hi all...

well last night i began mt new, new, new, *new* game!
[gotta begin a new game with MTT3 and Luara craft mods!]

there are some things, about framerate, that might help someone, here!
when i got all my 200+ mods ready, about three weeks ago, and ran them, i got about
5 fps, in the middle of sedya, and about 12 out away by that fallen mage, if i got all of that!!

lots and lots of stutterings too. the game nearly was unplayable.

Last night , as i began yet again, i now have about 10 to 18 in sedya and about 19 to 32 out in the countryside!!

WHOOOOPIE!!


so How did i get from 6 fps to 16 to 32 fps?
someone might be interested.

I have a athlon 2400xp, with 512 ram.
I also have about 240 to 280 mods, all running at one time.
I have MCA 3.0, wilderness sounds, lots of mods that have scripts.

Cull time.

i took out the dogs and cats, these animals are in most of the towns, hit your fps where it hurts the most! that gave to me about 5 fps.

I took out Atmospheric sound effects...another 5 to 7 fps, out in the country!

a surrrrprise was where i read the Pumaman's wilderness 2.0 kills fps!
I had thought that someone said that the loss was minimal.
oooooh BOY! removing *that* one gave to me about 10 fps, at least, out near the mage, i went from 19 to 32 fps, there, just by NOT having Wilderness!!

---then there was that awfull stuttering! i could tell that my audigy2 zs
was not playing the sounds right. as if that card was being strangled by the cpu!
I found *this* topic......
------------------------------------------


What the author or the article below claims is that this fixes some stuttering in games but moreover get rids of audio popping and cracking issues, due to some devices taking up to much CPU time (high latency).
with the program you can also change the latency from 32 to another you desire (remeber it has to something which can be devided by 8).

Anyway I tested it only with Colin McRae 4 which I found stuttered very much for me (very little stutters) even though I had 50FPS. WIth this tweak the stutters are gone!

Never experienced stutters with other games before but hey it does not hurt graphics performance! (tested with 3dmark03).



http://www.transformerman1.plus.com/LtcyCfg.zip

Get the tool and see if your graphiccard is running at 248ms latency. Is it?



---[oh boy!! i found that my poor audigy was only getting 32 latency while the Radeon9600xt was getting 255!! HOGGING!!]




Decrease latency of it (or any other device with a latency, '000' means: has none) to 64 or below (below may not be faster, depends on system) and go into your favorite 3D game!

Any difference? I say YES and put my hands in fire for that.

Note that you can save the config it to a file (click 'add to list first' or it won't work) and load it via batch file (read me) when windows starts because otherwise windows will overwrite your settings with the next boot (JUST LIKE IT DOES WITH YOUR BIOS SETTINGS! GRMMF!)


----[in my win98se, the changes will not "take' i have to reset it on boot, but a shortcut to desktop makes this quick!
maybe in winXP, one can set it better]

Ok, to clear some things up.

1. The changes apply for AGP also!
2. You do not have to do it after every boot.

a) Start program and make the changes you want (enter number and click 'set now' for the device you want to change) - make sure you don't touch the devices that don't have 000 (no) latency at all
mark ALL entries and click on 'add to list', you will see a new column called 'new' on the right (means it's added)
C) press 'save as' and save the table to a config file with a name you like into the program folder I suggest
d) Go into the program folder, create a txt file and write into it:

C:\LtcyCfg\LtcyCfg.exe -f:C:\LtcyCfg\config.cfg <- Replace with your path and name of config file of course. (I think you could leave the folders away as the file resides in the same directory of the program, but I never trust windows in such cases)

Then save the txt-file and replace it's extension with BAT (if you can't see the extension you'll have to go to your windows-explorer->extras->folder options->somewhere...Google if you don't know and disable the 'hide extensions from known file types' or whatever it's called in the English version of XP)

e) Drag a shortcut of that BAT-file into your auto start folder

f) Done, if you want to make changes repeat step a-c. Happy gaming and more overall power (even on desktop)

3. Possible heat problem: I WOULD say no. Me and my friends (one doesn't even have a fan on his ATI!!!) didn't encounter any problems but only improvement of performance.

Let me try to explain why (simple words, I'm no technician):

Decreasing the latency does NOT mean INCREASING the response time of your hardware!

The BUS latency stands for: How much time does a component of your PC (graphic card, network card, and sound card) have to perform an operation before another component can! Note that only one component can use the BUS at one time, then the next, then the next. In other words: instead of letting your graphic card do 100 operations in 248ms you set it to a lower number of operations in 32, 64, 128ms. (32 is minimum and must be a number that



can be divided by 8)

So the problem is while leaving the graphic card latency at 248ms - which it is mostly set to - that the component has TOO MUCH time and other important operations (soundcard for example) can not be performed in time, so the queue list is getting bigger and bigger-> CPU overload.

Experiment a little with the settings and see what gets you best performance. In my opinion it's mostly the graphic card latency that hogs the CPU but you may tweak a little more out of it. Depends on hardware I guess. I have all my components set to 32ms now.


http://www.transformerman1.plus.com/LtcyCfg.zip
--------------------------------

Iset my vid card to about 98 and my audigy to about 150 or 180.

THE STUTTERINGS ARE GONE!
I can even move fast through the sedya neen thick npc Square, at 12 fps, with no sound stutters and no game stutters!!
---and i hear sounds that i never ever had heard before, as now that soundcard of mine can get at them as it has more pci-bus time!!

next.
placing the sound acceleration, in my system/multimedia properties to "BASIC" OR "STANDARD" ...if basic gives poor sound,
takes away some of the cpu processings of the soundcard as i have read that while the video card Processes, the soundcard has the cpu doing all the work!
that little "one click solution" gives to me *another* 5 to 8 fps increase of framerates!!

my jaw droppeda bit, last night, as i stood next to that mage lying on the ground, outside of sedya neen, as my fps indicator showed to me 32 fps! a while back, weeks ago, a few gamestarts ago, i stood there in that same spot, with
about 15 fps showing showing in my fps indicator!
i now have 32 fps, next to this fallen mage, with 280 mods running, including "lura craft, MCA 3.1, mw advanced, wilderness sounds, morrowind additions redone, creatures of morrowind, Horror mod, black mill, mtt3, adventurers npcs, more npcs......

freestone

so maybe this rambling post will help someone!

