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Screen freeze during play

Postby elpresidente » Tue Feb 16, 2010 4:10 am

My nephew(11) just recently discovered SG. I had always put it on the computers I built for them but he never played it much until recently. He loves it. Problem is he is having some performance issues. He will consistently but seemingly randomly get screen freeze and sound stutter for 5 to 20 seconds then resume play. I don't think it is lag. I don't see any spikes in ping or connection problem icon. The specs on the computer are:

Pentium D Dual-Core 2.6Ghz
1Gb DDR2
ASUS P5LD2-VM Motherboard
On-board audio
Geforce 7600GT
Windows XP Pro SP2
Cable ISP connected via usb wireless card.

I have reinstalled SG and installed the latest video drivers. Any suggestions on where to go from here? Directx?
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Postby mLy! » Tue Feb 16, 2010 12:27 pm

Did you change anything in the config?

Try setting SG affinity to 1 core.

Make sure you disable your auto updating anti virus if you have one.
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Re: Screen freeze during play

Postby ReD NeCKersoN » Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:04 pm

elpresidente wrote:He will consistently but seemingly randomly get screen freeze and sound stutter for 5 to 20 seconds then resume play.

On-board audio

Sounds like an audio issue to me. Check your mobo manufacturer for latest chipset & audio drivers.
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Re: Screen freeze during play

Postby Tequila » Wed Feb 17, 2010 7:45 pm

ReD NeCKersoN wrote:
elpresidente wrote:He will consistently but seemingly randomly get screen freeze and sound stutter for 5 to 20 seconds then resume play.

On-board audio

Sounds like an audio issue to me. Check your mobo manufacturer for latest chipset & audio drivers.

Try also disabling OpenAL sound by setting "+set s_useOpenAL 0" on the command line or from the UI if you test the 1.1 beta.
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Postby elpresidente » Tue Feb 23, 2010 10:20 pm

Ok. I took another crack at this. I installed the latest directx. Also, the sound card is realtek and had their hd drivers installed. I downloaded the AC97 drivers but it didn't seem to take. I disabled openal. None of these attempts help. The game continues to hang and stutter. Not sure what to try short of reinstalling Windows. I know it's not your guys' responsibility but I would entertain any suggestions you guys might have.
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Postby elpresidente » Tue Feb 23, 2010 10:35 pm

What about the dual-core processor? I notice that while the game is running, it uses 50% of the cpu. Always 50% like it has maxed out one core. Is there some configuration and/or setup steps I can take to optimize gameplay for processors with more than one core?
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Postby Tequila » Tue Feb 23, 2010 11:25 pm

No, sorry, the game is not supporting SMP maybe in a later future, but it depends on SDL issue right now.

Btw do you still have screen freezing after you disabled completely the sound by adding "+set s_initsound 0" on the command line ?
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Postby ChainLightnin' » Wed Feb 24, 2010 1:16 am

Had a similar problem with a similar machine and the latest video driver fixed it. Do you have this?:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_196.21_whql.html
(Make sure this is the right one for your card).
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Postby elpresidente » Wed Feb 24, 2010 3:16 am

@Tequila I'll try disabling the sound. I'm pretty sure its a result of the OS not seeing the multicore properly. If it did, it should crush SG with like half a core.

@ChainLightin' This is a reinstall from about 4months ago and I made sure to download lastest geforce drivers. I'll double check. Its possible I installed wrong version I guess.

Also, this is not limited to SG so not an SG issue. I had my nephew download OpenArena and it does the same thing. Now before the format and Windows reinstall 4 months ago, I'm pretty sure that SG (actually was WQ3 from back a ways) worked fine. I'll keep working on this. If I figure anything, I'll update just in case someone else out there has the same problem.

Thanks guys.
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Postby elpresidente » Tue Mar 02, 2010 3:07 am

Update. Dual core is working fine. The multiprocessor HAL is installed proper. Issue IS limited to SG. OpenArena does not experience same problem. I did a complete uninstall and reinstall od SG including wiping the SG profile folder. No go. Issue is persistent in 1.0 and the beta. Disabling sound at command line does not help. The latest Geforce drivers are installed. I wanted to flash the MB bios but Asus' update software does not recognize any updates available. Might attempt manual flash.
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Postby /dev/random » Tue Mar 02, 2010 3:31 am

Uhm, stop. BIOS-Updates are still dangerous and I doubt it will help solving this problem, especially since OpenArena works all of a sudden.
Which OA version do you use? Its code should be quite similar to SG's betas. SG v1.0 (which is not ioquake, right?) doesn't work either?

I assume it's a problem with software, i.e. AntiVirus updates in the background or similar. Could you do some monitoring of hardware resources, i.e. disk activity, other processes, CPU load and so on during playing?
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Postby elpresidente » Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:44 am

/dev/random wrote:Uhm, stop. BIOS-Updates are still dangerous and I doubt it will help solving this problem, especially since OpenArena works all of a sudden.
Which OA version do you use? Its code should be quite similar to SG's betas. SG v1.0 (which is not ioquake, right?) doesn't work either?

I assume it's a problem with software, i.e. AntiVirus updates in the background or similar. Could you do some monitoring of hardware resources, i.e. disk activity, other processes, CPU load and so on during playing?

Yeah, I doubt a bios update would help but you never know. The most unlikely things can cause seemingly unrelated issues. I built a new rig a few weeks ago and it would not post with the DVI adapter that came with the video card. How that could possibly cause it to not post is beyond me. Also, I have flashed dozens of MBs over the year and never bricked one. I had the boy install OA 0.8.1.

I have taken SG to window mode and looked at the task manager/cpu and processes while having this happen but this doesn't offer much insight as the entire computer freezes for this time including the task manager. Next time I go over there, I'll get down and dirty about closing any possible software running in the background. I may even see if SG will run in safe mode. Doesn't have to look good but if it were to run there with no freezing then that would at least point in some direction. I'm sure its something simple with the pc setup/software etc.
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