Age of Conan

Hey all....

Based on the Open Beta weekend, I took the game through 3 different scenarios (I hope to do more soon..). I wanted to see how the game would play in various setups.

What follows is what the game was played on and how it played.

System 1:  E8400 Wolfdale 6mb cache, 8800GT 512, 4 gigs DDR2 1066, X-Fi Gamer, XP32, 640 gig 2 platter hard drive 16mb cache, Secondary drive Seagate 32mb cache (for pagefile), ASRock 4core1600. Overclock to 340FSB (3.02 Ghz)

1920x1200 On High, Tweaked, 174.74 Nvidia drivers, latest X-Fi drivers

This was the dream system, and my latest hardware, and it showed. The game loaded briskly after the first initial load (it has been noted a cache needed to be created due to the uncompressed texture system). I could play on High with some tweaks (adjustments to shader model, lowering distance, etc.) After doing this I was able to get a steady 50-60+FPS. Combat was smooth, death and resurrect reloads were almost instantaneous. I think the load times were helped by the new hard drive, as it is not 4 platters or more, and less disk activity. And then take into account the 2nd drive with 32mb cache...This system says "AoC is worth a buy..."

System 2: e6600 OC'd to 3Ghz, 8800GTS 640, 2 Gigs DDR2 800, Bluegears Inspirer sound, Vista Ultimate, 320 Gig Seagate, Nvida 680i

1440x900, Medium, Tweaked, 169.21 (note, the sound card has hardware based 7.1 decoding, and was unbelievable for sound..)

This is an HTPC system on a 56" JVC HDILA TV. This also has Vista, and was meant to be simple for movies, TV, etc. But, I decided to give it a go. After the initial loads again...it was bearable. I had stuttering here and there, but I also did not have the latest drivers...as the older drivers work better for video...(new version has a bug for video playback)...but, it looked gorgeous on the TV due to the rich colors. I think with Vista taking up so much in resources, an upgrade would be in order here, and could have a huge impact. But, I also did not feel the game was a failure here as well. i did not try DX10 and plan to see how this looks...but, I also heard it may not be working...will check and see...

System 3: e6850 3Ghz stock, ATI 3870 512, 3 Gigs DDR2 800, Realtek onboard, XP32, WD400 Gig 16mb cache, P35 Stock motherboard

1680x1050, Medium, Tweaked, 8.4 Drivers

A cheapie system, but bearable. Runs EQ2, The Witcher, NWN2 and Oblivion beautifully. The wifes gaming system.....and a DISASTER. This system would drag it's feet. The game took 5-10 minutes on the load screen, hung twice. Then once in game...try to turn and would hit 1-2FPS...it was bad. And there is no excuse. I have this system setup like any other here...except for the sound...which may be suspect (onboard). But, I finally gave up on the 3rd try after disabling sound and it still ran horrible. This could be one of those systems that would make a person cancel a pre-order

All the systems were defragged, latest drivers when possible...and all hard core systems. I could not see anyone with lesser hardware wanting this game, and that is a shame. The wife who is a very discerning player...enjoyed the game, as did I. But, the issues with the other 2 systems were not helpful in making a decision. As I said ...the Vista system may work out, but the 3870 and onboard sound may be a disaster. I will look into that a little more.

My next tests will be on some lower end stuff, to see if this game exhibits what seems to be an ongoing trend...older hardware runs most games smoother...and not sure why..

I will be tracking more information on my blog at

Simple -n- Complex

Cheers

Originally posted by openedge1

System 3: e6850 3Ghz stock, ATI 3870 512, 3 Gigs DDR2 800, Realtek onboard, XP32, WD400 Gig 16mb cache, P35 Stock motherboard

1680x1050, Medium, Tweaked, 8.4 Drivers

A cheapie system, but bearable. Runs EQ2, The Witcher, NWN2 and Oblivion beautifully. The wifes gaming system.....and a DISASTER.

First of all a gaming PC should have 2 harddrives. One for the OS and one for the games data. Take a cheap 20 or 40 gig for the OS. Doesnt matter much. But use a fast SATA2 for the gaming drive.

As soon as your OS is reading or writing something the access from the game client is slowed down massivly.

Kompatibility of harddrives. Yeah, its 2008 but there are still harddrives and controllers who dont like each other. You wont recognize it while reading emails or browsing a website. But it makes a huge differenz if the harddrive is running with DMA33, DMA,66 or DMA133+. The worst case of inkombatibility is when the harddrive runs with PIO. Angain hardly to recognize when mailing and surfing. But under CPU load the PIO polling is stealing you CPU cycles. Lots of them ;) Your CPU is basically the ATA controller then.

Besides some crappy CPU heavy audio devices there are some networkcards who are as crappy as those sound cards. Lots of cheap drivers with software emulated functions out there.

Last is to give ATI (and probably nVidia) a chance to adopt to the game after release. Remnember the vidoe driver patches for doom3 ?

Originally posted by eugam

 

Originally posted by openedge1

System 3: e6850 3Ghz stock, ATI 3870 512, 3 Gigs DDR2 800, Realtek onboard, XP32, WD400 Gig 16mb cache, P35 Stock motherboard

1680x1050, Medium, Tweaked, 8.4 Drivers

A cheapie system, but bearable. Runs EQ2, The Witcher, NWN2 and Oblivion beautifully. The wifes gaming system.....and a DISASTER.

People dont care enough about harddrives.

