Strange little framerate hiccup...

[Miyoko]

Okay, so, this might be a little strange to explain, but bear with me, and I'll do my best... Anywho...

I play PSU on a variaty of window modes, depending on how multi-tasky I'm feeling. Sometimes I run full screen with frameskip 0, others I run windowed mode with frame skip 1. Normally, I have no problems (I had one slowdown issue long ago that I assume was GG related, since it's long since been fixed), but lately, I've noticed something a little odd...

When ever I'm playing, and it doesn't matter what I'm doing, I get this strange little frame rate hiccup literally and precisely every 1 second. For example, when it's most noticible, is when I'm simply running from point A to point B, and not fighting anything, the framerate will be very fluent, then everything will stop for just a split second, then immediately resume it's normal framerate. However, this occurs literally -every 1.0 seconds on the dot-. The pause is extremely short, only a fraction of a second, short enough that I don't notice it when I'm fighting, but long enough that I notice it when running straight. I have no idea if it's always been like this, if it's like this for everybody, or what the deal is. But ever since I first noticed it, I've started noticing it more and more.

Has anyone ever experienced something like this, or more importantly, know how to fix it? I get the strange feeling that it's something gameguard related, since GG would randomly cause moments of slowdown many months back, sort of like this but on a larger scale (multi-second slowdown, but occurred once every few minutes). I've tested a few other games (well, morrowind) and it doesn't suffer from this same problem. I'm going to try doom 3 later, and see if it's just a high-end game problem or something.

I also doubt (though not fully) that it's my machine. I've got a 2.6ghz processor, ati radeo 9800 pro 128mb, and 1gig of ram. It's all pretty old though, and the fan on my motherboard is half broken, so maybe it is the case, but ... Like I said, morrowind runs fine, so I'm unsure. I also recently got a new hard drive, but it's registered as drive I: and not C:, if maybe that's causing the problem.

So, yeah, I spill my heart out for you, PSOW http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif If anyone has any insights, reccomendations, suggestions, comments, catgirl pictures or whatever, I'd greatly appreciate some feedback. Also, if others could check and see if their framerate does this too, I'd appreciate it. It may just be a global thing, who knows. I could perhaps record a video of it if need be.

(I'm getting a new computer, save for my hard-drive, come december. Man I can't wait... It better not do this too x_x)

[Dragwind]

Finally, someone who can relate. I've been having this same exact problem ever since that day the servers went down out of nowhere. Be assured this is NOT your pc. I get this same problem on my PC and PS2 version now. Along with this, do you notice that while you're in parties, everyone runs ahead of you? Pallete switching lag?

My theory is that since that day, something messed up serverside only for certain people on their servers. I've posted about this numerous times at the official forums and I've already reported it to ST. I'm guessing they won't do anything since its seemingly only a certain group of people getting this.

Also for the record, no matter what options and editing you do to your computer or psu, it won't fix it. I've tried everything and I've even ran benchmarks on my isp and my pc. This is something ST needs to realize somehow.

[Miyoko]

I don't have pallet switching lag unless I try and switch too fast, but that one I can understand (and usually do by mistake). I only ever really play in a part of 4 (my friend, myself, and two NPCs), and none of them ever get ahead of me. However, it may just be he's suffering from the same thing and doesn't know it.

It's good to see it's not just me, though. But hey, that one issue I had before was fixed, and I never thought this one would be. x_x I wouldn't rule out that it'll never be fixed. If it wasn't present before, it's possible that it'll go away with some random server downage right? We can hope at least... http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

Blarg, a month ago, I was playing in an entirely different city >_< I should've checked if it was happening there, too...

[Dragwind]

Well the thing is, I've never had this problem, ever. My PC has always ran psu near perfect. This odd effect has only been happening since the day only certain people (from those I asked, seemed mostly on the US east coast and Europe) were experiencing crazy lag spikes shortly after the Duel in the Relics mission came out. Then there was a server outage. After that, I've had this odd lag stutter problem since.

Like you said, I've tried everything even other high end games. Even downloading heavy bandwith streaming video and such works great. I can see no reason for this other than GG, or something on Sega's end.

[Miyoko]

East Coast huh? I'm on the west coast, and in Canada no less, so... x_x Very strange indeed...

Who knows... Maybe someone will post something insightful here... And if not... We can always throw a PM to one of the admins on the sega boards. They've been good to me with private messages so far.

[Dragwind]

Hmm, that's good to know. Perhaps I'll try that. I just hope more people over at tech boards begin to realize it's not their PC's that are randomly slowing down, this is something else. =

[Miyoko]

It baffles me, it really does... I've a sneaking suspicion that it's Game Guard... It'd be better to find out if it was a global issue or not. People might have it and not know it :/ I'm thinking that maybe deleting all the gameguard files or whatever that method is so that it downloads them all again will fix it. Or did you try that once already?

[Dragwind]

I haven't tried it, but not sure i'm willing to mess with GG stuff. =