SLOW HaloPC performance with 9800

[therealnickdanger]

My buddy has a Sony VAIO with XP Pro, a 1.7GHz CPU, 1GB PC-133 (2x512), and a 7200RPM 80GB HDD. He really has no reason to not get good framerates in HaloPC. He has an ATI 9800 with 5.11 drivers and even at 640x480 with ugly settings, he gets ABYSMAL framerates - rarely over 30fps.

Virus scans and spyware scans come up clean, CPU and memory usage prior to starting Halo are low. He's been playing this way for about a year and I never realized how bad it was until I played on his system for a few seconds. Even my 9600 can do over 60fps at 640x480 with full effects, so something is certainly fishy.

FYI, it's a plain ol' 9800 with 256MB. Not and XT or anything fancy...

 

[Lonyo]

Haha.
1) 1.7GHz P4 = Williamette core = crap
2) Halo for PC = crap. It doesn't run well because it's a bad port, not because of bad computer specs.

Maybe it's performing a little worse thna it should, but I can't check because my internet is super slow at the moment, but Hal was poorly ported, and the Williamette P4 cores weren't very good at all.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Halo for PC did suck, yes. I remember getting terrible framerates on my 9700 Pro back in the day too. However if you've lowered the settings to the point that it's playable on a 9600 and it's still not right on the 9800, then it's got to be a software issue. I can't remember what though, because it's been years since I tried to play - mainly because it was so damn slow

 

[Pete]

I actually just played Halo on my PC with a 9800P 128MB, and I don't recall framerate issues. I use an Athlon XP 2400+ with 2x512MB DDR266, pretty much the bottom rung of gaming rigs. Your friend's weak-sauce Willamette core P4 and SDR133 is probably--OK, I'm 99.94% sure it's responsible for his low framerates, though. Your P4 3GHz with DDR is almost definitely more than twice as fast as his CPU+RAM combo, which would explain your seeing over twice the framerate at a GPU-friendly resolution of 640x480.

Tell him to buy a faster CPU and move up to DDR RAM. Assuming he has a reasonable PSU, he can probably move to an AGP-based A64 system for less than $300. He can probably find something like my setup for less than half that, used.

BTW, he's disabled vsync and Halo's framerate cap, right? Just covering all the bases. I may be overestimating his system's suckiness (VAIOs weren't the fastest prebuilts, too), tho, so check something like TomsHardware CPU roundups to see if they tested Halo on a range of CPUs. I'm positive they've got a P4 of your friend's vintage.

 

[therealnickdanger]

I know that era of P4 was particularly weak-sauce, but I figured his superior gfx card would make up for it... He's very anti-upgrade and usually cringes every time I suggest an upgrade. I'll see what he says about the CPU/mobo upgrade, but I doubt it.

Thanks for all the responses - what is this about a HaloPC framerate cap? I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing. I know UT2K4 has one... how do I defeat Halo's? I've read nearly every tweek guide and not seen anything about it...

??

 

[Crescent13]

Originally posted by: therealnickdanger
I know that era of P4 was particularly weak-sauce, but I figured his superior gfx card would make up for it... He's very anti-upgrade and usually cringes every time I suggest an upgrade. I'll see what he says about the CPU/mobo upgrade, but I doubt it.

Thanks for all the responses - what is this about a HaloPC framerate cap? I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing. I know UT2K4 has one... how do I defeat Halo's? I've read nearly every tweek guide and not seen anything about it...

??

I don't think you can. It was just coded badly. Like FEAR.

 

[Captante]

I played Halo PC on an AXP 2800+ with a Geforce Ti4600 & it ran pretty well.. not the best game overall but performance was never an issue, then when I upgraded to a 9800 Pro it really flew... although I still have it installed, I havn't played it since I bought my 6800GT.

 

[ZobarStyl]

Originally posted by: Crescent13
I don't think you can. It was just coded badly. Like FEAR.

Not quite...FEAR may not be the most efficient code out there, but Halo is hands down the most badly coded game for PC ever, considering the source. How they managed to take it from a Celly 733/GF3 (XBox) to PC and it still hurts my 6800GT is beyond me. Part of me wonders whether or not it was intentional to make users buy Xboxes.

