(the answer) for all the Video Card Nuts

[id1948]

I've been trying different combinations of settings in the configuration in an attempt to maximise frame rates.

Does anyone know off hand what DirectX effects usually eat up frame rates in these sorts of games?

For example - is it the shadows? (like it was in Doom 3), or the reflections etc etc.

I would think that with a P4 640 (3.2Ghz) with a GeForce 6800, there would certainly be a good combo of settings to enjoy the game at full frame rates (assuming, lets say with a 60hz refresh rate), even in parts with items bouncing all over the place, lots of sprites jumping around firing things at you, with heavy effects in the background.

[BlackBean]

Actually, a lot of people are having the same issue (low FPS). But I'm not sure if Falcom will actually fix the issue or not.

I did the following to alleviate the lag (increase FPS):

* for my video card setting, I chose performance over quality
* in the YsO config setting, I set water, shadow, and glare effects to values of 0
* reduced resolution to 640x480 and played full screen

Some parts of the game still lag, especially when a myriad of sprites and animation are loaded simultaneously. I'm speculating this is just bad programming, since this did happen to Ys6 and YsF before it was fixed.

[FM-77AV]

blackbean said:

I'm speculating this is just bad programming.

Definitely. The game looks like it was made in 1998 and it still lags on my computer. Ys6/YsF didn't. Not Far Cry either.

Might be because YsO was originally made for Nintendo 64, and then emulated poorly.

[id1948]

Ah!! Silly me.

This morning I was thinking about it more and suddenly it dawned on me.

Originally I was assuming that (as a lot of people would) by cutting back on effects it would increase frame rates.
But doing this puts more strain on your CPU, while the video card starts falling asleep, because these days GPUs do a far better job at handling graphics than CPUs do (derr).

So - by setting all the options to max (or by simply pressing the "High" button under the Quick Config section (refer to Deuce's post on config translation), this hands most of the graphics jobs over to the GPU.

Now, I'm getting absolutely smoothe, fluid frame rates regardless of how much action there is on screen.


Anyone who has a high end video card, no matter what your CPU is, I highly recommend you not be affraid of going crazy with those settings (so long as your card has at least 128Mb of dedicated video memory on board).
As I said, I've got everything on - and I'm running it in 1280 x 960 res'.

No problems.

Anyone with the reverse - great CPU but crappy video card - would benefit from lowering the settings.