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Testing the engine (Surprised results)
Hashbrick
Member RarePosts: 1,851
So as many you have known I have been throwing Funcom under a truck on their marketing strategies and said little about the game in general. Though I still don't agree on how/what they did with beta it is the past and the people they loose over it probably isn't going to worry Funcom.
As soon as fileplanet opened the doors for the rest of the keys to non-subscribers I dove in head first, having to refresh the pages over and over again with errors and server non-responses about 30mins later finally I got through got my key and went on my marry way of downloading the client. Which again fileplanet screwed people over, the last gig of the client fileplanet resets the connection and makes you go back to the end of the line. Quite the dirty way to get subscribers by frustration but I did not break and just let it run its 400 minute wait line over night by noon the next day finally it started and downloaded the last gig in about 20 mins.
The installation went smooth though 27gig of space from the already huge 13gig download is quite the feat, I remember the biggest MMO before this was 8gig. Needless to say I needed to organize/delete/uninstall a bunch of crap I just had piling up cause I never needed space for anything else. Ok so about 20-30mins the install is set.
Start the client up the first time, warned me drivers were out dated, well no problem shut down the client and uh-oh my computer just turned into a retro screen. Hard-restart and back in download the newest drivers get back in and after 5mins the screen loads up to a very cool title screen, create and my character and I'm in after 8-10mins of loading.
Now to get to the good part, I have been hearing a lot of talk about the engine is junk. So my motivation was to find out if it really was junk. Throwing in old parts of pc components I had laying around from when I upgraded, I was able to put together a test source of a system barely meeting the REQUIRED settings.
The required settings as of Funcom are as followed:
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV Single Core
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or ATI 9800
Test System Specs:
OS: XP
Processor: AMD Athlon64 3200+ 2.2GHz
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 3.0 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6200 OC
Net Connection: T1
I was amazed that even loaded up AoC to tell you the truth, though the processor is on par with an intel counter part, I thought the ram would surely not be enough. To my amazement it ran pretty decent once I tweak out the settings. The engine is defiantly not junk for a test system that barely could run Two Worlds and by barely I mean 5-6fps it was horrible. It ran AoC pretty decent 18-22fps specially for a low end machine on medium textures settings. Shoving shader to 2.0 increased the fps about 3-4fps more. Loading into a town was another story, the loading took much longer and maybe got 10-12fps.
The point of this all is people are complaining their top-end machine is getting low fps about 10-15fps and calling the engine junk. When in actuality a low end machine is running better fps. Those is more likely to be the support of the newest card drivers and the problems with the duos and the quads not being used yet.
To each his own I guess, I am now ordering two replacement pieces for the test system to see how it performs. Being an old motherboard only AGP is accepted so I'm going with Nividia GeForce 7600 512MB SuperOC and replacing the ram with High Performance OCZ PC3200 DDR 400 2GB Dual Kit RAM, this will be replaced before the PvP event and I'll let you all know what performance I get out of it. For the ones stuck with low-end and old hardware this may be the ticket, we'll see how it pans out.
EDIT: Error on required video card, it requires a 6800+ fixed it.
Comments
I heard in a few places that the beta client isn't configured to utilize dual core processing, but the retail client is supposed to. This might explain while some people with newer system might be having less than expected performance. Someone using a single core p4 thats 3 ghz vs a 2 core system where each core is at around 2 ghz would make the single core user have more power. I'm not sure how much validity there is to the claim, but if it is true it might explain some of the performance inconsistancies we have been seeing. My machine is a single core P4 that is over 3 ghz and things ran pretty decent for me.
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Yep that is exactly what is going on with the high-end machines specially the quad cores, if it bases around 2ghz on an intel your getting speed less then the reqs just because you can't use the other 3 to help along with you. Why Funcom did this I will never know, didn't seem a smart move.
If im not mistaken promises were made that this game would make use of dual and quad core comps and DX-10 if it fails to at launch all im gonna say is stand by for High Seas and Heavy Rolls in the forums here.
MAGA
This will probably shut a few mouths of the haters.
but yeah. I will steal your thread for a second to review my spec.
Os: Vista ultimate
Ram; 2gb 800+
Graph; Gforce 8600 Gt 512 mb @ 1700
Okay, so i got a key for the open beta. Install was a drag but the patching went smooth and fast.
Character creation; Major lag. Took me over 5mins to actually load the toons and pick a class.
first load was long and annoying and when i got the beach i was lagging like a monster. Getting to the town made it worse. I constantly crashed and was hella annoyed.
Then i read some things about the client and how to decrease the amount of lag.
I took away all the shader files in my Aoc folder. Took window mode at 1024*768, im still running the game at medium/high with a decent 40+ fps with a few downfalls to 10-15 when loading new areas and such. My loading times are now 10-20seconds instead of 10minutes.
Huge improvement. Then i installed 3guru's 169.44 and huzzah! Now i can run the game. Almost instant respawn loadings. The "instance" spots. (like the one you get into after you hit level 6 with level ~10+ pirates takes 5seconds.
Sure, i get some lags now and then and freezes. But i decreased my crashes to almost null.
And this is even though the debugger is running in the background. A somewhat old client version patch. And such, im looking forward for the real deal. And i hope with the upcomming pvp event at the 10th. They will change the client version to a newer one.
Just my two cents really for those with issues.
The speed of the mole and the power of steel is my weapon
Great, it's amazing what a little time and actually managing your settings can do for you, though I take it your processor is single core?
Couldn't agree more, it was made and it better back up I find it weird that Funcom gave an open beta with a client that could not support any of those. It's going to back fire fast if they don't.
I found a link to test your system for Age of Conan.
Dunno if someone allready posted this one didnt see.
http://www.nzone.com/content/nzone/srl/nzone_srl.asp?gameid=4529
Heh funny, the test system fails on the check for the graphic card yet can still run it, probably cause it is OverClocked and they are just getting the model to check.
ppl said sli doesnt work in beta either.. who knows