 

[mrgq912]

Halo is not the worst port ever. In fact, I always felt it was the best port ever done.

I always play Halo PC for 15-30 minute streches atleast once a week.

What I love about the game is that, from the moment I double click the Halo icon on my desktop, I am playing the game in under 15 seconds. No joke.

If I die, I am go right back to my last save point, in about a sec.

I love it. No load times longer than 30 secs. ever. I hate games which make me wait for minutes.

And I don't have a killer rig.

AMD 2600 fsb333, nforce2 board, 512mb ddr, 6800gt.

 

[Slicedbread]

It may be technically one of the best ports ever because most games were designed to be cross platform and halo was not but it still managed to be a lot less fun then the original. -plus banshees suck.

As for the framerate issue most people were getting those framerates with the 9800 at res >1280 so make sure you have the 1.06? or whatever the newest version was, because the first one was almost utterly unplayable by last gen cards. Try lowering the AF on the game I remember this helped fps alot when i used to play it, also changing the device id to a 9800 pro helped but i dont think thats gonna help your friend. In addition if you check the gearbox forums for the older post you might find some help.

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: therealnickdanger
what is this about a HaloPC framerate cap? I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing. I know UT2K4 has one... how do I defeat Halo's? I've read nearly every tweek guide and not seen anything about it...

I've since uninstalled the game, but it's right there on the options page, IIRC. Maybe under "Graphics" or "Video?" It's probably a remnant of its console roots, as it aims for 30fps on the Xbox. IIRC--and I may be imagining some--the options are 30fps, 60fps, vsync, and no vsync. Try that first, it may solve his problem enough that he's not forced/tempted to upgrade his CPU.

mrqq912, heh, that fast loading is probably a direct result of its console roots, not anything specific to the conversion. As a console game, it has to load as little as possible in order to be as fast as possible b/c it's mainly loading off the CD/DVD, rather than a PC's much faster HD. And its textures aren't that high quality, b/c it's only got less than 64MB RAM to work with in the Xbox.

(Contrast that with HL2's default menu, which takes my rig forever to load. Let's not get into their level loads, either , but that may be due to more and higher-quality textures than engine quirks.)

 

[therealnickdanger]

OK, I thought there was cap other than the VSYNC options. His is set to "no vsync", so I know that's not the culprit. It probably is just his PC, it seems slow in general all the time anyway... stupid Willy core...

I don't want to turn this into a Halo discussion thread, but I think HaloPC is completely awesome. If more people played it, Custom Edition would be the BEST! I played it on the Xbox almost since it came out and I can't get enough of HaloPC - I play probably two hours per night. The CD never leaves my drive.

A friend turned me on to Xfire and now it's even better, I can just double-click the server I want to join and - no joke - I'm tearing sh*t up in Blood Gulch in under 10 seconds, I've timed it. My ping is normally either 35 or 65 and rarely 100, but even that it plenty playable.

I use a Super Joybox11 to plug in my Xbox controller to USB, PLUS I found a driver to use my Xbox Live Headset as a microphone for voicechat over Xfire. Combined with a steady 60fps locked with v-sync and 16x AF, it's the greatest, smoothest version of Halo you can get! Custom Edition easily has 50% better framerates - fewer spikes - but like I said, barely anyone plays it. Those that do usually have dumb mods...

BTW, I just ordered an ATI X800 XT AIW, so I should be able to rock 1280x768 with v-sync without a hint of sluggishness.

 

[BenSkywalker]

First off, make sure AA and AF are disabled. They don't work right/at all but they still kill your framerate. Have you looked into the command line arguments to force the game into fixed function mode? I would try that and see what kind of numbers you get. If they are the same- your issue is not the video card. If they shoot up considerably then the poor performance is due to your vid card.

Halo is hands down the most badly coded game for PC ever

If by the 'most badly coded game for PC ever' you mean incredibly well coded then you have a good point. Halo scales damn near perfectly everywhere it should- just like a Carmack title. Halo was the first game that actually made anything resembling decent shader useage and everyone was crying when they realized all of the BS about the great shader performance of that gen was a rather sickening joke. The R3x0 cards sucked hard at running anything resembling a decent shader load- it just sucked less then the NV3x boards did. Fire up Halo on a 7800/1800 and you will find that the game is buttery smooth.