Game Performance

MagicMint

 

I think the reason why the game lags as much as it does, is because of how far the viewing distance is. Because of such a far viewing distance (I believe it is a few kilometres) there is much more for your graphics card to render, which then leads to a very low frame rate. Even if you set up for low model detail at farther distance, you video card is still rendering a lot, which can be killer on some older video cards. Another reason is that the trees of the game are much more detailed (mainly just the leaves). One other problem I think could be is that there is a high polygon count when it comes to the player models. This is why when you lower your graphical settings you still have a low FPS. The people who have the ability to put two video cards in at once, such as ATI's x1900 series, can probably have much better performance.

jwshaw88

Personally, I think it has to do with the complexity of the artwork and the ability to move data from point A to point B in modern systems.  Also, not having more than 1GB of ram will hurt you, last time I ran the game, it hogged up around 760MB of memory, toss windows on top of that with 320MB and you're playing dangerously close to your virtual memory.  Load up a few TSR type programs and voila, you're beating up your hard drive.  Once you've got more than 1GB and a decent system, I think you run into what I stated above though.

Rattrap

So there is actually a valid reason to get one more gig ?

jwshaw88

Yes, in the case of Vanguard, you will be significantly rewarded with performance for having more than 1GB of ram.  They may tweak the game client between now and release to use slightly less, but the game is just a resource hog and honestly, there's a ton of lag related to caching and moving data that are unrelated to video settings if you do not have more ram.  I have two systems at home, an Opteron dual core 2GHz and a Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz.  The opteron has 2GB of ram and the Core 2 has only 1GB.....the Opteron has a 7600GT where the C2D has a 7900GT.  The C2D lags like things are constantly loading, the Opteron doesn't lag like that and the Opteron system is definetly the weaker of the two systems.  The Opteron also only has 400MHz DDR1, where the C2D is running DDR2.  I think you'd be better off with an average system, 2GB of ram and an above average video card than having a rocking system and only 1GB of ram......game play wise anyhow.

Rattrap

Yes this is the problem for me.

Things are constantly loading.

It bothers me way much more than 14 fps graphic

jwshaw88

The added memory probably won't completely get rid of it, but it will clean it up at least to a bearable point.  Basically, the cities still lagged for me with lots of memory, so did the really crowded spots, but other than that, i got real nice responsiveness out of the game with 2GB, and that was DDR1-400 to boot, probably will be better with a more modern system and good mid range + graphics engine.