Visual Glitches On New Installtion + New Machine

Mangopork

Hey,
Just got a new PC & Bought/installed NS2 via steam.

Mouse Issue:

Upon launching, the mouse cursor does not show on any of the menus, yet they do respond to clicks. (sometimes it takes multiple clicks to confirm a selection btw).

Game won't go fullscreen:

Also, when I switch to any resolution lower than my desktop settings, the game does NOT stretch it to fit the screen. So even in "fullscreen" mode, game plays in a centered window.

Performance.

I am going through the performance thread but have already done most of the steps. Game runs @ 30fps on mid/low settings @ 1280x720... on a brand new rig. Meanwhile, Runs Unreal4 @ 60fps.

Clean machine, defragged, etc.

Big fan of this + NS1 otherwise.

Ideas?

IronHorse

Need to see your techsupport.zip file which is generated by running techsupport.exe found in your NS2 folder.

What programs are you running in the background? Anything that could be interfering with the window?

Mangopork

Just steam predominately.

I'll update drivers and run it again, meantime Check this:

ideas?

Mangopork

There is nothing using my gpu, other programs not an issue. Still low performance and mouse cursor does not show up. Updated drivers, no change. Shrinks screen @ 1280x720. Only fullscreens @ 1080p but has 18fps.

Any ideas?

IronHorse

Ah you are running a Notebook laptop.. an HP ENVY m7 Notebook
It may be your power settings that are preventing fullscreen, i recommend setting it to High Performance : http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2488938/laptop-stay-fullscreen.html
If you end up with letterboxes surrounding your screen when using a lower resolution than your desktop, ensure that scaling is enabled in the nvidia control panel.

As for the perfomance woes... You've bought a Notebook, not a gaming laptop, and definitely not a desktop, which is really what you want for gaming.
No one who plays PC games would ever recommend a Notebook for gaming..

Being a "new rig" does not mean anything if the components inside are poor.
This happens often, as people are tricked into buying something at a retail store by some kid who says "it's a gaming notebook!" when in reality, they are either lying to make a sale or have no idea what they are talking about - for instance, the Video Card you have in that notebook is equivalent to one from 8 years ago..
A (not top of the line) video card that was released last year is almost 10 times more powerful than your "brand new rig"!

So try the power settings, ensure scaling is active and test again.. but don't be surprised if your performance does not change much. Sorry to bear the bad news

Yojimbo

IronHorse wrote: »

Ah you are running a Notebook laptop.. an HP ENVY m7 Notebook
It may be your power settings that are preventing fullscreen, i recommend setting it to High Performance : http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2488938/laptop-stay-fullscreen.html
If you end up with letterboxes surrounding your screen when using a lower resolution than your desktop, ensure that scaling is enabled in the nvidia control panel.

As for the perfomance woes... You've bought a Notebook, not a gaming laptop, and definitely not a desktop, which is really what you want for gaming.
No one who plays PC games would ever recommend a Notebook for gaming..

Being a "new rig" does not mean anything if the components inside are poor.
This happens often, as people are tricked into buying something at a retail store by some kid who says "it's a gaming notebook!" when in reality, they are either lying to make a sale or have no idea what they are talking about - for instance, the Video Card you have in that notebook is equivalent to one from 8 years ago..
A (not top of the line) video card that was released last year is almost 10 times more powerful than your "brand new rig"!

So try the power settings, ensure scaling is active and test again.. but don't be surprised if your performance does not change much. Sorry to bear the bad news

Check @IronHorse out, could sell honey to a bee ;-)

Mangopork

Thanks for the replies. I'll check the power settings.

I'm aware of hardware and how it works. I don't understand how a 940m would underperform in this game and not others, when ns2 was first dev'd as far back as 2009 (no offense, do love this game). I can see the benchmark scores.

However I reiterate that other (in some cases, more advanced) game engines run smoothly, so *shrugs*.

I playtested this machine on the games & applications I use before purchasing it.

Thank you all the same.

This also doesn't explain why the mouse cursor disappears

Yojimbo

Mangopork wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. I'll check the power settings.

I'm aware of hardware and how it works. I don't understand how a 940m would underperform in this game and not others, when ns2 was first dev'd as far back as 2009 (no offense, do love this game). I can see the benchmark scores.

However I reiterate that other (in some cases, more advanced) game engines run smoothly, so *shrugs*.

I playtested this machine on the games & applications I use before purchasing it.

Thank you all the same.

This also doesn't explain why the mouse cursor disappears

Could be your touchpad on your laptop thats interfering with it, have a play in control panel settings, could be called Synaptics or something similar.

DC_Darkling

You may want to have a good look at windows updates. Your log reports its having serious issues on installing some.

Without knowing where the system throttles its hard to say. Can you loadup ns2, type "r_stats 1" in console, run around until problem arises, and then printscreen and show us?

Soul_Rider

Knowing how demanding NS2 is, and looking at the result's below, I am surprised you are getting as high an fps as you are in NS2.

And, according to the results below, if yu are getting 60fps in Unreal4, you must be in an empty map, with everything low or off, because there is no way in hell you could do that with a decent visual quality.

Nvidia Geforce 940m Gaming tests

All gaming tests were performed with the latest drivers from NVIDIA installed and in this case – 353.30 WHQL and resolution set to 1366 x 768.

Tomb Raider (768p, Low) - 102 fps
Tomb Raider (768p, Medium) - 34 fps
Tomb Raider (768p, Max) - 18 fps

F1 2014 (768p, Low) - 52fps
F1 2014 (768p, Medium) - 38fps
F1 2014 (768p, Max) - 37fps

Thief (768p, Low) - 35fps
Thief (768p, Medium) - 25fps
Thief (768p, Max) - 15fps

GTA 5 (768p, Low) - 56fps
GTA 5 (768p, Medium) - 18fps
GTA 5 (768p, Max) - 8fps

http://laptopmedia.com/highlights/nvidia-geforce-940m-benchmarks-and-gaming-tests/

Mangopork

I'm getting 60fps in unreal 4 on most of the demo's that come with it. WIth the elemental demo (yes, the one with the firey demon), I'm getting 30-45.

The only game that significantly slows down my machine is Planetside 2, and thats only when theres a lot of heavy combat.

Mangopork

@Yojimbo Ooooh Good point! Thank you for that!

Mangopork

@DC_Darkling Thank you for that idea. I'll check into it. That could be causing some hangups.

Yojimbo

Mangopork wrote: »

@Yojimbo Ooooh Good point! Thank you for that!

Let us know how you get on