Game running extremely slowly/freezing on decent PC.

Hi. 

I am having major issue's with my recently installed via Impulse Sins of a Solar Empire/Entrenchment.

As soon as I start the game, even just at the menu it is prone to skipping/lagging/hitching. After 1 minute or so of actual gameplay the game becomes unplayable, with long pauses no matter what I am doing. Same problem with vanilla Sins and Entrenchment. 

My PC is an AMD 5600+ Dual Core, with 4Gb of RAM and a ATI 4890 and has no problems running the likes of Crysis smoothly. I noticed when I control+alt+delete that the RAM usage is ridiculously high for some reason (eg 99% in use with 2Mb free or something, there were no other programs using much of it either) , I have tried restarting, and checked all my drivers. It is probably worth mentioning that I am running Win7 64-bit, I noticed alot of others having problems with it but not with the high RAM usage. I also ran a MEMTEST on the RAM only a few days ago and it came out fine.  

Help plz.

3,281 views 6 replies
Reply #1 Top

ead the board. Pretty much everyone has the problem.

On an AMD Phenom 9500 it was pretty much unplayable.

I'd say the minimum requirement for this game is an Intel Core i7 975 or 9xx processor overclocked to similar speed.

I just don't understand how many people buy entrenchment even when they know it's that slow?!? Personally, if they won't fix it (the game can only use one CPU although being advertised as multicore) I guess I'll return it and get my money back - aside from the illegal false advertising it's also having quite a number of bugs which are not being fixed although the support knows about them.

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Reply #2 Top

You might have a 4gb ram but the game will only use a max of 2gb since this game is for pcs which are running 32bits so there is pretty much the answer to your lag problem

and secret you obviously haven't played sins for a very long time if you just relaize that all games will run slower and slower the longer a game takes right?

Reply #3 Top

I have slightly worse specs.

AMD 5000+ X2 2.6Ghz---4GB of DDR2 800 RAM---8800GTS 640MB I am currently running the Windows 7 64-bit RC. Latest video drivers as well.

I run at 1280x1024 with everything on highest, including AA. I have found that the game DOES slow down a lot on large maps with several very large fleets (at least 3-4 full fleets) but interestingly enough, it doesn't slow down anymore during battles. What I mean is, battles should provide a heavier load on the computer, and yet they do nothing to slow it down further when these large fleets fight. Anything below this amount and the game runs perfectly smooth. Turning off the AA seems to help a little, but not too much. I have theorized that this may be a game engine limitation, it does not "stutter" or "freeze" it just seems like everything moves similar to molasses, as if the speed is turned down.

Note: this is singleplayer.

The fact that battles don't slow things down even more seems to point to a limitation of the game engine. I am only playing vanilla sins with the latest patch, so I cannot say how things are in entrenchment.

Edit: the OP states that he is using a 64-bit OS therefore it will be using all of his RAM.

Second edit: I just reread what was stated, that Sins only uses up to 2GB regardless. A reference for that would be great if that was true.

Reply #4 Top

Quoting ice27828, reply 2
and secret you obviously haven't played sins for a very long time if you just relaize that all games will run slower and slower the longer a game takes right?
End of ice27828's quote

I realized it when I tried to play the first "medium" size random map...and that was around six months ago - and it's really the point which did prevent me from buying entrenchment and since neither that problem nor the bugs I did report back then have been fixed by now. So I'm really have a big tendency to returning the game and get my money back. I've still over a year of warranty on this, and while I prefer that they would fix the game, it just looks like they won't ever do that.

I just hope that there will be a good replacement out soon...good old broodwar has the annoying low resolution.

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Reply #5 Top

Quoting bxturtle, reply 3
Second edit: I just reread what was stated, that Sins only uses up to 2GB regardless. A reference for that would be great if that was true.
End of bxturtle's quote

Yes, that's true as the game is in 32 bit and thus bound to the 32bit memory limit.

However, reducing the graphics settings massively decreases RAM usage. It doesn't speed up the game though.

That the game engine itself is written in a bad way becomes clear if you pause the game: It's still using one core with maximum load, even if the game is minimized. Furthermore, on the Phenom 9500 it was almost impossible to navigate through the menus after finishing a game because it took several seconds (sometimes almost a minute) to respond to a single mouse click...showing a few statistics or activating the button to return to the main menu/quit should not take so much time. It's much better but still laggy on the intel 975.

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Reply #6 Top

Last night i tried lowering the settings to everything on high from highest, then when I had actually started playing I went into the options menu and raised them again. Was running smoothly for the 30 mins I played for with everything on full. 

When I had the demo it ran fine, on my older video card with less RAM.