I had very good performance with my game, it ran awesome and smooth... until the last update... now it take 4-5 minutes to actually get to the first menu, and that is with hitting Esc to skip the opening movies... since I don't really play online, i may just go back to the 1.2 or 1.3 update and say screw it until 1.5... this is something in the game itself as I am a computer tech by trade and this system is clean and stable as a whistle.
E6600 @ 2.4GHz, under load never goes over 40ºC
2GB DDR2-1066
256MB X1950GT PCIe GPU
HX650W PSU
320GB 7200.10 SATA3 HD
XP Pro SP2
GA-EP35-DS3P board
X-Fi XtremeGamer

so my performance went to crap after the last update... before that it ran better then pretty much any other game I have played recently.

I do ok until I get large Advent vs large Advent - then it becomes unplayable. I get about 10 clicks every 5 minutes.

AMD 4200+ 2GB Ram. 7600GTS

I was suprised to see the two cpu stats earler - on my system, I get one cpu at near 100% and the other basically idle.

Yeah... seems like Advent isn't a pickable race as far as I'm concerned. That one ability of theirs will bring any computer to its knees and at the same time makes it impossible to see anything worth a damn.

It's getting harder to recommend this game when I'm seeing so many problems being posted about. I'm already personally responsible for at least 13 people buying the game, through my postings at various forums.

I went back and looked at the dual CPU issue...

I found that Sins will not use both cores of my CPU on its own, I have to go in at game startup and set the CPU affinity to both CPU's.

My CPU is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 4200+ @ 2.21ghz.

Using Taskmanager, if you observe unbalanced core usage like I did, go to processes and find Sins. Right click it and select Set Affinity. It will automatically select both CPU's (mine did anyway), just click OK and then check for balanced core usage. This is not a persistent fix for me.

So for me, on my rig, I just have to set the app to use both CPU's at game start and I run a lot smoother. I am playing Advent but the other Advents in the game are currently otherwise occupied, so no idea how much of a help it will be for that yet.

Just thought I would pass this along, it helps if you don't tie one arm behind your back

There are programs or methods you can get which will automatically set affinity for you when you start a program. Don't ask me what they are, but I've heard of people using them.

Welcome to the placebo effect. You're seeing both cores automatically selected in Set Affinity because they are ALREADY ON BOTH. Set Affinity just allows you to make a program run on LESS cores.

Aha... yeah if they're already both selected nevermind.

Hardly. I have to UNSELECT CPU2 if I want to see no change in behavior.

Before CPU1 90-100 and CPU2 5-10%, afterwards both are 50 plus or minus.

On my CPU it is obviously NOT just to reduce the number of cores used.
Setting affinity actually changes how the CPU's are used, unless you want to totally discount what is observable and repeatable. Since I can also move it from one side to the other it obviously has some basis in reality, so I will trust what I see.

My desktop computer has an AMD Sempron CPU runnin at 1.8Mhz with 512MB or RAM and I put a Radeon X1300 into it. When my kids wanted to play on my computer I thought I'd try runnin Sins on my laptop...A HP Notebook, AMD Turion 64x2 which runs at 2.Mhz, 3 gigs of memory and a NVIDIA 7150 card pushin graphics.
Honestly, the only difference between the two is my HP laptop brings up the game quicker. Neither one has problems pushing the game at all...until I get to the epic battles at the end of the game. It gets a little slower and choppy if I'm zoomed in close. If I back off..no problem. Once though, my laptop said "MiniDump." I found out what that meant real fast. Thank God for autosave. Actually, I think it did it twice playin Sins.
I'm no computer expert by any means..but basically I'm hearing you all parrot the same issues I'm having too. It's a good game, I enjoy it very much...just wish the final battles were a little smoother like you guys do. Don't know what the answer is but maybe they'll come out with an expansion or Sins2 that corrects the very elloquently said..."Hideous Bug" LOL!
Peace!

hahahahahaha

so you have it set one way, then open up affinity which does nothing, observe the effect, then try to rationalize it by saying when you *uncheck a box* which restricts it to one core THEN you see a decrease in performance.

well, duh, gj. but you're not doing anything.

Reading comprehension is your friend. That is NOT what I said.

1. Observe CPU capped at 52% overall when playing.
2. Observe CPU 1 maxed out.
3. Observe CPU 2 idle.
4. Check affinity of Sins exe
5. Observe both CPU's checked. !!!! Although clearly not running on both !!!!
6. Accept both checked, observe load now balanced across both CPUs.
7. OR - Uncheck CPU 2 and observe NO CHANGE in behavior - app still isolated to CPU1.
8. OR - Uncheck CPU 1 and observe the app switch to the other (single) core.

#7 is the same as doing nothing. Repeatable ad nauseum.

So, as I stated before, the 2nd already checked box that I find in step 5 does NOT reflect the current state, it reflects the suggested setting. And it is not a placebo, what you check (or accept) in the boxes is accurately reflected in the CPU usage graph. Before and after, whenever.

If I ever unselect a CPU, and go back in, it will no longer "suggest" it by checking the box. But it will do so the first time every time. AND it is NOT initially running on both.