This post has been edited by freestone: Sep 27 2004, 08:03 AM

I don't unfortunately understand the last bit. Oh, well.

Whoa that was a mouthful, but it was informative, here have a !

Thanks, freestone. I've seen instructions to change latency before and have done it, but didn't understand why. Your explanation helped me a lot.

Maybe you can add Wilderness 2 back in now. It is amazing to see a properly shaped birds flying overhead.

I'm having troubles with that also. My machine can handle Giants, it can handle Atmospheric Sound Effects, it can handle humongous texture packs but Wilderness 2.0 is bringing my machine to its knees. I'm beginning to think Puma Man's decision to add creatures to leveled lists via scripts was maybe not the best decision to make. Too many scripts running at once for my machine (Athlon 2800XP, Radeon 9800 Pro).

I hate like heck to get rid of this mod because I really like it so I may give some of your suggestions a try, freestone.

Careful with Wilderness II mod!

The one that was released by Puma should be clean, but the one in Euro-Morrowind was leaked by someone else, that placed a malicious script in a .wav file. Trojan it seems.

This virus makes Morrowind fps fluctuations MEGA UNSTABLE, giving tons of stuttering, and forces you to reinstall the game. I know because It happened to me.

The one released by Puma doesnt have virus though, I doubt he would disgrace himself like that. But its a hog. Global scripts and such.

This post has been edited by Amazing_Amoeba4: Sep 27 2004, 08:19 AM

Wow, I would have never thought to try this! Thanks freestone!

we'll see how well this does with ~340 plugins =][

Meh. I'm using MorrowEden.

Great thread nonthless. I guess I wont be using Atmospheric Sounds this time.

Bookmarked.

hi...Doomed M.

I found a few more things about it. two more links at the bottom of the post, for it.
basicly, the vid card hogs the bus. tis good if you play Quake, perhaps, but for MW??
NO!!
gotta have the soundcard have a better bus use, as the cpu
processes the sounds from the sound card!

there is supposed to be a way to set the configuarations, in this program, where it configures it permanently. otherwise one has to open up the program each time one boots up the machine as the windows cannot, apparently, "save" the configurations. the tip for setting appears to apply for winXP. i have win98se, so that it does not work.

i made a shortcut to LtcyCfg on my desktop, so that when i boot up, i can open it up immediatelty and then i go to the saved file, where my settings are stored, and set this program in one second.
if i forget to do this, my game stutterings return!!

here is what someone else wrote about this tool.
---------
It can be the video hogging the PCI bus. This can cause sound cards problems. Some video card will use 248 PCI latency, while other devices use 32 & 64. The sound card uses 32. I've used a PCI latency program to change my video card latency to 64, it was 248. My sound is better & my video card preforms much better. I've set all my devices to 32 except for the video card & thats 64. My over all system runs smoother!
------------------

more.....

In the meantime, I've been reading allot about something new to me --- PCI Latency. I’ve read how changing these setting fixed many people’s woes. For example, some folks were having serious problems with sound sputtering or video freezing, etc., and were later fixed when they changed their PCI latency settings for some of their devices. For those who are not familiar with PCI Latency, it is the amount of "wait" time PCI is allocated to communicate with any given peripheral. From what I understand, a device with a high PCI Latency setting takes more PCI bus time than another device with a lower setting. Normally, the PCI Latency Timer is set to 32 cycles. This means the active PCI device has to complete its transactions within 32 clock cycles or hand it over to the next PCI device. As you can see, a device, like my video card (in fact, all my video cards) which has a setting of 248 essentially “hogs” the PCI Bus when compared to the G520 whose setting is 128. My Soundblaster sound card is set for 64 on the machine with the G520 and 32 on my other PCs. I'm beginning think that D-Link is switching the order of the cards to minimize the cards fighting for PCI bus time in lieu of having you change the PCI Latency setting. Think about it, the more time a vendors card has access to the PCI Bus, the less likely that it will cause havoc because it will have the time needed to do its thing. Once I get my G520, I will play with the PCI Latency settings and report back what I find.

Anyway, the utility that I found is called LtcyCfg.exe which is a pretty simple tool to use. It will show the PCI Latency setting of all your devices and will allow you to change them. I've attached it for your use. I've used it with no ill affects.
-----Of course, a few hours of uninterrupted operation doesn't constitute a declaration of success, but it's a good indication given the fact the crashes happened much more frequent/sooner before the changes...I'll keep everyone posted...
to forum · » ·

kmn

Member
FYI....

Computer has been up for two days without a single crash or freeze. If you haven't tried it yet, I'd recommend you try the utility...
--------------


more!!
.......Having had a quick look at it, I can see that my FX5600 latency is set to 249 (which has always produced a warning in SiSoft Sandra, funnily enough, but I've never been too bothered about it before)! It's a shot in the dark, but others have seen excellent results by setting this to around 100 (though anything above 64 is generally considered risky).

By lowering my FX's latency and raising the sound card's, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I might finally have found a solution. I'll raise the SBLive!'s latency incrementally until I'm content that there are no further crashes (if it makes any difference at all).

So far, with no loss of performance in either device, I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can actually get to the end of an Enemy Territory campaign.

I'm off to play. Wish me luck!


(Edited by White Hawk on 08-09-2004 22:13)
White Hawk

I now have my soundcard's PCI latency timing set slightly higher than the graphics card. I tried my best to make it crash out - I overclocked the GPU, then ran a couple of games at once, and had MP3s playing in the background for about five hours.

No crash, no lockup, nothing. I'm well chuffed.

There has been a pleasant side-affect too. Even without the overclock, my framerate has increased between 10-25% in various Direct3D games! On top of that, my CPU is running cooler!!
---------------------


http://www.transformerman1.plus.com/LtcyCfg.zip
http://www.audiotrack.co.kr/spboard/board....download&gul=36

yes Pseron, when i read that too, about how he
added the animals to SCRIPTS, my heart Sunk!!

I just "knew" that this mod was really fps-killing, and i like it so!!
I wanted to put Giants ultimate into my game, but I Am Afraid!

