Performance improved by /nosound

By Talsworthy on April 21, 2009 4:04:43 AM from

Talsworthy

Join Date 02/2006

I've been having issues with Demigod performance. I had assumed it was my processor as its an AMD 3200+, 8800GT and 2 GB Ram.

However after seeing a similar post I tried the following.

Skirmish Map - Brothers.

First with sound

Game starts at Sim Speed of 4, then I go and cap the Portal to the right as I approach it moves down till hit hits 0 and stays there.

Then without sound using the /nosound option

Game starts at Sim Speed 4, I cap - still a steady 4 and fps 45. I then wade into battle and it remains at 4 with fps above 40.

My card is a Creative Labs Xfi Xtreme Gamer card (latest drivers Dec 2008) - so a good card. I have tried various options such as no hardware acceleration (much worse!) and turning off EAX etc. Tonight i'll turn back reverb back on to see if that has an effect.

So anyone else seeing a difference in performance with /nosound. Also Are there any other options on the switches - the sound options don't seem to make a difference.

I'll also try the onboard sound card tonight and post my findings. However IMHO the game performance should not be effected to this degree

Tals

If you are not sure how to implement the /nosound option then this post should assist https://forums.demigodthegame.com/348389

If you do have the issue Stardock have also made this post

for those of you experiencing the audio performance issues, could you please email [email protected] with the following information. Entitle your email NOSOUND PERFORMANCE ISSUE.

Before sending this information, please do the following if you have not already:

1) Update your sound drivers to the latest available.

2) Make sure your motherboard and chipset drivers are the latest available. (These are drivers such as Intel Chipset XXX where xxx is your motherboard chipset.)

Once you have the latest drivers, run Demigod and reproduce the issue. Then exit Demigod and create / obtain the following files. Please attach the following information to your email:

1) Please run the DXDiag.exe utility and save the output to a file.

2) Attach your DemiGodLog.TXT which can be found here:

%userprofile%\My Documents\my games\Gas Powered Games\Demigod\DemiGodLog.TXT

Thank you for your assistence in helping us address this issue for the community.

I'm also running into the same issues; I run a Creative Audigy 2, and a number of people (myself included) have found that changing the device settings from Quadraphonic to Desktop Stereo in the control panel made a significant difference. For me, it made the game fairly playable again, but even then only barely (huge increase though compared to what it originally was). Changing the in game sound options to low helped a little, but it was the difference between ~a -3 sim speed and a -2 sim speed, not exactly fantastic.

If you haven't tried switching from 5.1 or Quadraphonic then give it a go, hopefully that will help, but a fair number of people seem to have this issue so here's hoping we hear something official on it soon.

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I tried that this morning, unfortunately it was already on that.

It almost feels like the game doesn't use hardware acceleration or the EAX stuff at all.

Hopefully we can keep this topic alive and get a solution - when I did a search this is not a new issue

Tals

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Well, then for the love of god don't change it to quadrophonic

It's really kind of an interesting issue, I've never heard of a system bottlenecking on sound until this. I'd be really intrigued if it weren't happening to me -.-

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Quoting ,

quoting post

First with sound

Game starts at Sim Speed of 4, then I go and cap the Portal to the right as I approach it moves down till hit hits 0 and stays there.

Then without sound using the /nosound option

Game starts at Sim Speed 4, I cap - still a steady 4 and fps 45. I then wade into battle and it remains at 4 with fps above 40.

This pretty much equals my own experience. I already sent a mail to support some days ago, with DxDiag.txt and startup.log attached, as suggested in this thread: https://forums.demigodthegame.com/347688/#2152103 The thread got snowed under the many 'I can't connect' threads however.

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I'm seeing a massive difference when using the /nosound switch too. With /nosound I get a pretty constant simspeed of 7+, without it, it eventually slows during the course of a game to 0 or -1. Using sound it's borderline unplayable at the later stages of a game, despite having a pretty constant FPS.

I'm using an onboard Realtek using the latest drivers, set to Stereo Speakers in control panel and set to Low Quality and no reverb in the Sound options of Demigod.

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Interesting Supreme Commander which uses the same engine also seemed to have this problem - I couldn't find a solution but others maybe more sucessful.

