Cures for Tribes 2 issues......
I'll try to edit this as much as possible with new info. Here are some basics that I uncovered while attempting to get Tribesnext running on a very conflict prone platform.
Hardware:
AMD X2 5200+ OC'ed to 2.9 GHz
Gigabyte Radeon 4850 OC edition 1GB video card
ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe Mainboard
8GB (4X2GB) Crucial Ballistix PC800, 4-4-4-12 memory
SATA drives
SATA SONY Blu Ray DVD burner
WD Mybook USB2 500GB drive
OS: WinVista 64bit tweaked for no prefetch, no windows search, no indexer, UAC/Firewall/Defender disabled
This machine popped the unhandled exception consistently, when I had my AVAST antivirus active, and no compatibility fixes, and my CPU overclocked to 2.98 GHz.
I found that this program is very sensitive to timing issues, and on my current mainboard, overclocking the CPU overclocks the whole system by default.
I first lowered the overclock to 10% (220 MHz CPU bus, versus 200 stock). This resolved the insta - crash, and short lived online time til crash issues.
I next disabled my Antivirus, and right clicked on the tribesnext shortcuts. I hit properties. Next selected compatibility. I chose to disable desktop composition, and set compatibility to Win 2000. (note: I will be trying XP SP2 next).
Next I played on a LAN server for 2.5 full hours, with humans and bots. Zero issues.
My recommendations are as follows:
DO NOT RUN OVERCLOCKED
Especially do not overclocked, or "push" memory timings.
-This game is quite old, and a 1.3 GHz ATHLON T-Bird processor was big pimping, as was 133MHz memory, and 64 meg video cards. -
Remove any custom settings from your video card except VSYNC enabled. In game, set to whatever is comfortable. You may want to avoid highest anisotropy, as I suspect that the game doesn't handle modern implementations well/correctly.
You may have to do "run as administrator" in the right click options menu of the shortcut, if you have UAC enabled. If it is propmting you for permission to run the game after you click the T2 shortcut, UAC is enabled.
Disable windows sidebar. Maybe not forever, but at least close it for now.
There is a little known driver from AMD:
AMD Dual-Core Optimizer Version 1.1.4 - The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core processor systems, by periodically adjusting the core time-stamp-counters, so that they are synchronized. Download Now! August 2008
Link: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html
Just keep in mind that this game is quite old, and that a P4 3.0 GHZ and Nvidia 6600 video card is overkill for it. Any rig made of recent parts will likely not see hardware issues!
Also note: Vista has NO hardware sound acceleration allowed, due to the way hardware abstraction is done. If you use 3d sound it may be broken and/or buggy. It will definitely hit system performance heavily.
More to come, as I find it.
Hardware:
AMD X2 5200+ OC'ed to 2.9 GHz
Gigabyte Radeon 4850 OC edition 1GB video card
ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe Mainboard
8GB (4X2GB) Crucial Ballistix PC800, 4-4-4-12 memory
SATA drives
SATA SONY Blu Ray DVD burner
WD Mybook USB2 500GB drive
OS: WinVista 64bit tweaked for no prefetch, no windows search, no indexer, UAC/Firewall/Defender disabled
This machine popped the unhandled exception consistently, when I had my AVAST antivirus active, and no compatibility fixes, and my CPU overclocked to 2.98 GHz.
I found that this program is very sensitive to timing issues, and on my current mainboard, overclocking the CPU overclocks the whole system by default.
I first lowered the overclock to 10% (220 MHz CPU bus, versus 200 stock). This resolved the insta - crash, and short lived online time til crash issues.
I next disabled my Antivirus, and right clicked on the tribesnext shortcuts. I hit properties. Next selected compatibility. I chose to disable desktop composition, and set compatibility to Win 2000. (note: I will be trying XP SP2 next).
Next I played on a LAN server for 2.5 full hours, with humans and bots. Zero issues.
My recommendations are as follows:
DO NOT RUN OVERCLOCKED
Especially do not overclocked, or "push" memory timings.
-This game is quite old, and a 1.3 GHz ATHLON T-Bird processor was big pimping, as was 133MHz memory, and 64 meg video cards. -
Remove any custom settings from your video card except VSYNC enabled. In game, set to whatever is comfortable. You may want to avoid highest anisotropy, as I suspect that the game doesn't handle modern implementations well/correctly.
You may have to do "run as administrator" in the right click options menu of the shortcut, if you have UAC enabled. If it is propmting you for permission to run the game after you click the T2 shortcut, UAC is enabled.
Disable windows sidebar. Maybe not forever, but at least close it for now.
There is a little known driver from AMD:
AMD Dual-Core Optimizer Version 1.1.4 - The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core processor systems, by periodically adjusting the core time-stamp-counters, so that they are synchronized. Download Now! August 2008
Link: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html
Just keep in mind that this game is quite old, and that a P4 3.0 GHZ and Nvidia 6600 video card is overkill for it. Any rig made of recent parts will likely not see hardware issues!
Also note: Vista has NO hardware sound acceleration allowed, due to the way hardware abstraction is done. If you use 3d sound it may be broken and/or buggy. It will definitely hit system performance heavily.
More to come, as I find it.