I guess with my 280 mods, i Have enough monsters as it is...
I will now add only simple mods to my game, i guess.

yes, that irks me a bit. i think that wilderness 1.0 was much more fps-friendly, i had that one before. now all the scripts Kill!!

freestone

It sounds like this is mainly a problem for those who have a PCI video card? Do you know if this PCI latency is also a factor when running an AGP video card?

Thanx for the tweak, the game does seem run a bit more smoother

Btw AGP cards have bus-mastering which is why this patch still do works (unless you have Voodoo3)

this guy with R9700Pro got his problem fixed by lowing pci latency on his card
http://www.geocities.com/phileosophos/tech/pcilatency.html

this guy also fixed his problems by lowing pci latency on his card (GF2GTS)
http://www.overclockers.com/articles529/

This post has been edited by NTsan: Sep 27 2004, 09:37 AM

YES YES YES!

all cards, pci or agp, use the Bus!

mu radeon 9600xt was using 255!! my audigy was using 32!

i set my audigy to 150 and my radeon to about 100.

gotta go....freestone

Intersting.Gonna give it a try asap.

Hey freestone, did you get good performance boost with those latencies?

You see, I happen to have ATi 9600XT and the same Audigy as you do

Hi Amoeba!!

in a sense i really DID have a great boost!

the "boost' comes about where the audigy can now play its whole range of detected sounds and music! why i hear mw sounds that i never ever had heard before!

what the problem is, Amoeba, and sports fans, is that the audigy only
has about 32 cycles on the bus and the radeon has 255 !!!

this translates, in gameplay, as when the audigy tries to get the data presented to it, and cannot, the video card hangs while the audigy
tries! there is a monetary lockup, in the game. "stutterings" it is called. sometimes the lockup is longer, even a "real" lockup!
so if you, say, run, in the game, you run in jerks, especially at a place with low fps, like in a group of npcs in balmora or sedya, with scripts running and then there are a lot of musics and sounds playing!
this ALSO is one of the causes of the fps-metter going quickly from, say, 5 fps, up to 20 fps, and back down again, in very quick ossalations, in half a second or so! very very bad for game stability!

another thing to try: set the slider to 'basic" in the sound acceleration in the multimedia section of systems. that audigy, while suppossed to be "cpu-friendly", is such a "good' card, that it still uses a lot of cpu-cycles. the audio cards have the cpu doing the work, unlike the vid cards!!! ti easy to see, in mw, what you should Do! make the cpu get the most cycles for the game alone! so set the slider to BASIC unless the sounds/music sound terrible, then try STANDARD.
that little trick alone gave to me, Amoeba, about 5 to 8 fps!!!

there, tell me please if this, or these, tips help you!

freestone

I gotta try all this stuff thx for the help.

Nonsense. That's just how buses work. I have the same issue if I turn the PCI latency settings up too high and then try to sign on to the Internet while running Winamp, since I have a PCI modem. While the modem's trying to dial, the sound card gets momentarily interrupted because they're both on the PCI bus and both important devices on that bus.

All you're probably doing with this is shaving off graphics performance your system is incapable of doing in Morrowind in order to smooth out the whole package by giving everything similar priority to one another.

Of course the graphics card is going to be ridiculously high, graphics cards traditionally have more data to process than sound cards.

They don't all use the same bus either. AGP was invented as a way to flip flop graphical data back and forth directly to the CPU. If they used the same bus, then why does the latest standard of AGP get 8.6 GB/sec. of bandwidth while PCI is stuck at 33 MB/sec.

You're fooling around with CPU time to your devices moreso than how much they use their respective buses. I've seen tweakers like this before and fiddled with them with hardly any noticeable results. However since you've given me a number to try in one of these, I might give this another shot and see what happens.

I saw a little improment in my FPS in Morroiwnd was running like him 5 to 7 FPS in some Moded towns and now run at 10 to 13 Fps with is almost twice the swped it was which is now playable...thanks for the heads up on this.

By the way, while I'm getting ready to try out this tweak, how do these results compare to simply lowering the max fps in your Morrowind.ini file?

I've personally found that changing that maxfps option does next to nothing for the actual framerate.

I've set it to 20 in my game (cause let's face it, above 20 is pretty rare, and with the MW-FPS Optimizer, I generally get greatly expanded view distances, which are much preferable to 60fps.) However, looking at a wall indoors still shows the framerate going at 120... wierd.

Okay. I'll have to check this out then.

I'll see if MajorGeeks.com has a AGP latency adjuster floating around.

I've tried these before, but never had any specific numbers to type in, so I'll give this another shot.

In terms of your glitch though, that's because you're staring at a wall and there's not much activity going on when you just have a single texture in front of you taking up the whole monitor.

EDIT: Cha-ching.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=852

This post has been edited by JayProgrammer: Sep 27 2004, 12:31 PM

Yeah, but with maxfps at 20, it should only render 20fps, instead of using all available clock cycles to render 2 triangles and paste a texture on it... right?

That might be more of a priority-setter than a strict limit.

I've found some more discussion on this.

http://www.techimo.com/forum/t120232.html

Google-search agp latency and there's other sites discussing this as well.

well Jay....

that is *exactly* the Point!
games like quake, doom3, far cry, probably need that 255 video pci-bus latency!
but morrowind, unlike other games, is SO cpu-dependant! thus there is a lot of room to shave off the top of the graphics card as people report that upgrading their vid card does disapointingly little for their fps!!
thus...if the soundcard, in *your* system is holding back smooth
gameplay, because it is coughing on the sounds, not enough latency, then bumping it up makes Sense!
when i had the Xvisual pack, and tried it, i got all of 5 fps outdoors
and my game was unplayable, NOT due to the low fps, but due to the
constant sputtering and hanging as the soundcard was jammed up.
I could tell by the distorted sounds and the pops and crackles and such, that the soundcard was not happy.

