The Drunken Lizard Pub

On the first computer I had played EB1 on (a 2.4GHz P4/HT w/1GB ram and a Radeon X1600), I found that performance rating in XP under DirectX was dismal... I was getting 20-22 pretty consistently. In OpenGL I was seeing 10-14; just enough to run smoothly. So when copied the folder to my new computer (Athlon 64 X2 4000+ w/2GB Ram and a Radeon HD2600XT), I didn't really mess with DirectX since OpenGL was now running a PR of 4-5.

Well fast forward a little bit, and now I'm dual booting Windows XP and Windows 7. I've been playing EB1 mainly on W7, since I've been trying to avoid using XP (to properly get a feel for the new OS). The OpenGL mode does not work at all (I'm assuming its a driver issue since it's all beta), so I'm running DirectX and it's been running perfect... a PR of 4-5 just like OpenGL in XP. The past few days I've been playing Serious Sam 1 + 2 with my dad on XP and didn't feel like switching, so I copied my EB1 savegames folder from my W7 install and fired it up. Lo and behold I notice that it's running horribly slow... I'm scoring a PR of 25, worse than on my old XP machine! I exited the game and tried it in full screen, and shut down all other apps I had running... to no avail. I started the game up a third time and realized that I was running DirectX... switching to OpenGL brought the PR back down to 4-5.

So W7 runs EB1 on DirectX flawlessly, but XP pukes it up like a bad hangover... the only thing I can think of is a driver issue. I'll have to check it out in Vista on my dad's machine when I get a chance.

Well I tried Eschalon on my dad's machine running Vista... it's a 3.2GHz P4/HT Extreme w/4GB DDR2 667 and a 256MB Radeon X800. Comparable but still slower than my computer.

DirectX pulls 4-5 on the performance rating.

OpenGL scores 8-10.

So far this tells me that DirectX on Vista and W7 kicks ass compared to XP, driver issues aside.

OpenGL is an unknown, since the game won't yet run on W7 in OGL. However, OGL certainly seems better implemented on XP (not terribly surprised here...).

These are interesting observations. The truth is, E:B1 should run fastest on XP regardless of the hardware. It does for us.

Questions about your XP machine:
- Do you have all the Service Packs installed?
- Have you gotten the latest audio and video drivers for your components?

Other than that I have to say it may be related to the ATI. ATI hardware has always caused some wonky performance and graphics issues, regardless of the OS. I hate to dog them because I really have enjoyed some of their cards.

It's gotta be ATI related... when I disable my onboard audio, there's no performance difference... yet when I select "low detail" the rating drops by 10 points. When I tested originally all the OSes were running Catalyst 8.12... I'm currently running 9.1 on my XP install and it offers nothing. It IS an older series card so I wouldn't expect much from the newer Catalysts. Once again, it's not a show stopper, I just find it annoying that I can't play via DirectX in XP, yet the game flies in Vista and W7.

I'm actually thinking about Nuking and Installing XP64... no real reason I haven't done it yet other than the fact that I haven't felt like re-installing my main OS and all other software I'm running.

Sounds like the usual ATI story, sadly - great hardware, shame about the drivers.

It wouldn't surprise me if the 64-bit drivers don't get nearly so much maintainance and optimisation effort as their 32-bit counterparts. Maybe W7 will be the kick up the arse that some hardware vendors desperately seem to need.

Well my XP drive (36.5GB WD Raptor) is now reporting a SMART failure, so I may be making the XP64 switch sooner than planned... =P

Oops... Backup time!

The weird part is that it's not the SMART reporting a failure, it's the computer reporting that SMART seems to be missing from the drive.

Well I copied anything important to my secondary (and W7) drive. It was a good run... drive lasted me over 5 years, about 6 months past the warranty. ^_^

That sounds like a weird problem you're having. I have that same ATI video card (x1600) and, while I admit I frequently have issues with it, Eschalon runs like a champ. I am running under Ubuntu now, but have tried it on this computer with XP and didn't have any problems. I was running Catalyst 8.12 if I remember right.

- Daniel