely improves things with that off

[SSNick]

Might want to get a 256mb graphics card

I have the ATI RADEON X600 PRO 256 MB,and it works fine here.

[greyhill]

maybe you should try a program called fsautostart, it was designed for, and is still used for flight sim 2004 to increase frame rates. The program shuts down programs that run in the background greatly increasing your computers resources to run your game. The program is very easy to use and explains what each program does, aswell as recommends which ones to leave running. I used it for a number of years with no problems. It was designed for flight sim but i see no reason why it shouldnt run for ship sim, infact i think i used it for arrmed assault which was a labour intensive game with no problems. to find an uptodate version use google, the program is freeware.

[captseaton]

I have the ATI RADEON X600 PRO 256 MB,and it works fine here.

Big difference between desktop PCI cards and laptop cards. Laptop video cards are notoriously throttled back to improve battery performance and to compensate for a lack of proper cooling.

[Subwolf]

Or hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete to find out how many programs and processes are running. The important thing is the use of CPU, if it's % is low there is no need to disable anything, if it's more than 20% you should stop programs not needed when you run SS08.

Never disable your antivirus or firewall as suggested here, if you got a dsl connection you are always connected to the internet.

[Parsec]

This is not Flight Simulator with a little plane flying over buildings, this is a very intense graphical program and the minimum system requirements are the BARE minimum for the game to install and run. On my new rig, I have an 8800GTS with 640MB of DDR3 RAM and it gets toasty running SS 2008.

Is it the amount of objects that make the game intense, or is it the 3D engine...? 

I have other games, far more complex, that runs a lot smoother with higher graphic quality settings...

[captseaton]

Is it the amount of objects that make the game intense, or is it the 3D engine...? 

I have other games, far more complex, that runs a lot smoother with higher graphic quality settings...

I'm going to go with the 3D Engine and the realistic waves.

[cargohauler]

I just had to check the insteall DirectX box...I guess I had it installed...but I reinstalled it with that option checked and it runs really smoothly now