Descent 3 and Dual-Core CPU's

N2Flames · Post by **N2Flames** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:21 am

Hi, I'm new here. My name is Mike, it's nice to meet you all.

I haven't played Descent 3 in quite a while. And as you can imagine, I have a much different PC now than I had back when I played it. Now, back in the day, the system I played this on was awesome for this game, and I think I only had a 600mhz Celeron with 512mb of RAM, plus some small NVidia display adapter. Well, the game ran fine.

The computer I have now is at least 4 times faster (or more). When I decided to install and play some Descent 3, I couldn't believe how bad it was running!? This is my system:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 (Dual-Core) 3800+ 2.01 Ghz
1Gb RAM
PCI-Express 3D Video: VisionTek Radeon X1300 512Mb

Not super-awesome, but I can run Doom 3 without a single hickup, even with several programs running in the background.

Now, I have had trouble with some, older games, not running properly through a dual-core processor. Some of which, I was able to find a downloadable \"fix\". When I run Descent, all is fine through the menus and the mini-movies; but when I get into the actual game, it has an \"on\" / \"off\" / \"on\" / \"off\" effect. The video will just stop, go, stop, go. This is much the same kind of wierd trouble I had with other older games running through my X2 CPU. Wondered if any of you had any thoughts on this or know of a fix or something? I'd really like to play this game again.

Thanks in advance.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:55 am

Force the D3 processor affinity in task manager and see if it helps.

Teddy · Post by **Teddy** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 11:25 am

My system is very similar to yours...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 (Dual-Core) 4200+ 2.20 Ghz
1Gb RAM
PCI-Express 3D Video: Nvidia 6600GT

D3 runs just fine for me with out setting the cpu affinity, so i'd suggest that the problem is else where. most likely with your video....

If your using D3d for your video render, change it to opengl. Besides being slower then opengl, d3d has a rendering bug that causes the game to choke every few seconds.(but this shouldnt effect video playback or menues, only ingame play)

If you are already using opengl and your having this problem.... find out from other d3 players which driver set has the least problems with d3, or pull out the POS ati card and buy a card that actually puts out decient Opengl drivers...

N2Flames · Post by **N2Flames** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 3:30 pm

Krom wrote:Force the D3 processor affinity in task manager and see if it helps.

That did it... thanks! Worked like a charm and I was able to use full detail and 1024X768 res. Very cool.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 4:31 pm

Well, w/ that setup you should not only be able to run full detail at 1280x1024+, but also at 300+ fps.. If it doesn't do that, something is indeed very wrong w/ you computer. I'm running D3 on a dual core CPU an I never had the problem you described nor did I set the CPU afinity for it. Are you running in Direct3D o OpenGL mode ? In case of the former, switch to OpenGL as suggested above and see how that goes.

edit: welcome to the board

N2Flames · Post by **N2Flames** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:58 pm

I tried both settings (DirectX and OpenGL). Right now, I am using OpenGL (with the affinity changed to use CPU-0). I'm wondering if I need to get that \"unofficial\" update for D3? I grabbed the 1.4 patch. Should I get the other as well? Maybe it has something that fixes the problem?

In either case, it runs perfectly fine with the affinity adjustment. Would be nice though not to have to do that anymore.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 6:40 pm

Maybe this helps..

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 7:38 pm

He may have some background task running that uses up just the right amount of CPU and causes the OS to shuffle D3 back and forth from one core to the next.

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:11 pm

Krom: shuffle processes between cores? Is that even possible, given the fact that the thread state would be cached on one of the cores? I'm pretty sure Windows takes advantage of x86 features to save context, which is local to the core the process is running on... but I'm not entirely up on dual-core tech.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:19 pm

AMDs DCs have a crossbar between the Cache's, Intels share the cache in some instances, so both DCs should be able to access the other cores cache.

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:32 pm

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3152

Tho, moving a process between two cores wouldn't functionally invovle the cache - your are pushing the registers onto the stack(ie RAM) and having the other core pick it up.

I don't think windows does this without user intervention, or do most desktop operating systems. The only place where I can see something like that happening is a machine that you can hotplug CPU's into.

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 5:33 pm

Flip, this kinda explains what I'm talking about. I am not an OS developer, so I make no claims.

N2Flames · Post by **N2Flames** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 7:27 pm

Grendel wrote:Maybe this helps..

hmmm, a windows hotfix, and registry stuff too, gahhh I hate messing with the registry! LOL
Well, I may try this. Funny thing is, I had installed another game before (an older one, can't remember what game it was) and had this same problem. To fix it, the developer had a patch. When the problem first occured with this other game, I hit up google for some research on dual-core issues. I wasn't the only one with this problem (there were tons of people asking about this stuff on other BBs).
Anyway, I may try the hotfix (Thanks Grendel) when I have some time away from work to sit here and play with it.

Thanks everyone for your help!

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 7:21 am

GO Legit on your O/S and Update

N2Flames · Post by **N2Flames** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:37 pm

my Windows XP is paid for

I gave up the pirated O/S's long ago.

the hotfix worked.