Poor performance
 

Hello everyone,

My son and I have recently started playing pirates and are enjoying the game. The one problem we are having is that Pirates runs really poorly on one of our machines. The machine in question is a Gateway DX4200-09 Desktop, Phenom X4 9100e 64-bit Quad-Core Processor with at Nvidia 8800GT card.

Using Fraps I see about 12 FPS which is horrible. I'm wondering what the bottleneck here is. I'm guessing the 8800GT is more than up to running pirates so that leaves the CPU. Is the 1.8Ghz Phenom just too slow?

I've tried using OpenGL and DirectX and both seem to get about the same FPS.

Thanks for any help!

I too had problems on a 64 bit system...potco uses panda 3 d game engine(I may not be saying that right)...and the drivers are for 32 bit or used to be...this might not be your problem, or you might have to update something.

Go on live chat in potco page and they can help you. Good Luck.

Possible graphics card? They usually update the cards numerous times even if your computer is like a month old they did ALOT of different updates with new cards.

It definitely is not the graphics card...I used to own an OC'd 8800 GTX and that card ran everything for over 5 yrs...gave it to my nephew and he used it while I was using a nVidia 250...

Now I've upgraded to a Cross-Fire rig and he uses the 250...but that 8800 will still run anything if I were to drop it into another rig...

Having a Phenom 4 means you should have more then sufficient CPU power to run the game, even if your chipset is 1.8Ghz...the game only needs a 800 Mhz processor to run and I'm sure by now most people have at least a dual core or even a high Ghz single core...

My thoughts why you're bottlenecking is two-fold...1) how much RAM are you running? Is is DDR or DDR2?

2) Do you have any programs running in the background such as virus scans, etc?


One other option you could explore as well is checking your internet...do a Tracert, look for any bottlenecks in your area etc...

Finally clean out your cache...defrag HD, etc...


Keep us informed...if the problem still persists then I can help you trouble shoot it further...

Good luck!

BTW my System Specs are:

AMD Phenom II 555 BE 3.2Ghz w/unlocked cores making it a 55BE Quad
4 gigs DDR3 1600Mhz
(2) Sapphire 5770's running at 16x by 16x Cross-Fire
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit

With that cpu and graphics card you should be getting a frame rate at least in the 20's. You did not say how much memory you have. That is the only other hardware bottle neck to frame rate. If you have 2 or less gb, you definately need more, 3 or 4 gb would be better.

You should always do the scan and clean thing, use anti malware programs like Spybot Search and Destroy to find junk running in the back ground. If you use Norton antivirus/firewall, I would recomend getting rid of it and using any of the free ones out there, they run much leaner.

One more thing you can do to get an instant improvement (never had an AMD so I would have to assume it is the same): You have a multicore cpu, multicores usually run at a slower speed per core, because you get more performance from having more than one. But pirates does not support multicore, so everything is trying to run on the one primary core, that cuts the frame rate way down. If you're lucky, your cpu/os set up will alow you to open up the other cores to pirates, here is how:

After you log on to pirates, right click on the task bar (assumes you use windows) and select task manager. Select the processes tab. Right click pirates_online.exe. If you see an entry called Set Affinity, or something like that, click it. If the selector that opens allows you to place check marks along other cpu cores, check them all.

If your cpu and os allow you to activate the other cores this way, the os will spread pirate accross one of the other cores and you will see a definate boost in performance.

good luck

^ I would have never thought of that. Plus how many internet based appliances is there? You might have to get the bigger speed from your network for a better preformance.

You can do Set Affinity regardless of whether the CPU is AMD or Intel...it's embedded in Windows regardless...

Honestly though I do not believe his issue is with the cores per say...something else has to be bottlenecking his game because again the game's minimum requirements is only 800 Mhz...and we all know POTCO is not graphics intense like other games are...

Like Jeffrey said, run free programs such as Spybot, Hijack This, Malwarebytes, etc...also make sure you have the latest drivers for your 8800 GT and that it's properly configured...turn off any programs that aren't neccessary that run in the background...by that I mean programs that get installed sometimes run in the background even though you might not be using them...again go to Task Manager and under processes you'll see what's running and what can be turned off...

I still think it's either a internet issue or perhaps even a network adapter or possibly a router issue if you use a router...once you go through the basics here and still find the game running slow, then we can trouble shoot your problem further...

Most times it's something easily overlooked...just need to go through the steps and soon enough the issue will be resolved...

if ye be needing help, u may be having to seek, this thread! http://www.piratesonlineforums.com/f...ead.php?t=7838

AN easy fix is deleting the contents of the "cache" folder in the program file for POTCO. Won't be game-changing, but it will be visibly faster.