This thread here seems a good starting point

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=295&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=400

I'm going to try installing the latest directx which has been recently updated

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en

Hopefully we can keep this thread focussed on issues directly related to the /nosound effecting the gamespeed.

Tals

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so how do you apply the /nosound ? Is it through the shortcut or is it through ingame console/command?

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The shortcut is the easiest way - just add it to the end /nosound. Not tried it through the console command.

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Quoting avnos,

reply 7

so how do you apply the /nosound ? Is it through the shortcut or is it through ingame console/command?

No, create a shortcut to Demigod.exe on your desktop, right click the shortcut, chose 'Properties' and in the command line in the Target field, add /nosound. So your command line should look something like this: "C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\Demigod\bin\Demigod.exe" /nosound

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Quoting Talsworthy,

reply 6

Interesting Supreme Commander which uses the same engine also seemed to have this problem - I couldn't find a solution but others maybe more sucessful.

This thread here seems a good starting point

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=295&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=400

This actually worries me a bit. It doesn't seem as if this ever got fixed there?

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Agreed it doesn't look good. I'm going to be trying a load of stuff tonight. If I hit the jackpot i''ll post but it would be nice for a dev to get involved and either give us options to force sound to be a lower quality eg mono etc or just give some more input. Certainly I believe the issue is more widespread than was appretiated.

Tals

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I have a SoundMax HD AD1986 A and I was having these issues. Ran with /nosound, works great. I figured out that if I set my card to stereo/headphones mode and turn the audio quality all the way down to low and no system reverb it doesn't happen as often. That said, it seems to eventually come back after I've played a few games. Really strange. I wonder if there's some kind of memory leak in the sound code that eventually catches up. At any rate, still running with sound seems to impact my fps. I can run with /nosound at all details on high, AA at x8, and vertical sync with a respectable framerate, there's something there that is significantly impacting performance.

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Hmm, I'd never heard of the sound issue in SupCom. I never actually had any issues that were soudn related in that game, but it looks like that was primarily for XFi (I'm running Audigy2).

Lets hope we have better luck this time =P

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Quoting Renwold,

reply 13

Hmm, I'd never heard of the sound issue in SupCom. I never actually had any issues that were soudn related in that game, but it looks like that was primarily for XFi (I'm running Audigy2).

Lets hope we have better luck this time =P

If you read the gaspowered thread you'll see its very much an issue in SC - 18 pages, it was also more Audigby 2 - but that appeared to be 'solvable' by turning off 5.1

Moving on to my own investigation:

I switched to the MB Onboard Sound Card - Realtek 850 - no difference

Updated Directx 9.0c with latest - no difference

Updated Nforce drivers to 15.23 - no difference

Change mode from gaming mode to audio creation mode - no difference

Tried reverb on and off - on is worse

Tried low quality sound - no descernible difference

I think i've pretty much exhausted the option - feel free to suggest more. Basically if I run /nosound then the game pretty much stays at a reasonable performance with sound on it starts as a a reasonable performance but rapidly degrades making the sound option at least a 2 to 3x hit on performance which is outrageous.

So my options appear to be run without sound and have reasonable performance or with sound but be prepared for majot stutter.

If anyone needs any further info please let me know -as SC never appears to have resolved this i'm not hopeful so if you are experiencing this issue please post.

Tals

** as an addition I later ran it with switch /windowed 1024 768 and had task manager active. I could then see the processor is maxising out but it does this with both sound and no sound! So regardless the machine is maxing but with sound it is then killing it

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Would be great to have official word on howevere the devs think there is a solution to this problem.

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At this point, looking at the history with SupCom, I'd be grateful to hear anything from the devs on this. Even bad news is better than being left in the dark.

Though as I said before, I can't even imagine what aspect of a sound engine could justifiably double or triple system load. This would be easier if Demigod were a crappy game, then I'd just stop playing it

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Quoting Renwold,

reply 16

At this point, looking at the history with SupCom, I'd be grateful to hear anything from the devs on this. Even bad news is better than being left in the dark.

