Topic: Need For Speed Underground gets slowdown

[neverhadachoice]

Hi,

Me and my friends have had some problems with NFS:U running weirdly.  At some points in a track it'll run at full speed and run great, but occasionally during some sections of track (not necessarily graphically intensive ones) the whole game slows down, and I don't mean the framerate just drops, the actual speed of gameplay goes down.  I find this odd.

My specs:

Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
XP3000+
512 mb dual channel ddr400
gigabyte ga7n400pro2
7200rpm hdd w/8mb cache

I've tried taking off FSAA/Anisotropic filtering but it has no effect, same with lowering the resolution.  This happens on two of my friends computers as well.. anyone got any ideas as to why this is?  Before anyone suggests it, I've got the latest drivers for my video card and motherboard, windows is patched to date, and NFSU is at version 1.3.0

Help?

[neverhadachoice]

Here's my dxdiag, btw.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Doc Nyar]

Does this happen while you play online, or when you play single player (or both) ?

Try lowering your desktop resolution to 1024x768, 16bit, default refresh rate, just for test purposes.

When your game slows down, do you detect any cdrom activity ?

[neverhadachoice]

i haven't played online, just single player.  i'm currently running the game at 1024x768 in 32bit, and no, no cd-rom activity.  i'm going to try dumping the settings back as far as they'll go and see what happens but there's no reason a system like this shouldn't be at full res and ful detail.

i've been playing games for years now and i'm a little concerned because tthe way this behaves reeks of shitty coding

[Atomic Mitten]

Try updating and re-installing your mouse drivers, I read of an issue like this, because the mouse wasn't always being recognised by games, I mean the mouse's movement isn't always recognised at certain stages of a game.

In control panel click on the mouse Icon and see if in the mouse options there is a tab for disable acceleration in games, if there is check this box and see if it makes any difference.

Another thing I noticed in your dxdiag is that you have a Liteon CD Rom drive, have you tried updating the firmware for this drive ?

That might be worth a try too, ask your friends if they also have USB mice or Liteon drives.
This might help track down the problem.

This might also be of interest to you:

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/catalyst_310_release_notes.html#169870

[Doc Nyar]

i haven't played online, just single player.  i'm currently running the game at 1024x768 in 32bit, and no, no cd-rom activity.  i'm going to try dumping the settings back as far as they'll go and see what happens but there's no reason a system like this shouldn't be at full res and ful detail.

i've been playing games for years now and i'm a little concerned because tthe way this behaves reeks of shitty coding

I agree, it shouldn't be needed, but it's just for test purposes and limit the problem possibilities. If the game runs well in lower res, then at least we know where to look..

[neverhadachoice]

okay, tested it and here's how it goes:

it runs perfectly in any resolution at low detail, and does this at any resolution in high detail.  this is just plain strange.  this is a pretty high-end machine; there's no reason that it should be crapping out like this when there's a lot going on, ESPECIALLY not at low resolution, although the fact that it is happening at any resolution makes me suspicious that the video card may not be at fault, as a brand new radeon 9800 pro shouldn't be...

[RotteVis]

Another thing I noticed in your dxdiag is that you have a Liteon CD Rom drive, have you tried updating the firmware for this drive ?

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/catalyst_310_release_notes.html#169870

That is totaly useless


Update BIOS & mobo drivers

[Atomic Mitten]

I had a similar issue with a CD rom not recognising the Game CD properly Rottevis.

Try running the card on high detail but at AGP X 4 I read that this may make it stable.

Download this reporting application and see what it picks up :

http://www.aida32.hu/download

The personal user is the one you want.

[alienzero]

I have the exact same problem!!! and posted about it.

I am sure that it's not the cd-rom, because my game doesnt even run with a cd, plus i downloaded SP1 already.

and my bios/chipset/soundcard/videocard are all updated anything else to update ?
what does mobo mean by the way

here is my dxdiag

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Doc Nyar]

what does mobo mean by the way

Mobo means motherboard.