Why Is My Warcraft III So Choppy? I have more than...

[Lord Nightsorrow]

I tried the re-instal thing before comming here. As for SB, I ran that to, and got nothing.

 

[TheoStormhawk]

Like the title stated, why is my warcraft III so choppy? Im a very smart person with computers, I bought warcraft III awhile ago, I had 640MB of RAM, and a 1.5GHz Processor. I also had a 32MB Geforce 2 Video card. I didnt like the quality of the card, so I spent nearly 300$ in a New, Nvidia Geforce 6200 256MB card, and its still choppy!!! But not "as" choppy. What's going on? Theres like 10x more Video RAM than the box says it needs. Ugg, Im so P*ssed off, I spent 300$ for nothing, my Warcraft III RES. is at 1024x768x32, (I am no way turning it down) and everything else is at HIGH/ON. I need some assistance.

I am smart with computers also , so here is what I think:
First, what is that RAM, how come u have 640 mb, because usually someone it has 512 or 1024 or 768? that 128 over the 512 doesn't count too much and on some mainboards could lower the performance. Take care that u have the biggest ram (512) on the first slot of your mainboard.
Do you have DDR memory?
Do you have double channel?
do you have a 7200 rpm hard disk?
Also you didn't had to buy that graphics card only for wc3, a nVIDIA 5200 would have been enough to render u the maximum wc video experience.
It doesn't matter if u have 10X more ram on your graphic card, did u know that a GeForce 5900( I think even G4 Titanium could be better)is better than your graphic card? not the quantity of ram is important the chip and the instructions of the chip are.
here how this goes, wc3 is a multiple processing game I mean it has to proccess alot of things, and on the spot, the speed is not so important, system stability is important.
U probably have Win XP, so I reccomend u to get 768 mb of RAM (because the win eats alot, about 128 mb of resources). Ideal would be to have double channel and double channel memory.
Also the processor is important, yours I think is good because it has alot of cache, ideal would be a prescott with hyper threading.


PS:
that graphic card of yours can be tuned to 6600, using riva tuner, this is not overclocking, it is tuning.
this is how: the 6200 chip has 8 pipelines just like 6600, but only 4 are activated, so using riva tuner u can activate the other 4 pipelines, the insructions of the chips are the same, practiccaly 6200 is the same chip with 6600 except for what I have said above.
atention: this is not valid for the 6200 chip cards that are buid on NV44 technology.

 

[ChrisH36]

Combinations to make 640

256x2 + 128
512+128

The weird thing is that I am not getting my 512 block till next week. I have 256 and my game runs fine.

 

[TheoStormhawk]

Yeah I played too when it came out with 256 RAM and it was fine, but my RAM was geile.

 

[ChrisH36]

I am starting to think its his processor. He probably has too many programs running and its causing his programs to run slow when he attempts to run Warcraft III.

Like I just bought Serious Sam II, and its not really choppy. Considering I play on medium res everything with a system that meats its recommended requirements.

 

[Lord Nightsorrow]

hmm, my processor. I'll try to exit most of the programs running on the taskbar. Also, I used 2 256MB RDRAM (PC800-400Mhz) and 2 64MB(PC800-400Mhz) rams. The video card is also I belive at 400Mhz. I'll try quitting some stuff before I play again.

BTW, how do I edit the card with riva? It looks very technical and I dont want to mess anything up.

 

[ChrisH36]

Use the edit button to avoid double posting (I can tell by the Automerged line).

Well, I believe you have a control panel for that kind of card. If you owned a ATI Radeon, I could be of great help.

 

[Lord Nightsorrow]

Hmm, yes, I already set the Nvidia to Best performance, but what I mean is how do you you tweak the card using that Riva program.

 

[TheoStormhawk]

hmm, my processor. I'll try to exit most of the programs running on the taskbar. Also, I used 2 256MB RDRAM (PC800-400Mhz) and 2 64MB(PC800-400Mhz) rams. The video card is also I belive at 400Mhz. I'll try quitting some stuff before I play again.

BTW, how do I edit the card with riva? It looks very technical and I dont want to mess anything up.

RDRAM? is this by any case rambus memory?
because if u have rambus memory I think this is your problem.

Hmm, yes, I already set the Nvidia to Best performance, but what I mean is how do you you tweak the card using that Riva program.

It is well known that the difference between GeForce 6600 and 6200 is the number of Pixel Pipes. So the first has 8 and the second has the same, but 4 of them are blocked. There is no other difference, the standard specification for the GPU and memories frequences being the same (this is not valid for the 6200 based on NV44)

The nice thing about this tuning is that it can be done easily, with cards from the majority of big brands and is succesfull in most of the cases.
I have tried a tuning like this on a Leadtek 6200 TD AGP 128 MB DDR 128 bit and everything went fine.

