Performance

This is a beta, code is probably running in debug mode, lots of unnecessary things around,... Performance will improve.

Obviously this is something that'll be worked on as the game moves forward, but I want to chime in, too and say that the beta is quite sluggish on my laptop.  On the cloth map my FPS is fine, but zoomed in it drops to the 10-15 range, which is surprisingly slow given that I'm running it with about as low graphics as I can.  I don't have the most powerful graphics card in the world (what with this being a laptop and all), but it runs, for example, Dragon Age Origins without that kind of slowdown.

Specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P9600, both @ 2.67Ghz

4.00 GB Ram

NVidia GeForce 9300M GS

Yeah, I was getting some zoom in/out lag, and I have a GTX 260.

The only thing I notice is that sovereign movement is super sticky, since beta 1, but I'm sure that it will clear up later, the transitions from cloth to 3d to max zoom are really nice the close up zoom feature over the functions of your town are reminiscent of populous.

If performance worsened between beta 2 and beta 2a, that is definitely worth bringing up.

Yeah, I'm seeing a huge stutter when the selected character finishes pathing in 2A that I don't remember seeing in the last beta.  It doesn't happen every time (probably every ~3-5 turns of continuous movement).  It's accompanied by drop of ~20+ FPS  (from an at-rest FPS of 30-90, depending on what's visible).  Non-stutter paths usually end with a drop of ~10 FPS, but I've seen a drop from ~35 to single-digit FPS (in which everything freezes for half a second).  This is with Auto Turn enabled (so the stutter probably includes all of the end-of-turn calculations).

In Beta 2, I wasn't really watching FPS during movement, so I can't compare the exact numbers.  In general, movement seemed smoother in Beta 2 than in 2A.

Same machine for both betas:
Win 7 x64
4GB ram
Core 2 X9650 @3GHz (quad)
Nvidia GTX 260 (no sli)

I also wasn't keeping track of FPS on Beta 2 (just 2A), but it does feel more sluggish.

Yes performance is noticeably worse with 2a on my system as well, with zoom/scroll & character anim all choppier.

Win 7 x64, 6gb ram, i7 930, Radeon 5870

I'm glad i'm not the only one with this issue.

I don't mind as i understand its Beta and Performance will improve at least 200% by release but still i just wanted to bring it up to ensure it did get addressed.

Thank you all by the way for responding sorry i was away and unable to post a response for abit.

I don't really think so, I would not expect performance to be very good until much closer to release... As they enable things, like the full graphics, they will be able to get more reports and information on where they are having performance problems and so on...

Suggestion: Turn down or OFF anti-aliasing. It defaults to 4X which is overkill.

Talking about comparative performance between the two beta2 releases here, using the same settings.

I was/am running 2560x1600 using 2x anti-aliasing; beta2 was pretty smooth at these settings, beta2a less so.

 I've noticed a definite slowdown when the skating golems are moving.  The game seems to stop while they move (as opposed to when other critters or my party moves -- the world then seems to go about its business while we move).  Dunno if this is related but there may be a common thread.

I would like to echo the sentiment that Beta 2 ran much smoother than Beta 2B (using the same settings).  Not only that, I think Beta 2 had fewer crashes/freeze-ups as well.

I haven't noticed a big difference, I mostly get stutter when it switches from cloth map to clos up graphics the transition isn't entirley smooth.

GTX295

Windows 7 64bit

4Gb RAM

mostly runs fine though.

To the OP how much hotter is your card running, have you changed drivers recently some nVidia drivers in the past have made the card run hotter.