Extreme FPS issue

[NotPigeon]

Video Card: MSI 8600GT 512mb

Ehh, that card is kind of bad. 8600GT < 7900GS

I can't even play it without it lagging all over the place.

Does it really matter?  It generally runs fine for me, and I'm using an integrated card.

things like this make me sad 

Things like what?  The fact that there are people trying to play games on these things?
I've got a card coming in the mail...

No, that you can run it fine without a graphics card, and my 512MB x1650 pro card cannot.

Well, "fine" as in not fullscreen, lowest graphics settings, long load times (although not for the analyzing), and lag if anything else is going on, but yeah.
Also, this is my 42nd post.

I get quick loading times, and play on the lowest graphic setting, but I do not get really good FPS, I don't understand how on board video can be doing better than my rig.

Nor do I.  Maybe it's a driver issue?

[spastic]

ATI Radeon x1650 pro 512MB, I've tried loads of different drivers, all to no avail.

[DremoraLord]

Just tested the beta and 'gold' version on my old pc. Its specs are:

AMD Athlon 3500+ 2.2 Ghz
Windows XP Home SP2
1 Gb RAM
ATI X800 XT PE 256Mb

So a pretty top end pc for 3 years ago, and I'd say a pretty average pc now, so should easily be able to run a moving blocks game.

Don't have actual benchmarks, but I'm sure the feeling of the game 'catching up' is caused by drastic changes in the frame rate, eg 50 to 30 in 1 second.

The gold version felt pretty smooth, although FRAPS reported a constant 30 fps, but it did drop below 25 a few times, causing serious lag.

On the Beta, felt MUCH better, getting steady 50+ fps at 1280x1024, and much smoother, this is all done using enhanced, as premium just mucks up the frame rate and makes the game look blurry, which I personally don't like anyway 

I think I've found an interesting clue actually. If the menu system runs at 60 fps or close, I'm pretty damn sure the real game will run well too, as before my fix, the 'gold' edition chugged on the menus and lagged in game, and now it runs at 60 fps. Same for my old comp. The beta's menus are fine, but the gold edition lags a lot. This might help the devs track down the cause of the lag?

As for potential fixes, i installed hotfixes for Vista (don't think it did anything), installed different drivers, and added a profile for QuestViewer.exe (found in steamapps-common-engine) to turn off SLI but maybe it helped? Ill run some more tests... 

[DremoraLord]

OK, Im completely confused... 

Deleting the profile made no difference now! I see the SLI Indicator Bars in game, but it makes no difference, and I'm getting decent FPS...

I just dont get it...

I stand by the menu comment though, anyone who is getting serious frame rate drops, whats your rate like in the menus. Test using fraps.

I'll install the lastest ATI drivers on my old system and see if it makes a difference. I'm still amazed (and very thankful) that my driver update worked, really hope they can get this sorted out, espcially after the beta ran beautifully with all drivers.

[Phetal]

I stand by the menu comment though, anyone who is getting serious frame rate drops, whats your rate like in the menus.

My beta menus had very high fps. around 70 if I remember right.
Gold = 30.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[DremoraLord]

And now my game is 'fixed' the menus are back up to normal speed 60 fps as Vsync is enabled by default in game.

I disabled Vsync by force in the Display Drivers and although the average speed is up, the min stays the same, but nevertheless, it does feel more responsive. Might want to try this if you need more fps.

Anyone else with slow menus?

[Lim-Dul]

I had "slow menus" when I was experiencing low performance but they are all good now. So maybe this WAS a driver issue after all? By the way - only 60 Hz? Change your refresh rate to 75 Hz using the "change resolution button". =)

[FabianN]

I too would like to report having FPS issues in this game.
In the beta I was able to play it at my desktop resolution no problem. Now, I need to turn everything down and at 800x600 Full screen(going windowed also kills the FPS, not as much as say, going up to 1024x768 full screen, but it still takes quite a big hit)

Here are my system specs:
Dual Intel Xeon 3.06GHz with Hyper Threading
2GB RAM
Geforce 7950GT 512MB(AGP)
Windows XP Service Pack 2
I am running the official Nvidia drive from their website. The version of driver is listed as: 6.14.11.6371

Running the game at 800x600 full screen with all other settings turned down, I top at 40fps, and I don't notice myself going below 20. But a big issue I get with FPS is that there are moments where it will suddenly take a 10-15fps drop. Just a straight drop in FSP, not a gradual drop. It will be like that for about 2 seconds, and then will go back up(again, straight back up, at around the same fps it was at before the drop). And it seems to be random. I've played a whole song without it happening(Fun Loving Criminals-Scooby Snacks), and then I played another song and it happened quite often for me(Daft Punk - Encore - Human After All / Together - Together / One More Time (reprise) / Stardust - Music Sounds Better with You{off of Alive 2007 album})

I love this game, but I had to stop playing it because it just become so annoying to have these fps drops.

If there is any other kind of information you need to help debug this, just ask.

[MagicX]

For any users that have FPS problems and also use AMD dual-core processors, make sure that you have the AMD Dual-Core Optimizer utility installed. My computer saw a drastic improvement in framerate by installing the optimizer by 40fps!!! If you don't have it installed and you use an AMD dual-core processor, I would suggest giving that a try first.

[petethepanda]

Figured I'd add my name to the list.

Q6600
4gb RAM
8800gt
Vista Premium x64

When I try to play at 1680x1050 I have to turn graphics down to normal and no AA to get a decent framerate, but it still drops to (what I assume is around) 30 a lot, even if I drop the res to 1280x768.

[Phetal]

something that people are forgetting, including me to this point, is the fact that the game reads from your harddrive constantly while playing... I wonder if hard drive speed could matter...

all my music is on a 5400rpm external.

[NightRyder]

eh, not hdd performance related.

It has to read a ~5meg file. That can fit in the cache of many hdds these days.

Plus, that is probably not something that would have changed from beta to release.

[Messerwitz]

Can confirm I am also having WAY slower FPS than the beta.

I am using same setup as beta (AA, resolution etc.) and I tried recording with Fraps, again - same setting as beta, whoa - it's a nightmare, you can barely hit notes. Will tinker with drivers and VSync today and see if I can get it to be less laggy when recording.

[DremoraLord]

Messerwitz, what setup do you have?

I'd say pretty much any vaguely recent PC should be able to play this game perfectly. On Beta my old PC stays above 50 fps on enhanced, and its not an amazing pc.

HDD makes no difference as the beta was reading from the same HDD and it worked fine. Seems that mostly Nvidia cards are affected, but maybe thats just because of market dominance (my X800 XT PE system has the same problems), I really don't know what made it work for me, I'm just glad it did.

It seems like the new version of Audiosurf has problems with lots of versions of drivers.

PS. Lim-dul, my 2405fpw supports 60 Hz only at 1920x1200, which is perfectly smooth

[DremoraLord]

Updated by old PC's Catalyst Drivers to 8.2 and its still as slow as it was....

Really, really weird...