So stop being dense and drooling on yourself while you laugh at me. The point was that some people are only using half their CPU, until folks started telling me I didn't know what I was seeing...

sorry multithreading does not work this way

rather, your alt-tab from sins then back into it shows increased cpu usage because it uses the second core for loading textures into memory

derpa derp derp nt

Here is a test for you..
run sins
hit control-alt-delete
start task manager
click the processes tab
click cpu use a couple times till it organizes highest to lowest
watch sins sit solidly at 50%
get into a network game
click the menu-networking
look at the ping speed, but also at the cpu number.. the higher this climbs, the more your cpu sucks
go back to the task manager
notice that it is still at 50%
sigh
wish that you had a very very fast single core processor
go to a baseball game
eat 9 hotdogs per inning for each of the nine innings so that your team will win
come here and post about how bad the game performs/crashes/minidumps without sending in the minidump files (if enough people do this the psychics at stardock will be able to read your machine and figure out what is wrong with their code that will make it run better for you..
clap your hands and say out loud "I believe in fairies"
respond to this post with a flame
go watch the playboy channel (scrambled of course)
enroll in a stress relief class at your local community college
go to the vet and have your pet spayed or neutered
start a recycling program
do an act of random kindness for a total stranger
update your drivers
update your antivirus
update your windows defender
install more memory
uninstall old stuff you haven't played in 2 years
defrag your drive
go to www.majorgeeks.com and download random software and run it
uninstall it after you run it
go to www.bored.com
ok ok enough from me, hopefully by now you are no longer frowning, and maybe even smiled once or twice

Hey,

One performance behaviour I can link to possible UI processing is this.
I pause a single player game and Alt+Tab to windows, under Process Explorer SoSE is using 100% on one thread with a stack into the Kernel32.dll for function RegisterWaitForInputIdle. I am assuming that your primary thread is handling your event loop. From a programmers perspective, I think there is something wrong there if it is sitting at 100%.

Can others confirm this behaviour?

After reading all this I loaded a saved game, 4 player, med map about 400 ships, 40 some planets. I had task manager running in the background. It showed two (2) cores at 25% to 30% and two (2) cores 5% to 10%. I have a intel quad core 2.4 Ghz.

I have everything set on highest. I have not run any frames rate programs but have never 'seen' any lagging. I don't know however it 'seems' that I don't have the 'running single core' problem others seem to have!!

I see nobody has posted on here for a while.

I hope this means that everybody has solved their various performance issues.

While there is debate over the issue, it does seem like despite the systems, some users get this game to run really smoothly while others simply cannot.

I've run this game on two laptops. The first was a single core 3ghz P4 with 128mb of vram. The Second was a newer 2.26 ghz Core 2 Duo with 1gb of vram.

Both systems started the game at 50-60fps. But as the game went on, it eventually dropped to 15. If I load up the later saves and change the video settings, there is no change on fps. I can run in the lowest detail or highest, lowest rez or highest, the framerate is unaffected. This leads me to believe that, as others have speculated, this game is not really gpu intensive but rather processor intensive. Anyhow, we seem to be suffering from ghosts in the machine. Anyhow, I am thinking of upgrading the processor on my system just to play this game. I do love sins. If it is indeed some kind of "balance" issue as others have stated, than perhaps this could be fixed, but despite these so called issues of balance and the amount of stats posted on this thread, those who claim that others systems are not well balanced have certainly offered more insults than tips on how to find this elusive concept.

 

No, it still sounds like you're GPU limited, considering VRAM is about as relevant to graphics card performance as tire width is to a car's acceleration. Games will get slower as more ships are created, that's not new, and if you're having performance problems perhaps you should run the game on a desktop.

I don't think its VRAM because the fps should've increased when I lowered the texture and screen resolutions if the video ram was the culprit.

That's what I meant. VRAM doesn't have anything to do with it, if the GPU sucks then the GPU sucks regardless of how much VRAM it has, so what are the GPUs in those systems?

Limiting your Empire tree will help with your FPS greatly. At least it has for my system.

The GPU doesn't "suck." Its a GeForce 9800. That's why I'm on the forum. If this were a global issue, I'd wouldn't be so concerned about this one program. I seem to not have any issues running high resolution high textures applications except for this game.

 

@ Carbon, I stacked the Tree. That didn't seem to help. I could maybe play around with the other Tree Settings.

Well its not so much stacking that will help, its just elimiation the tree as much as possible. For example, I dont use it so I got rid of it all, by useing the options to keep it from auto sticking thing to it. If you can use the bare minimum for best FPS.

Mid to late game you have enough planets and ships that it will reduce your FPS cuz its trying to draw and keep track of all those planets and the units around them. I had bad FPS, during big battles and late game when i had 10's of planets. I got tired of the bouncing Empire Tree so I killed it. And by accident gain much better FPS. Though it may or may not help you. Its just an something Ive found to work with my system.

Thanks, Carbon.

I will definitely give that a shot. My play style uses the tree quite a bit though. I usually use it to manage capital ship abilities. I will have to relearn it.

Carbon, I'm just looking at the tree settings now, did you actually remove the Tree alltogether. Can you actually do that?

 

Cheers,

Soul

Before any of you go and judge people based of there computer parts.  I think you should take a look at this surve, i think youll find that those of use with advanced computer systems are a minority.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/