Requesting hardware performance guide from the developers

[bkwrm13]

Given that some of us are already spending non-trivial dollar amounts on upgrading our PCs for this game, it would be helpful if we could find out what upgrades would give us the most bang for the buck. I know there are several threads here on our best guesses, but it can get really expensive in time and money to use trial and error to figure this out. The system requirements are a good starting point, but most of us upgrade a part at a time as we can save up.

Specifically I think these points would be helpful for a lot of people:

+Given a mainstream or low-end graphics card (say a Radeon 9600 or nVidia 9700) would upgrading the CPU give a better benefit than upgrading the graphics card? According to Valve's system survey it seems the Geforce2/4MX are the most common graphics cards cards and they don't even support DirectX 8.

+It seems even the faster graphics cards are not getting more than 25 - 30 FPS even with low visual settings. I upgraded from a Geforce4MX 440 to an Radeon 9700 Pro 128 and saw no discernable increase in FPS at the same settings according to FRAPS. Is it CPU limited or is there a max FPS code limit? Well, even if they don't want to disclose the details, we could at least not recommend people upgrade to a $500 graphics card.

+Which visual settings would give the nicest effects for the least GPU hit. We could spend hours testing each parameter, but I'd rather spend the time playing.

I'd rather the devs give us at least some general guidelines than everyone posting their specs and trying to decipher what really makes a difference. I'd also like to avoid wasting any more money on upgrades that don't make a difference. All in the quest for a nicer looking Ryzom.

Also, thanks cerest for all your efforts in the forums

[bkwrm13]

So I did some swapping between my systems and changed my game sys from an Athlon 1700+ (1.47GHz) to a 1GHz and then to a 2100+ (1.73GHz). Man I hate removing the Athlon HS/fan.

The downgrade to the 1Gig Athlon drop dropped my FPS about 10 to 10 FPS average. Upgrading to the 2100+ did increase my max FPS to 26, but the average only increased to by 1 to 21 FPS.

Good thing I didn't pay for the upgrade.

[sledge11]

There is 1 prime change that you can make that will give you the best base performance. Its possible you may want to do other changes after this, but memory is pretty cheap these days.

Update your system to contain 1 gig of memory.

This all goes back to the problem Microsoft has with using disk as a replacement for memory. They simply never learned how to do it effienctly. The page pool is the last place you want to have to go to while running this game or any game.

All of the checks i have done shows that I am running just under 800 meg with Windows XP Professional.

[aether4u]

I'm running the following PC specs/settings, and the performance is smooth as hell (except for the occasional network lag):

Custom-built Athlon XP 1.4GHz
Epox mobo w/200MHz FSB
1GB DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9200XT
Sound Blaster Platinum
WinXP Pro (sp1)

--

Direct3D
32bit textures (low for 64MB cards)
high-res settings for all options except effects (normal)
1152x864 resolution @ 85hz
EAX enabled (sounds very nice)
2x AA enabled on vid card settings
anisotropic filtering disabled
vsync disabled

My computer is a bit dated, but I think represents an average gamer PC these days. Hope this helps! The higher resolution and AA make up for the low-quality textures, but I can barely tell the difference. For some extra zing, turn up the contrast in the game settings too.

[bkwrm13]

Thanks for the suggestions. Do you guys have any idea what FPS you're getting in the open fields?

RAM is the last option I'm planning to try, but the problem is that my MB only has 2 RAM slots each filled w/256MB DIMMs. So I would need to buy 2 new 512MB DIMMs at $160US plus shipping. I'm trying to work out a loan so that I can test it out before blowing the money on another unimpressive upgrade.

[aether4u]

Thanks for the suggestions. Do you guys have any idea what FPS you're getting in the open fields?

RAM is the last option I'm planning to try, but the problem is that my MB only has 2 RAM slots each filled w/256MB DIMMs. So I would need to buy 2 new 512MB DIMMs at $160US plus shipping. I'm trying to work out a loan so that I can test it out before blowing the money on another unimpressive upgrade.

Well, the FPS in the fields is fine & dandy. It's the FPS in cities that takes a hit, but with my current settings probably 25-28? It's pretty smooth.

[bkwrm13]

Well I had a chance to play with some borrowed RAM, and it wasn't the holy grail I'd hoped it to be. I didn't really expect it to increase my FPS, but I swapped in 1GB of DDR RAM. As expected there was no increase in frames, but it did decrease the page file on disk getting hit so much as some people suggested it would. So it made for a more enjoyable playing experience, but not one I'd pay $170 for.

Again I feel lucky I had the chance to try before I buy, which is why I'm requesting this performance guide.

So where does that leave me? It seems the only upgrade that would make sense would be a fullblown new system, finally taking the jump to an Athlon64 CPU/MB with 1GB of RAM. Now we're talking about a $400 upgrade (or $500 if my current PSU can't handle the load). Not something I'm willing to spend for one game until I get some kind of assurance that it would be worth it. Hint hint hint.

In the meantime, I guess I'll just get used to 20FPS under good conditions. Still worth playing Ryzom with. Just seems amazing that other games run on my system so much better.

[dpkdpk]

In the meantime, I guess I'll just get used to 20FPS under good conditions. Still worth playing Ryzom with. Just seems amazing that other games run on my system so much better.

I just checked with FRAPS, I average about 20-23FPS in town no matter what I set the settings to (didn't try texture memory, though). Even with sound off.

I think MMOs must have to process much more external information than any other game. I suspect that is partly why the FPS is lower. It's probably harder for the client to do advance predictions of NPC behavior as well, so it has to act on the data it gets, and thus has to wait until it gets the data to act. I'm not speaking as a game developer of course, just making slightly educated guesses.

FWIW, I have the following:

Athlon 2600+XP
1GB RAM PC2700 (3200 caused errors, bad MB probably)
SB Live 5.1 value
Gainward GeForce Ti4200 64MB
No AA, no AF

20-23FPS in towns.

[bkwrm13]

I think MMOs must have to process much more external information than any other game. I suspect that is partly why the FPS is lower. It's probably harder for the client to do advance predictions of NPC behavior as well, so it has to act on the data it gets, and thus has to wait until it gets the data to act. I'm not speaking as a game developer of course, just making slightly educated guesses.

Thanks for the info dpkdpk. I guess part of my frustration in trying to figure out performance is that Ryzom is not well known enough to be used by the PC hardware review sites for benchmarking.

Interestingly enough though, hardocp uses City of Heroes as part of their test suite:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjYwLDY=
It looks like you don't have an option to use D3D since its an OpenGL game, but its roughly comparable to Ryzom. Granted, they're using a 3GHz CPU, but they're also using a slower GPU than mine (Radeon X600XT vs 9700 Pro). Too many variables to give much weight to the comparison, but still, they're getting a minimum 22, maximum 55, and average 36.4 FPS.

Also interesting that resolution makes a big difference in CoH, but not much difference in Ryzom.

Questions, questions, we've got questions.

[jeffhill]

Whats the command to display FPS ?