First post, by NobuoUematsu
I've read and tried various readmes and helps, fixes and so forth online and nothing seems to bring the game from a crawl. In some areas it's useable (such as in paperdolls or base build), but the cityscape and especially tactical combat is so slow it's unuseable.
First, system specs:
PM800-8237 (Via PM880 NB, Via VT8237 SB)
2.6 GHz Celeron (400 MHz FSB, 8 KB L1-d 12kuops ETC, 128 KB L2, MMX, SSE1+2)
1 GB (2x512 MB PC2700 DDR, Dual Channel, 2.5-3-3-7-1T timings, 2.5v)
GeForce MMX 440 (64 MB DDR, 250 MHz GPU 400 MHz DDR-VRAM, AGP 8x)
Onboard AC97
Windows XP Professional SP3
X-COM (R) Apocalypse (tm) Version 1.00 11th June 1997
Problem:
Sound is stuttering, choppy, and unsynced (despite block/prebuffer settings). Game runs very slowly, unresponsively, symptoms similar to when running it on a system below minimum requirements (requires a 486 100 MHz), especially in tactical combat or when scrolling the sides of the screen.
Soundmode used: SB16
Video mode: Not sure? 600x480, fullscreen
frameskip=0
aspect=false
scaler=none
Dosbox: 0.72
Steps taken:
Adjusted cycles (if put on auto it maxes, max uses ~20% of my CPU and results in unplayable lag (50+ second mouse-click delay, ~4 minute game load)
Switched from Auto to Normal, it runs a bit better at 10,800 cycles but is still unplayable. Switched from Normal to Dynamic. Runs much better, but tactical combat still unuseable and cityscape badly laggy. Runs best at 12,500-25,000 cycles (12,500 for tactical and 25,000 for cityscape)
All cycle settings have choppy/laggy music.
Tried any combo of prefetch and block sizes:
BLock: 32, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384
Prebuffer: 0, 5, 10, 12, 14, 20, 25, 50, 100, 200, 1000, 5000, 50000
Set memory to 63 MB
Switched from Normal2x to None for render method (slight improvement, fixed an issue with 'ghost' pixels and choppy bink/smacker movies.)
Lowered sound quality from 22050 to 11050 (negligible increase in performance)
Disabled sound (no noticeable improvement)
Set priority to Highest, Higher, Normal, Lower, Lowest, and Pause (Normal and up got best performance, but no gains past normal)
Tried downloading a non-legitimate copy. Same problem.
ANY more ideas?