Though as I said before, I can't even imagine what aspect of a sound engine could justifiably double or triple system load. This would be easier if Demigod were a crappy game, then I'd just stop playing it

Agreed at the moment i'm looking at a stop gap of just running the game with no sound - but that looses quite a bit of immersion, i'd settle for mono sound just to get some form of sound with minimal hit on resources.

Really strange how when I test on the brother map - as soon as I open the Portal and the peeps start coming through the Sim factor goes down to 1 and then 0. With sound off stays at 4. Just such an odd issue

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Quoting Renwold,

reply 16

At this point, looking at the history with SupCom, I'd be grateful to hear anything from the devs on this.

Same here. Since it never got solved in SupCom, I don't expect it to be solved here either. Nothing was mentioned in Frogboy's posts about it being looked into either.

I would really like to hear some official word about this, because if there's no solution for this, I'm gonna go for a refund. I simply don't like playing either without any sound or 2-3 FPS.

EDIT: Guys, I may be a bit premature. Some days ago, I filed a ticket about the issue, and sent in my DxDiag.txt plus a file (startup.log) generated by one of the dev's tools. It took a while, but I just checked my mail, and I got the following answer (I copy and paste):

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

This is actually Dash. The following is a pre-written response that you have probably already have tried... except maybe the Reverb option being turned off. As it says below, we are working on the issue.

Some freezing/crashing/slowdown issues are being caused by an audio conflict. The developers are aware of the issue and are working on a solution for it.

There are a few things you could try that have worked for many people on the forums.

First, make sure your audio drivers are completely up to date.
Second, go to the audio settings in the game and turn off the Reverb option.
Third, go to the Windows Control Panel and open your audio/sound settings and change the configuration to 'Stereo'.
Lastly, if none of the other options helped, make a shortcut to Demigod on your desktop and open it's properties. At the end of the 'Target' line add a space and "/nosound" (without the quotes). This will load the game with all sound rendering turned off(playing the game without sound really isn't as fun, but it will make the game playable until the issue is resolved).

If none of these help, then your issue is being caused by something else, and you should respond to this support ticket for further assistance.

Thanks,

Michael Emmerd
Technical Advisor
Stardock Systems, Inc.
http://www.impulsedriven.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In other words: they are aware of the issue and are working on it.

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That is positive at least

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I think I have this problem -- I've got the xfi extreme gamer, have latest drivers for it and otherwise I have a capable system (C2D 3ghz, 4 gigs ddr2 800mhz ram, 9800 gtx+ video, etc.) The /nosound switch improves performance dramatically -- it seems as if there is some type of conflict going on.

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Out of interest what motherboards do people have. I use a Nforce 4 Ulta Motherboard.

Has everyone here got an Xfi Sound Card - with my tests I did disable the Xfi and use the onboard sound card and with the Xfi disabled it went fast but when I used the onboard sound card (which also supported 5.1) it went slow. The only thing I didn't do was take the Xfi sound card out. If someone confirms that when they did that the performance was significantly better with the onboard card than just disabling attained then i'll take the card out. However i'm loathe todo that as I don't think the issue is with the card at the moment.

I played some MP with /nosound, the immersion was totally gone but the game was far smoother - was generally seeing SImSpeed of 6. I hope they can find a solution for this as I can just about play this with no sound but its a much lesser game and one I can't see myself playing as long as I had originally

I'm not convinced the game uses HW Sound Acceleration

Tals

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I have an ASUS a8n-sli deluxe with a Creative Audigy 2. And you're right, it might be easier to just bag it and run with /nosound if the sound weren't so darn integral to this game's presentation (which I maintain is magnificent).

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Quoting Renwold,

reply 22

My Motherboard is a Assus A8N-E....

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Quoting Talsworthy,

reply 23

Quoting Renwold, reply 22I have an ASUS a8n-sli deluxe with a Creative Audigy 2. And you're right, it might be easier to just bag it and run with /nosound if the sound weren't so darn integral to this game's presentation (which I maintain is magnificent).
My Motherboard is a Assus A8N-E....

Interesting...Same motherboard here.

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I'm not sure if this posts helps. http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t10946.html but it implies that the issue is with the nforce drivers or bios - if it is indeed related!

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The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

Performance improved by /nosound

Talsworthy