NOW, if i have a place where the fps is, say, real low at 6 fps, why i can RUN through that town square, and, yes, i run like in molassis
or mud, but i run smoothly without stutters!
yes, for each stutter, a lockup/crash Lurks not far in possibility, now i can even fight monsters at 6 fps!!

thanks, i also went to this site and downloaded it. it might have the advantage of actually setting the values where it "takes" for all further bootups!

too...
POWERSTRIP has a value setter too! but this utility is a trial version and maybe $20 to buy it, free for something like 30 days! the place to set latency is hidden, hard to find. but powerstrip is easy to find on the net, maybe even in that site that has your file!
[i will check now]
yes!
----------------------
Size: 738 Kb
License: Shareware $29.95
Requires: Win All


PowerStrip 3.46 provides advanced, multi-monitor, programmable hardware support to a wide range of graphics cards - from the venerable
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=718

here is an article about powerstrip and
LATENCY IN GENERAL
--------
http://www.geocities.com/phileosophos/tech/pcilatency.html

freestone

if anyone wonders why this latency post is here in the mod forums, it might be that i tried AT LEAST TWICE to write about it in the tech section: i guess after it quickly sinks to page 4 without an intelligent reply, i figured that modders are the most interested in frame rates!!

freestone

The point wasn't that you weren't doing what you were doing, but that you were doing it in a way other than what you thought.

You're evening out the workloads these devices send to the CPU rather than via anything related to the buses.

Speaking of Powerstrip, I remember the last time I tried this I used a program that allowed me to tweak the latency using a GUI instead of a command line. I'll download that utility again because I think that was it.

I have a Soundblaster Audigy Platinum taking care of the sound. Not a problem, since I run the sound in software mode when I'm not using my Klipsch 4.1s. However, I've heard the Audigy 1 was a joke and the newer ones do a much better job with this stuff.

This is the least of my concerns right now though. Since installing Service Pack 2 I have gotten zero crashes to the desktop. Nope, instead of CTDing with no message or anything, I actually get REAL Windows crashes now with error reports to send to Microsoft (LOL), so I'm wondering if I can use those in any way to figure out what's wrong here.

Aha! This could be the magic bullet I'm looking for, or one of them at least. My Geforce latency is 248, and my soundblaster is 64. Could you recommend some values for these devices?

By the way, were you getting CTDs, and did this remedy that at all? I've been getting alot of them and I suspect it has something to do with plugins that rely heavily on sound, like MorrowindDJ and Lilarcor, which are plugins I want to keep.

I wasn't impressed enough with Wilderness 2 to want to keep it, especially now I've heard this. Some of the animals are good, but others are really blocky and undetailed, and sometimes it seemed like there was just too many animals around at once.

Wilderness 2 isn't consistent but I haven't been able to check the entire mod out yet. I don't want to sidetrack the thread with that discussion. fps is a new problem since I've been careful re texture packs and global scripts. I have a system fairly similar to Pseron Wyrd's. Athlon 2700+ and ATI Radeon 9800Pro, but there is stuff out there that will bring it to its knees. Darn. (Not supposed to the way I read the sales brochure)

I am pretty much lost now on following the tech details in the last posts. After you guys sort out what is going on, could someone write up a step by step process on what changes to make and how. In clear English without the techie whys at every step. I know how to find the nearest bus stop. My knowledge stops there and there are probably a lot of ppl like me, who could use some help.

Thank you so much, freestone! This really did work! I normally suffer stuttering of picture and sound after about an hour of gaming in MW, but with this, it's no longer a problem. If anyone else is skeptical, give it a try. Nothing to lose.

