Morrowind: Extreme Slowness

[NiteFox]

I gather there's a whole slew of Elder Scrolls: Morrowind fans here? Yes? Good. Just bought the GOTY edition (Morrowind and the two expansions), and in theory I have more than enough of a machine to run it with all the damned bells and whistles a-ringin' and a-tootin'. Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8GHz), 1GB of RAM, GeForceFX 5200 with 128MB of memory. Still running 98SE though.

In theory.

In practice, the game runs obscenely slow, even in 640x480 resolution. Not exactly a slideshow, but damned near close enough, just jittery. As far as I can see, the only other two graphical options I can tweak are shadows and view distance, and setting both to the minimums yields not a single fps in return.

Usual spiel: Drivers and stuff are up to date, game is patched, system is in good running order. A cursory check of the support site and forums yields naught but the usual make sure your drivers are current/disk is defragmented/planets are in correct alignment blurb that is on every single support site. Ever.

And why the fudge do you have to register on a support board for what will essentially amount to a single post?

Anyway, I beseech thee, fellow Lurkers to help me in my hour of need and stuff.

[[wcip]Angel]

Sorry to hear you're having problems. It's such a great game. Have you tried this guide?
http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dT...ew&dId=316

[NiteFox]

Y'know I actually remember reading in a magazine that disabling the CD protection would cause the game to run faster.

Hmm, gonna try all this.

[[vL]Kp]

Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8GHz), 1GB of RAM, GeForceFX 5200 with 128MB of memory.  Still running 98SE though.
[right][snapback]77459[/snapback][/right]

If I remember correctly, you've wasted your money on hardware. :) Win9x family cannot use that much RAM, so it's just ignoring it. Your effective RAM is either 256MB or 512MB; I don't recall which. NT-based Windows kernels will correctly hog all the memory you can throw at them, though.

[Encore]

Ah Morrowind...very good game. Graphics were outstanding. I don't know why you would be having trouble.

[Bob the Beholder]

I had the same graphics card, half the RAM, a puny processory, and still ran the game better than you described it...

Still not particularly well, though. Hilariously long loading times. Just the transition from one area to another ended up with the game locking up for thirty seconds, and a full-on door, or long-distance travel which actually prompts a loading bar ended up being up to a minute or two long.

Solution: X-Box. Game of the Year edition's twenty bucks and works just like it's supposed to.

But then, I already had an X-Box. So that may not be much of a solution for someone lacking one.

[Obi2Kenobi]

This seems like a good thread to ask this, so here it goes.

I've been having some graphical problems with Morrowind for a while now. I get screens that look like the attached image, and those triangle things constantly move to stay "attached" to me and block my view. It's completely unplayable. Anyone know why?


I'm running Windows XP, all drivers updated, Radeon 9800 Pro, Pentium 4, 1 GB

[jahcs]

...
[right][snapback]77521[/snapback][/right]

Video card/driver artifacts?

[NiteFox]

Kp,May 15 2005, 02:49 PM]If I remember correctly, you've wasted your money on hardware. :)  Win9x family cannot use that much RAM, so it's just ignoring it.  Your effective RAM is either 256MB or 512MB; I don't recall which.  NT-based Windows kernels will correctly hog all the memory you can throw at them, though.
[right][snapback]77492[/snapback][/right]

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=333688

Yeah, found out about the limit the hard way when I built the machine. Also found out the hard way about 98's inability to see large hard drives the hard way too.

But I fixed it easily enough. It's only a problem for MS-DOS programs.

I ran through the tweak guide, and it really didn't fix much. In small indoor locations I can average about 5fps less than what I've set my max fps to in the ini file (If I stand still and look at a non-moving wall I get full fps. Whee) while outdoor locations still crap out at a minimum of 5fps every five seconds.

*Sigh*

[Drasca]

I'm running Windows XP, all drivers updated, Radeon 9800 Pro, Pentium 4, 1 GB
[right][snapback]77521[/snapback][/right]

Definite artificing/ video corruption. Additional heat does this too.

Not sure what to tell you, as I have updated drivers and this happens on Sims 2, but only sometimes on other games.

[Rinnhart]

This seems like a good thread to ask this, so here it goes.

I've been having some graphical problems with Morrowind for a while now. I get screens that look like the attached image, and those triangle things constantly move to stay "attached" to me and block my view. It's completely unplayable. Anyone know why?


I'm running Windows XP, all drivers updated, Radeon 9800 Pro, Pentium 4, 1 GB
[right][snapback]77521[/snapback][/right]

*cough* How clean is your box? I had some interesting artifacts on WoW for a while. Popped open the case to take out the old 56k modem and ended up blowing free a few dust bunnies.

No video problems since. :blush:

[kandrathe]

This seems like a good thread to ask this, so here it goes.

I've been having some graphical problems with Morrowind for a while now. I get screens that look like the attached image, and those triangle things constantly move to stay "attached" to me and block my view. It's completely unplayable. Anyone know why?