 

First of all a gaming PC should have 2 harddrives. One for the OS and one for the games data. Take a cheap 20 or 40 gig for the OS. Doesnt matter much. But use a fast SATA2 for the gaming drive.

As soon as your OS is reading or writing something the access from the game client is slowed down massivly.

Kompatibility of harddrives. Yeah, its 2008 but there are still harddrives and controllers who dont like each other. You wont recognize it while reading emails or browsing a website. But it makes a huge differenz if the harddrive is running with DMA33, DMA,66 or DMA133+. The worst case of inkombatibility is when the harddrive runs with PIO. Angain hardly to recognize when mailing and surfing. But under CPU load the PIO polling is stealing you CPU cycles. Lots of them ;) Your CPU is basically the ATA controller then.

 

Besides some crappy CPU heavy audio devices there are some networkcards who are as crappy as those sound cards. Lots of cheap drivers with software emulated functions out there.

Last is to give ATI (and probably nVidia) a chance to adopt to the game after release. Remnember the vidoe driver patches for doom3 ?

The issue is...how many people will go to buy the game, thinking they meet the requirements of the box, to then have a "System 3" issue...

2 Hard drives is not a requirement of the game, the sound card is definitely a factor here though...As to drives and controllers...I have yet to see any SATA drive give back the incorrect data...and I double checked that system to make sure (yea, I am old school, and realize how the old ATA drives did this..)...but, it was fine...

As to drivers...this is a good question also. But, on system 3, all i noticed was a constant access to the hard drive as I did anything...so, I plan to run a disk check, as maybe there are errors...but, it is relatively new also..

But, I think i really wanted to show...the frustrations seen by many can be warranted...but, it is also possible to run the game well...just are people willing to put that kind of money in to play a game..

Thoughts?

Originally posted by openedge1

 

As to drivers...this is a good question also. But, on system 3, all i noticed was a constant access to the hard drive as I did anything...so, I plan to run a disk check, as maybe there are errors...but, it is relatively new also..

But, I think i really wanted to show...the frustrations seen by many can be warranted...but, it is also possible to run the game well...just are people willing to put that kind of money in to play a game..

Thoughts?

I think people shouldnt pay to much money for games. Nowadays this is also a waste of electricity. Seen that microsoft gamer rig ? Hell, its burning electricity like your herd in the kitchen. Just cooking takes 10-40 minutes and a gamin session hours Count 10-30 Euro per month for the electricity (depending on national prices).

Its not hard for me. If i have a software running i usually know quite well where the bottle neck is. In most cases its one part to upgrade. I never bough board, CPU, memory and GPU at once.  I think if  agame is fun, then its fun on medium with 30 fps too.

You have to wonder though looking at the sort of systems you need to get this game loading fast and get the looks which i might add is one of its selling points.

Who is this game aimed at?People with 8800gts and above?If so it is due for a rude awakening .Even EQ2 at launch did not require as much power  and it suffered greatly from it.

If you read the first ever offical review here on mmorpg.com on EQ2 the high demand on the reviewer's low specs system dominated the reviews and got it a bad review even before the reviewer got to level 5!

Same will happen to AoC if its not careful and it will alienate so many people due to its so high specs.

To me i am past the "oh its so lovely " mmorpg feeling.In 2 years max some game will make AoC look plain and by then it would have lost its chance at gaining a customer base just like happened to AO,SWG,EQ2 etc all games which on release were the best looking ever.

I rather the game looks average and as it ages they improve the engine as people dump older systems for newer ones.

Future proof graphics tactics have always failed.Just ask EQ2 .

Originally posted by eugam

 

You are sure System 3 is a 3 gig memory XP32 ? Unfortunately i dont have a beta key. But i have heared about the shader rendering problem. But constant access sounds much more like a PC thats using virtual memory. Shouldnt happen with a 3 gig XP32 system tho. Weird... tried to disbale virtual memory ? It cant be the debugger who writes data to the harddrive ?

 

Well this exact shader problem produces the stuttering because of the missing shader cache. The game has to load the textures all the time and has to apply the shaders. This is independent of having XP or Vista afaik. Not sure though if it applies to both Nvidia and Ati. I only have a GF so I cannot say.

There are others that propose to shrink the swap file down to a size around 1024MB. Well, just try it out. On my rig I didnt have to do it yet and the game works very well. Though the dump shader cache stuff I do all the time. It really helps alot.

Originally posted by eugam

 

Originally posted by openedge1

 

As to drivers...this is a good question also. But, on system 3, all i noticed was a constant access to the hard drive as I did anything...so, I plan to run a disk check, as maybe there are errors...but, it is relatively new also..

But, I think i really wanted to show...the frustrations seen by many can be warranted...but, it is also possible to run the game well...just are people willing to put that kind of money in to play a game..

Thoughts?

You are sure System 3 is a 3 gig memory XP32 ?

I will attempt to turn off the pagefile though as another poster suggested, and see if we still have this problem.

But, the shader cache file is the culprit. The fact it is also a 3870, and not an Nvidia product is key...this may be why the shader cache is writing so heavily. Unsure at this point...

I plan to also move the 8800GTS later on into this system and see how it acts...

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Flashback...

OMG, I thought I was somehow warped back to the forum boards during Vanguards release....my bad, carry on.

Thanks Openedge for this good post. I've followed your postings regarding hardware and stuff on both this and the official E2-forums for