Oh, and the Powerstrip thing is pretty awesome. I might buy it now

I ran several tests using this set.
GameFile0=Morrowind.esm
GameFile1=Tribunal.esm
GameFile2=Bloodmoon.esm
GameFile3=Better Heads Tribunal addon.esm
GameFile4=Better Heads Bloodmoon addon.esm
GameFile5=Better Heads.esm
GameFile6=Beauty_Pack.esm
GameFile7=World_Of_Faces_Master.esm
GameFile8=Unique Heads I-Balmora.esm
GameFile9=The Wilderness Mod 2.0 T & B.esm
GameFile10=Morrowind Comes Alive.esm
GameFile11=Clean QuickChar.esp
GameFile12=Morrowind Comes Alive Guards Patch.esp
GameFile13=VTA_TravelBM+Trib.esp
GameFile14=zbretonf4.esp
GameFile15=zamazonia.esp
GameFile16=van helsing.esp
GameFile17=NightelfBB.esp
GameFile18=bcsounds.esp
GameFile19=master_index.esp
GameFile20=Clean adamantiumarmor.esp
GameFile21=Clean EBQ_Artifact.esp
GameFile22=Clean entertainers.esp
GameFile23=Clean balmorau.esp
GameFile24=Clean Nemon's_Balmora_Interiorator.esp
GameFile25=Clean Nemon's_Vivec_Interiorator.esp
GameFile26=Khajiit_Replacement_WSen.esp
GameFile27=Arwens_New_Look.ESP
GameFile28=Clean Astarsis_Barenziah_Replace.esp
GameFile29=Clean Astarsis_DEF_FieryReplace.esp
GameFile30=Clean Astarsis_HEF_PlainReplace.esp
GameFile31=NW_Redguard_femaleheads.esp
GameFile32=Clean _KP_Multi-Races_Faces_Pack.esp
GameFile33=S-M Bosmer Beauty.esp
GameFile34=CRHeads.esp
GameFile35=Don Salus Faces III.esp
GameFile36=EM_Angelina.esp
GameFile37=Emmas_Imperial_heads_1_0.esp
GameFile38=Emmas_redguard_faces_1_0.esp
GameFile39=emma_highelf_fem_v1_0.esp
GameFile40=MiscFacePack-Nords.esp
GameFile41=Emmas_breton_faces_1_0.esp
GameFile42=Woodman's Female Celeb Heads 01.esp
GameFile43=Emmas_dunmer_faces1_0.esp
GameFile44=Sils_Long_Hair_Mod_v1.0.esp
GameFile45=Guinevere.esp
GameFile46=BM_Redsonja_01.esp
GameFile47=Cleaned PlayableFacesPack.esp
GameFile48=FBsCompilation4DrowMod.esp
GameFile49=FBsCompilation.esp
GameFile50=SATAN's Long Hair For Elves.esp
GameFile51=PW_Brin.esp
GameFile52=Clean Make-up & Tats.esp
GameFile53=Joy's Redguards.esp
GameFile54=qarls_hot_girls.esp
GameFile55=Dunmer_Rogues.esp
GameFile56=Xia_facepack_01.esp
GameFile57=MN_Breton_Vampires_1_v1.esp
GameFile58=Qarls_Hot_Girls2.esp
GameFile59=Weapons of Tamriel v1.2.esp
GameFile60=Castle_Kanthrock.esp
GameFile61=Clean SauronsAbode252_Tribunal.esp
GameFile62=Clean SauronsEnchantments252.esp
GameFile63=Clean TF_Grazelands_Estate_v1.esp
GameFile64=Clean add-on-pack_morrowind.esp
GameFile65=Clean House - Airioch Manor-v1.3.esp
GameFile66=Clean S_Inn_th.esp
GameFile67=Clean Sorefoot Enterprizes, Inc..esp
GameFile68=Clean Skali's Bitter Coast Hideout v2.esp
GameFile69=bob rapier.esp
GameFile70=Fortified_Thirsk_1.1.esp
GameFile71=Helios_Keep.esp
GameFile72=The regulars - Sitting NPC's v2.02.esp
GameFile73=Castle Vianden V1.esp
GameFile74=farrp_WeaponCompilationMod_V2.esp
GameFile75=Tigh High Boots 1.0.esp
GameFile76=Amazon War Boots 1.0.esp
GameFile77=Elven Mithril Chainmail Armor.esp
GameFile78=Cali's Clothing.esp
GameFile79=Sierre's Trader.esp
GameFile80=Leather&Lace.esp
GameFile81=Glitter Dresses.esp
GameFile82=Loincloth_top_ pkg.esp
GameFile83=Lord Alt Tab.esp
GameFile84=Necklace_Pack.esp
GameFile85=Korana's Closet.esp
GameFile86=Cali's_BB_V.2_Tight_Dresses.esp
GameFile87=Heaven's Lookout.esp
GameFile88=zbrotherandy.esp
GameFile89=Slave Collars.esp
GameFile90=Pozzo's Pandora.esp
GameFile91=paladin_armor_M_v.1.0.esp
GameFile92=Chainmail Tops+Slips 1.3.esp
GameFile93=Full Gowns.esp
GameFile94=Divine_domina_part_5.esp
GameFile95=CET_Meteoric_Steel_Mail.esp
GameFile96=French Maid Outfit.esp
GameFile97=Qarls_Gothic_Attire.esp
GameFile98=Ranger Tent.esp
GameFile99=Oakridge Ranch.esp
GameFile100=The Undead.esp
GameFile101=Disturb_the_dead.esp
GameFile102=Balmora Expansion v1.3.esp
GameFile103=Pegas Horse Ranch v2.1.esp
GameFile104=Guard Sex 2 - Funky Edition.esp
GameFile105=Clean Almilia's daughters 3.2.esp
GameFile106=Zkidforlove.esp
GameFile107=Clean dracandrosvoice.esp
GameFile108=zdacandros.esp
GameFile109=Clean P.R.E. v4.0.esp
GameFile110=Clean Nudity Greeting Expansion V1.esp
GameFile111=Vampire_Embrace.esp
GameFile112=MTT Vol III.esp
GameFile113=Advanced Herbalism - TR & BM.esp
GameFile114=Resources Enhanced.esp
GameFile115=Better Bodies.esp
GameFile116=Clean ring_teleport_trib.esp
GameFile117=Clean Barabus'Fireplaces.esp
GameFile118=Key Replacer Trib & BM.esp
GameFile119=Clean RealSignposts.esp
GameFile120=Vivec Signposts.esp
GameFile121=Unique Banners and Signs.esp
GameFile122=Authentic Signs IT 1.1.esp
GameFile123=VA_OrdReplace_openhelm1.0.esp
GameFile124=IceBradyRobeReplacerMW.esp
GameFile125=IceBradyRobeReplacerTB.esp
GameFile126=IceBradyRobeReplacerBM.esp
GameFile127=Amulets and Rings 2.1 Upgrade A.esp
GameFile128=NB_Soulgems_ReplacerCLEAN.esp
GameFile129=MWE_Base.esp
GameFile130=MWE_Blocking.esp
GameFile131=MWE_Writing.esp
GameFile132=MWE_Combat.esp
GameFile133=MWE_Journal.esp
GameFile134=Lights 300 v5.esp
GameFile135=Windows Glow.esp
GameFile136=Lock bash enhanced.esp
GameFile137=No-Glo_0709.esp
GameFile138=Clean NoShieldEffect.esp
GameFile139=Merged_Leveled_Lists.esp
GameFile140=Merged_Objects.esp
Qarl Tx texture pak over Visual v2.11 and 2.2 nature.

My rig:
Amd 3.0 barton, 1giga ddr at 400mhz, Ati 9800 pro 128.
res 1024x768
Direct x specs:
anti alising at 4x
Anisotropic at 16x
all rest at max quality.
Same specs for open gl.
Ati driver 4.9.

Used Ltcyconfig.
Changed the vga compatible controler to 64 instead of 255.
As I already used the basic sound bar on Direct x diag.
Results:
With max distance set on Balmora central plaza.
6/8 fps max.
with reg pci vga controler to 255.
6/8 fps
With distance bar turned down to min.
9/11
With Fps optimizer at novice mod.
In options I checked 1st only the 2nd - do you want to se farer.
8/9
In options checked 1st can optimizer adjust to see distance - 15fps, only.
12/14
In option 1st, 3th, 4th and 5th.
14/16
So for My rig using Ltyconfig didnt result in any gain of performance, by the contrary.
However Fps optimizer made the set Im using perfectly playable on the worst spot - Balmora central plaza,
Several rides by horse form Balmora to seyda nein.
14/17
13/16
16/20
14/17
17/36 (being 17 on Pelagiad next to Vailden castle and 36 on the road from fort till pelagiad and from pelagiad till Seyda nein).
So Im pretty confident that Fps optimizer is really improving My playbility.
Btw tested with Vga card settings turned off for performance instead of quality gaining around 2fps more.

This post has been edited by Gen_Lee: Sep 27 2004, 04:09 PM

It's not so much that it helps fps, but playability. Let me explain.

