Video Card observation

[Boozbaz]

I have an ATI radeon X850, back in the day this was a flagship. Nowadays it's a sinking titanic.

I play with the video options to the lowest possible - there was a slight performance improvement.

I installed XMAX mod today and read the warning: May cause extreme lag - causes stress on CPU and Video Card.

Luckily I have duo core processors, so that's out of the question. Anyhow, I decided to take a screenshot of all the dead bodies after a battle, so I turned the video options to the max.

After taking the screenshot, I decided test playing with high video settings. ;)

Here's the observation. I expected a loss in performance. Instead I got a gain in performance O_O It could be due to toggling on triple buffering. It could be my computer putting more priority towards the game.

It could even be temporary. I've been play testing for about 20 minutes now, and am getting a steady performance.

This may have a horrible backfire when playing multiplayer.

I have yet to test that. Who knows? Someone else out there may find similar results.

I'll update after more testing.

(note: I turned off background music, this may have had an effect)

[Boozbaz]

Well I guess that was a temporary thing. The video card fan is blasting and taking a long while to load things like entering/exiting caves/using portals etc.

[Crescent_Hawk]

How many other programs do you have running?

[Boozbaz]

How many other programs do you have running?

a lot, but that would affect the CPU, not the video card right?

Hmm...hmmm. Well I've got a decent DUO core, Intel Pentium: 2.13 GHz each. I used to play supreme commander and had that thing running without maxxing out the CPU usage too fast. I'm pretty sure TQ: IT doesn't require THAT much CPU usage.

It's probably the video card, or ram.

[Crescent_Hawk]

I use an 8800GTS 640mb card on a 1680 x 1050 LCD. I don't run any other programs just to make sure that I get no slowdown. Games are notorious HOGS!!!! when it comes to cpu/video time. Even with my 7900GTS I still made sure that I had no other programs running.

[Boozbaz]

I use an 8800GTS 640mb card on a 1680 x 1050 LCD. I don't run any other programs just to make sure that I get no slowdown. Games are notorious HOGS!!!! when it comes to cpu/video time. Even with my 7900GTS I still made sure that I had no other programs running.

Hmm yes that is a good idea. I would do the same as well, if I knew which programs to turn off, and which to leave on. Here's a screenie of what I get when I CTRL+ALT+DEL

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a11/Boozbazz/WhatisRunning.jpg

Is that a normal sized list?

I know better than to expect perfect performance with things like Itunes or limewire running in the background. But all that other crap.... I don't even know what half of that stands for.