I'm running Windows XP, all drivers updated, Radeon 9800 Pro, Pentium 4, 1 GB
[right][snapback]77521[/snapback][/right]

Is your Radeon overclocked? Try stepping back on resolution to see if it clears up. I saw that on my first Radeon 9800 Pro with MW just before the card toasted. The card was fine with no stress, but high end games like Dawn of War, WOW, or MW added alot of stress and heat.

[Dako-ta]

Hi, NiteFox,

I gather there's a whole slew of Elder Scrolls: Morrowind fans here? Yes? Good.  Just bought the GOTY edition (Morrowind and the two expansions), and in theory I have more than enough of a machine to run it with all the damned bells and whistles a-ringin' and a-tootin'. Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8GHz), 1GB of RAM, GeForceFX 5200 with 128MB of memory.  Still running 98SE though.
[right][snapback]77459[/snapback][/right]

Hmmm, really quite puzzling. I have a machine that just meets or barely exceeds minimum specs, yet it sounds like I get better performance than you do.

Here's a tip that Drasca posted a couple of months ago:

"Tip for improving MW performance: Morrowind uses a lot of threads. Turn off every other program and unuseful service (which should happen regardless), then go to task manager and set Morrowind's service priority to LOW. (Optional: Go to Control panels-->System-->Advanced tab-->Performance-->Processor scheduling. Set cache to 'optimize for backround services') What happens is that Morrowind's threads collide with each other each demanding CPU time. When set to low priority, they somehow balance each other out and since no other services are drawing huge CPU time, Morrowind is free to use the CPU time for its own threads.

Strange, but true. MW takes more CPU time for its threads in backround services than for the game rendering itself."


I haven't played the game since I saw that, so I don't know if it would help my system or not.

IIRC, I think the system tweak that gave me the most benefit was to increase the size of my swap file (way beyond what was is normally recommended as a maximum).

However, the best performance boost I got was from using the fps_optimizer.

http://www.elderscrolls.net/morrowind/do...imizer.htm

I think I downloaded it from some other user site, but couldn't find an English-language alternative when I googled the file name. There are some drawbacks to using the Optimizer, but after I got used to it, I tried playing without and quickly decided to go back to using it. Try it, it might help enough to make the game playable.

Regards,

Dako-ta

[NiteFox]

then go to task manager and set Morrowind's service priority to LOW. (Optional: Go to Control panels-->System-->Advanced tab-->Performance-->Processor scheduling. Set cache to 'optimize for backround services')[right][snapback]77975[/snapback][/right]

Pity you can't do that in Win98.

Thanks anyway.

Looking at the FPS Optimiser page, which some people on the support forum mentioned in hushed tones, and so help me but I can't find a download link. The page, and everything it links to appears to be in Russian or Polish (Offended some Polish guy once because I couldn't tell the difference), which is indecypherable to me.

[Dako-ta]

Hi, NiteFox,

Pity you can't do that in Win98.

Thanks anyway.

Looking at the FPS Optimiser page, which some people on the support forum mentioned in hushed tones, and so help me but I can't find a download link. The page, and everything it links to appears to be in Russian or Polish (Offended some Polish guy once because I couldn't tell the difference), which is indecypherable to me.
[right][snapback]78048[/snapback][/right]

Yeah, I got to wondering if Drasca's tip was for XP only after I posted it.

I'm puzzled about the Optimizer thing; don't know where I downloaded it from; possibly some fan site, maybe one that doesn't even exist anymore. However, I just checked and it's only about a 100 KB zip file -- possibly I could just send it to you as an attachment? If interested, shoot me a message as to where you want it sent (I assume you'd just as soon not post the e-mail addy here). As I said, it's no universal panacea, but it might be worth trying it (I don't think it even makes any registry entries - IIRC, just unzip to a directory, create a shortcut, and run it, so you aren't out much time if it doesn't help enough to be worth it). Just let me know if you want it.

Regards,

Dako-ta

[Obi2Kenobi]

*cough* How clean is your box? I had some interesting artifacts on WoW for a while. Popped open the case to take out the old 56k modem and ended up blowing free a few dust bunnies.

No video problems since.  :blush:
[right][snapback]77599[/snapback][/right]

It was quite dusty not to long ago, but I cleaned it out thoroughly before having posted that... Didn't help.

[Obi2Kenobi]

Is your Radeon overclocked?  Try stepping back on resolution to see if it clears up.  I saw that on my first Radeon 9800 Pro with MW just before the card toasted.  The card was fine with no stress, but high end games like Dawn of War, WOW, or MW added alot of stress and heat.
[right][snapback]77645[/snapback][/right]

It is not overclocked. I dropped the resolution back to 800x600 a few days ago, and it still hasn't fixed it. Arg! *smacks self* *smacks computer*