After about an hour of playing (for me) the game really starts to bog down. The framerate maintains a good 20 in balmora, but pauses every second/two seconds (without a fps dip), and also when turning in place the screen would stutter. This is really hard to ignore, and I would need to restart pc and play again. This app really helped this problem. No more freezing or pausing. (in sound or picture)

If you want better fps, get the Optimizer. Now I can see the plantations from Suran while keeping a great framerate.

I did this and i experienced a very nice improvement in the performance of my audio card
no more stuttering or pauses so NPCs can talk

From Agp bus read me:

This utlity should work on all AGP vid-cards located at bus 1, device 0, function 0. The utility should be run
from a DOS box while in windows 95/98. I would first make certain my AGP vid-card is at bus 1,
device 0, function 0 by looking at Sissoft Sandra's PCI, AGP, Cardbuses information and
checking the AGP bus. NT doesn't seem to like real-mode code so I doubt it would run under NT,
Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Unquote:
My vga card is on Bus 02 dev 0 function 0 and Im running Xp pro with sp1.
Seems no way it would work.

Where can I find info on this one? Google has nothing, and it is not on the major sites.

Probably on a site called "Morrowind Modding Gone Wrong". Forgot the URL.

I'm wondering if pre-Windows 2000 machines would be most affected by this, since I saw no improvement whatsoever even in playability when tweaking this value.

No matter, I'm getting ready to begin a new system anyways. The next machine I build will run Morrowind with a vengeance.

Speaking of vengeance, heck yeah. It's payback time for all this crap I've taken since installing this game! Now I just need some money.

Actually Free and Jay are both right

AGP and PCI are the SAME. The AGP is an extention of PCI technology, hence, they actually do share alot at one point. AGP does not clock directly to the CPU. but instead is connected directly to one of the bridges (North I think), where the PCI ports are run through the slower South bridge. Teh South bridge then connects to teh North bridge, which houses the Higher speed connections to memory and CPU. Whe you are changing PCI Bus properties, you are also affecting AGP properties, unless teh program/Basic In Out System (BIOS) provides for seperate setting for the AGP and PCI BUS. They still have to be assigned priority in the eyes of the CPU (hence interupts), and thus reducing teh latency of the BUS will allow other devices to access it more frequently. IT wourks the same(actually similar) as strob and column latency on memory. By reducing the length of acces, you can increase the numer of access's. So for those, with studdering, and a powerfull Video card, this could help by giving your other devices more love. Note, I don't know exactly how the programs work, but if you changing the BIOS, you could be "overclocking" and voiding your warrenties. (I for example alter my Bus frequency to improve performance)

Hopefully PCI-E will fix this with more bandwidth, AGP and PCI technology is over a decade old. We need a change...

This post has been edited by DenYaSis: Sep 27 2004, 09:51 PM

yes i was getting lockups, rather than outright ctds, but the stutterings were worse.

values?
I am going to look up to see if there are other posts and articles, there are different people's opinions on them.

mine are....
about 100 for the radeon9600xt
and about 150 for the audigy2 zs.
I may set my audigy to 180, as someone wrote that 180 worked best for him

apparently, from other places that i have read, the total amount of "values" in the bus has to be less than 750. thus if there are about 14 devices and all of them are set at "32", then it is
32 X 14 = 448

that soundblaster has to be gotten up to that 150 or so value, as the mods that need sound : that means that the soundblaster needs to have high priority

]HERE IS SOMETHING untried. for those who set "priorities", for the game to be "high", maybe the soundcard needs this setting too!]

a vid card setting of 248 means that that card is using much of the bus, irrevelent that the card is a AGP card! gotta get the soundcard to use the bus much much more. betcha that you will hear sounds that you never ever heard before!

freestone

I can SEE what the summerization is, to my post!

that there are TWO fixes!
ONE...the latency.cfg, or the powerstrip, fixes the stutterings and the pauses and the distorted music/sounds, but has little affect on fps.

TWO...the setting the acceleration to "Basic" will increase the framerates by 0 to 8 fps.

hoooooever! some systems will have a lot of results, on one or both Procedures, and some systems may have little results: there
are *SO* many soundcards...vid cards...out there, let alone other components!

I, here, hope that this thread might be Pinned, especially if i can find more documentation on this, there is very very little info out there on this latency program, i find!

freestone

here is yet another site with a program to set latency, apparently for win2000 or xp only.

http://mark-knutson.com/t3/

-----PCI Latency, The Root Of All Evil
Learning about the PCI bus latency settings provided a revolutionary performance in my own systems. I had upgraded to a CPU/Memory configuration that was far in excess of what I should have needed (I wasn't thinking about a more disciplined Ulysses kind of performance aanalysis back then--I just threw new CPUs and motherboards at the problem), yet still I was getting occasional pops and gapping.

Once I got a PCI tool on my system, I saw that PCI card was set to the highest setting of 248 (many systems round the latency setting down to the nearest multiple of 8). I changed it to 96, and the pops and clicks went away. I developed PCI Dawg to address this issue.

The seminal article on this subject is here. This gentleman's claims seemed overstated until I tried it myself.

I will note that the AGP device is on its own special superpowered PCI bus wired straight into the CPU and memory, but it does share some sort of resources with the PCI bus containing the sound card, which is why reducing its latency value can improve the sound performance on a music computer.
--------------------------------------------------


and that infered link?
it is here
http://www.geocities.com/phileosophos/tech/pcilatency.html