So, how it is done:
The program for this operation is Riva Tuner (I used the 2.0 RC 15.5 version). In the "Main>Target Adapter" tab it can be seen the type of the graphic card and in a paranthesis it is written "4x1 , 3vp". "4x1" its the number of Pixel Pipes and "vp" means Vertex Pipes, but this is not so important.
Near these, there is a button on wich is written "Customize". Click on it and choose the option "Low-Level System Settings". Than NVStrap driver. In the bottom part of the window there is the option "Active pixel/vertex units configuration" wich is set on "Determined by VGA BIOS". Set it on Custom.
Than click on "Customize", a button wich is situated below. A list will appear. Search for the field at Description written Pixel unit. Notice that there are 2 fields of this type, one having at "State" Enabled and the other Disabled. At the one that is written "DIsabled" click the Bit field exactly in the front of that statement. Notice that a marked sign appeared, a selection sign. After this click "OK" and than "Apply".
Now notice that at the card type it is written "8x1 , 3vp".
This is it. Simple isn't it?
So, in 3d Mark 03 v3.60 I got 3302 before the tuning and 4247 after.
The system on wich I performed the tuning was Semptron 2200+ , 512 MB DDRAM PC3200 (2.5-3-3-6), mainboard ECS N2U400-A , WinXP Pro + SP2 , DX9.0c , Forceware 71.90 from Leadtek.
I say that this tuning can be tried because is practically harmless for the "health" of the card and the improvement in performance is substantial especially for the applications in wich Pixel Shader is involved.

And another thing, but don't try it without parenthal advisory. The GF 6200 can be overclocked pretty nice, especially the Leadtek, and the increase in performance after an operation like this can be surprising, especially combined with the 4 pipes thing. But don't get into overclocking if u are not sure what are u doing!!!

 

[Lord Nightsorrow]

Ok, I get it.
And I do have RAMBUS memory, but 640MB should still be enough either way. I'll attemp. the video editing.

EDIT, Wait, I tried what you said, but I already have both bit fields enabled. What do I do now?

 

[TheoStormhawk]

Rambus memory is not good, the thing is that it has alot of incompatibilities with alot of aplications and at high amounts of memory it becomes unstable, this is why there aren't on the market sticks of RDRAM with more than 256, or at least there weren't a few months ago (I haven't checked recently). Anyways this platform is dead.


About the tuning.
Are u sure have u checked about both those fields?

Say, does your graphic card is called by any chance 6200 TC (TC=TurboCache)? Because if it is like this, it is NV44 and not NV40 and this means that it can't be tuned.
Actually this chip is more slowest in my opinion than the previous 6200, the one using NV44 is build on 0.11 microns and NV40 on 0.13, but this is the only advantage because this NV44 6200 has 4 pixel pipelines, though only two pixels can technically be written at each clock cycle. This is due to a "fragment crossbar" that interprets the data coming from the 4 pipes and then balances them.

 

[Lord Nightsorrow]

Ok, I dont understand how to "checK" and see if I my card is the NV40 or the NV44. But Im certain for sure its not a 6200 TC.

 

[JLAH]

Hmmm...
My comp is not as good as yours (im hopefully upgrading it before christmas), i have:
800mhz AMD CPU
256 Ram (Dont know what kind)
and an Ati Radeon 7000 with 64mb
And i get good performance, even in FFA games, well in 12 ppl games it can get a bit laggy but not too laggy, i can still micro just fine, i also play Footman Frenzy sometimes, that has a lot of units on at the same time and it plays just fine, laggy at times when theres too many units on screen at same time, but playable.
And i managed to play WoW for 9 months and got 2 characters to 49 before i decided to quit till i could upgrade my comp, i ran the game at 10 FPS, and going to Orgrimmar or Ironforge or playing battlegrounds was hell for me, so i quited, came back to Wc3 and im doing fine.
I do close Norton Antivirus thing before playing, i can really notice the change when i forget too, i dont just turn it off, i end task it.

Edit.- I didnt only get those two to 49 in 9 months, im not that bad hehe, i made a lot of alts, i have a problem with alts i think, i played every class two or three times to 20 or 30, some on horde some on alliance, and my two highest are a Shammy and a pally, i just didnt want to get to 60 cuz raiding wouldve been impossible, and at 60 thats pretty much it, at least thats what i hear.

 

[Pains Requiem]

Just a simple thought, but do you think it might just be the disc itself?

 

[Emperor Pan I]

The disk is only used to load require memory to Ram, the game doesn;t run straight off the disk so I doubt it would be choppy because of the disk

 

[ChrisH36]

Ok, I dont understand how to "checK" and see if I my card is the NV40 or the NV44. But Im certain for sure its not a 6200 TC.

Its called open your case and find out.

 

[Lord Nightsorrow]

*sigh* Im not that dumb. Its not stated anywhere on the card, I just bought it.

 

[TheoStormhawk]

*sigh* Im not that dumb. Its not stated anywhere on the card, I just bought it.

Hellwolf said on the BOX, not on the card, on the card obviously doesn't say anything.
Ok, in order for us to try to help u, please state the full name of your graphic card, brand and some other parameters that u can find.
I'll search on the net to see if I can find something about your card.

 

[QuikSilver]

Why are you all getting so technical. I highly doubt it is a hardware issue. You have WAY ABOVE THE REQUIREMENTS. Even though he has rambus ram. Your issue is most probably software. Make sure you dont have a lot of applications running in the background and take care of spyware.
Also...Very important...UPDATE YOUR video card driver.
Are your other games running fine?

Go to blizzard tech support site. You might find an answer there.

 

[IceDevil9]

I bet my bottom dollar he's got too much shit running ar once. So many people open up like, MSN Messenger, AIM, a media player, some browsers, a game or two, and leave them all running!

It eats up your RAM, so don't do it, only have Warcraft run and maybe AIM (or another messnger program), and I'm sure your game will become less choppy.

-Frank