here is some of what is on this article.
----The list of problems I've just solved is a long one, but they bear some similarities to each other. All of them have to do, in one way or another, with "stuttering", "hitching", pauses, and so forth. For years, I've had my system evince various and infrequent glitches when playing back MP3 files, QuickTime movies, etc. This is something you've probably all seen
-----I discovered all of this after starting to experiment with a utility by the name of PowerStrip. As tweaking utilities go, I honestly didn't think much of PowerStrip until a few days ago. Sure, it allows you to overclock your video card, adjust your monitor timings and such, adjust PCI card settings, and perform a number of other tweaks. The reason I wasn't very impressed previously was because it provides only the most minimal features in any given area compared to other utilities.
-------PowerStrip does one thing, however, that no other utility I've found does. To wit, it allows you to examine and override a number of parameters for the PCI communications bus as applied to each device in your system. The first time I ran PowerStrip, I discovered the likely source of my hitching problems: my video card's PCI latency was at 248, my network device's value was 128, and my poor Audigy 2 sound card was set at 32. In other words, the video card and network card could easily hog the PCI bus to the point whereat my sound card might not be able to keep up with the load. PowerStrip makes it a simple matter to set those values to 80, 32, and 64 respectively. I experimented around a bit, of course, but those values seem to work best for my system.
-----Because quite a few people have written me regarding how to use PowerStrip, I thought it was worth mentioning two things here. If you're having trouble tweaking the PCI latency values, don't worry, it's probably not your fault; the PowerStrip interface is utterly terrible in this regard. First, to be able to switch from one device to another, you need to look to the right of your video card's name. There are tiny scrollbar buttons there that allow you to select the device you want to tweak. Second, if you find that you can't actually change the latency values, you should look for a check box labelled "Read-only" and make sure it's unchecked. If you still can't find them, click here for a diagram that might help.
diagram is here.....
http://www.geocities.com/phileosophos/imag...rip_diagram.gif

there is not much info to be found, on google, for such a revolutionary thing as "latency"!

freestone

there is one more thing that i must say about this latency cfg program, at least for my windows 98se operating system!
While i posted, in my first post, the instructions for how to set this program up to keep the configuration settings to "hold", for win98, this does not work!

I read further that other latency programs, except for powerstrip perhaps, have the same trouble!

which is.....

YOUR SETTINGS ONLY WORK FOR ONE WINDOWS SESSION!!
on the next reboot/bootup, the numbers that you have set in the ltcy.cfg program settins window, for the soundcard/vid card, reset back to the old windows settings!!!
thus, if you play mw tomorrow, you will have your old stutterings back again, unless you re-enter the values again!!

so what i do is to make a shortcut to this program on my desktop.
then i go to windows explorer and look up the folder that has ltcy.cfg and open it up. i then open up the program to bring up that screen. then i set my values, for the soundcard/vid card. i apply them.
then i see on the right bottom sidebar and option to create a file for these currant settings. i do so. this file is stored in the Folder for ltcy.cfg.

so the next time that i turn on my computer and up comes windows to
desltop, i click on the shortcut and the settings window comes up for ltcy.cfg. i note that windows lo and behold has reset my values back to the old ones!! i then click on that button at the bottom to bring up that "saved file". i then click on this file and then these settings are placed in the window. thus i do not have to manually re-enter them again in this window. that file applies the values to my cfg program and you can see the new values in the window after they are applied.
tis a three or four quick click process, only takes a second.

maybe this will help...
freestone

I came across what bethsoft says about sound issues.
for anyone's info, and a clearer wey of describing how to get the sound accerlation slider to basic, read this


MORROWIND : WINDOWS 98 : RESOLUTION 15498

Q: Morrowind is crashing to the desktop or I am having sound/voice issues.

A: If Morrowind is crashing to the desktop when sounds or voices play, try using the steps below to resolve the problem.

If the problem still persists, try lowering audio acceleration using the steps below.
- Click on Start, Settings, then Control Panel.
- In Control Panel, double click on Multimedia (Sound and Multimedia in Windows ME and later).
- On the Audio tab, under the Playback section, click on the Advanced Properties button. (Note: If the Advanced Properties button is grayed out, click on the drop-down box above and select the option that reflects your sound card.)
- Once the Advanced Audio Properties window appears, click on the Performance tab and take the slider bar for Hardware Acceleration from Full to Basic Acceleration.
- Click on Apply, then OK, then OK again and close the Control Panel.


there. i have said enough.
I would like to see the thread pinned, myself

freestone

Case Closed.

You should have told me earlier. This is why we're getting different results.

It was scientifically verified shortly after the ES forums began: stickying a thread ensures that nobody will ever read it, under any circumstances, ever. Not once. People who come to this forum will walk ten miles in the snow to avoid reading a thread that has been stickied. They will methodically cut off their fingers one by one rather than subject themselves to the agony and tedium and dull, dreary, brain-cell-destroying monotony of reading a stickied thread. They will eat eat broccoli, fer chrissakes, rather than read a stickied thread.

No! No! We can't let that happen to your thread, freestone! We must not let that happen! We can't give in! There's too much at stake, people! Think of the children!

brash! Over here, quickly.

Ok, someone help me

You see, since I installed Radeon 9600XT 256mb, I have been getting massive fps instability, going from 60 to 5 to 60 to 5 to 60 in seconds, etc.

The thing is, I tried the same that freestone did, and nada. My sound card is a Creative AudioPCI, 32 latency. Not an Audigy after all.

I did the changes, sound card to 150, graph card to 100, and it stayed the same, still the stuttering

I would hate to have to give up on Morrowind.

Im on Windows XP. P4 1.7Ghz, 512Ram.

Anyone knows any other source of problem that may do this?

This post has been edited by Amazing_Amoeba4: Sep 28 2004, 11:33 AM

ATi just released a beta driver that is supposed to fix issues with 256Mb cards. Have you tried that?

Also make sure you use DriverCleaner to get a clean install of your new video card.

Exactly do as showler says above, also if your prior card was fairly old check your bios settings to especially the amount of memory cache(I believe it's called that ok) for your agp bus. If it's set to low that might be messing with your video.

This post has been edited by brady228: Sep 28 2004, 12:56 PM

LOL. Creative AudioPCI. I remember those.

You might want to turn down some of the sound acceleration in DirectX as well, since some of the fancy stuff in this game might not be hardware native to your card. (There were issues like this with the Soundblaster Live, never mind its predecessor. )

You can try setting your MaxFPS to 60-100 instead of 240 as well if you're having this problem. Have you ever seen 240 fps in Morrowind (if you have, please let me know your secret:D).

Your processor is similar to mine, your RAM is equal, your video card smokes me, and my sound card smokes you. We should be about even in performance I think, and I keep things steady in the 20s, 30s, and 40s most of the time when outdoors.

Also, try turning threadloading off, since threadloading is stream-loading, not loading in chunks when you need it.

Something else you can do. Make a batch file in the Morrowind directory by creating a text file, copying and pasting the text below, saving, and then renaming the file from *whatever*.txt to *whatever*.bat. Next time you play, run this batch file and the game will run in High priority mode. It only works in NT-based operating systems. There's a tiny program that allows the same thing for Win9Xer's and if anyone is interested in that then PM and I'll email it to you.

Create text file, copy & paste this into it, save, rename, play:

echo off

Start /high Morrowind.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

It should also be noted that Morrowind FPS Optimizer can do this as well if you have it installed.

Hi Jay....

yes, win 98se, as i said in my very first post, that begins the thread!

post number one.....

hi all...

well last night i began mt new, new, new, *new* game!
[gotta begin a new game with MTT3 and Luara craft mods!]

----[in my win98se, the changes will not "take' i have to reset it on boot, but a shortcut to desktop makes this quick!
maybe in winXP, one can set it better]
--------------------------------

it was buired away, in my post, that i was using win98se! Lost in the words, no one sees it!

maybe in my future i should Outright at the beginning of my post, post my operating system and specs so that this confusion will not happen again as it seems that win98 is rare these days!
sorry!

naturally i might be the *only* one who uses this operating system, of course, being "contrary" in most of my life. i slowly built up my computer, i would have to re-format to install this winxp [read: lose all my games and mods!]

at least we are talking about the same game! I have seen usenet posts where there were two games with *nearly* the same name, and two posters were thinking it was the same game, took a while to staighten this all out!!
....or something like that!

onwards....
freestone

Question!

Where can I find the sound acelerator in Directx9? Where can I find directx9 panels?

This post has been edited by Amazing_Amoeba4: Sep 29 2004, 10:51 AM

the bump?

type dxdiag in the run window. I think that's what you want.

thx!

And a bump, since many people would do well in reading this. Its good information to those that have problems with fps.

In my win98se system, all i have to do is to go to "my computer/controlpanel/systems" and then click on the "multimedia" icon to bring up it.
then go to either 'advanced' or "performance" and find the slider.
set it on "basic". if the music and sounds do not work well, try "standard". my basic settings work well....

freestone

Freestone and JayProgrammer, I love you both.

It was the directx9, and the game is running 100% again!

You both saved my Morrowind (which is my favourite game of all time, I DID NOT want to part from it) and I love you both!

Just out of curiosity I tried this on my system yesterday:
P4 3.06 500mhz FSB
1 Gig RAM
9800 Pro
Audigy 1

My Video was set at 255, audio 32.

I tried setting the video card to 128 and 64. I tried Morrowind with all 3 settings and it seemed to help but I only tried it briefly. I was more intrested in seeing how other games would react. I ran a timedemo in Doom 3 and Quake 2 and all 3 settings had the exact same results. So, on my system, turning down the hogging of the video card had no effect on my FPS in other games.

yes of

COURSE!

this is true, hte video card does its own Processing of the data. thus a supermax graphics card wins for quake, doom, etc!

but morrowind is a cpu intensive game and that vid card does not count for too much, in comparison. morrowind is very very very cpu-intensive, where all the other games are much more graphics card intensive.
thus your soundcard, which does NONE of the work, has a greater more importance. the sound card's work is done by the cpu!!
thus if you give the soundcard a higher detting, it takes the load off the cpu, and there are fewer freezes and stutterings! the fps does not increase so much, the smoothness of the game does.
i can RUN through a 9fps area, now!!

be aware that your settings get lost at each reboot! I put a shortcut to ltcy.cfg on the desktop and open it from there. in my saved file, it only takes a second to activate it...read the readme that is in the folder that comes with this program on how to set it up.

yes, the next time you play morrowind, the settings revert back to
the 255 video. be very aware of that. then use the desktop to set it again.

freestone

Thanks, Freestone. The Latency Tool was a big help here. Now, just like you've mentioned, I can run through an area with 9 FPS and it still be smooth whereas before it'd be jerky. Granted, I didn't have the stuttering that some have had - I've noticed a significant difference all the same and anyone with low fps in Morrowind should give this program a shot.

I think this thread should be made a sticky.

See my post above.

Wish I had those results.

I now get real Windows "this program will be closed" crashes instead of CTDs since upgrading to SP2 and have moved Morrowind over to my Windows 98 partition.

In 98 thusfar, I've already had one inexplicable freeze, kernel32.dll kick the bucket, and a freeze with my mouse movement causing the PC speaker to buzz. Ah, it's just like old times yet again.

Have you checked for IRQ conflicts? In Win2k I had my vid & sound card using the same IRQ. Windows didn't see a conflict but I had all sorts of problems. Well, Win2k doesn't let you change IRQ settings like Win9x in it's default state. I had to do a reinstall and F8 at the appropriate time in order to change that which also meant fiddling around in the BIOS. Now, everything is kosher. At least in Win9x you can just go to device manager and change those settings manually.

Also, the sound card conflict generated similar kernel errors. Fixed it and haven't seen those errors since.

This post has been edited by Eirinjas: Sep 30 2004, 02:48 PM

That's because Windows 2000 has its own set of IRQs and changes this whole thing drastically.

Windows 98 is just Windows 98. I have it on a dorky little 10GB partition to run old DOS programs like Arena, nothing else. I never have any problems either most of the time. That 98 install is as old as this machine's main drive, since I've reinstalled XP a few times but have never had to touch 98. It's also running 6 month old drivers on everything because I haven't done anything since when I was in college, and the Kernel32 thing occurred when I tried copying 3 GB of files over. Easy to get around, I accessed the partition in XP.

I might be on to something on my XP install of Morrowind though. I'm running in Windows 2000 compatibility mode now and seeing what happens. Last time I ran in 98 though, the whole computer froze when I exited Morrowind.

I think I'll stick to DOS games.

Moving this to the hardware section.

Moving this to the hardware section since it's mostly tech-talk.

Fantastic improvement using this. Using Fps Optimiser it means I'm not running in fog everywhere. Nothing else made any noticeable difference
so I have hardware sound on too. Thanks again.

If you try Omega Catalyst 8.07 driver from www.omegadrivers.net it will set to 32 latency for Ati cards