Performance problems with Prey

[creix]

Hi there.

Im using an Athlon 3700+ with 2 GB RAM in combination of an nVIDIA 7800 GT with 256 MB RAM and an Soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinium.

Windows XP SP2 is patched up2date, i use the newest nVIDIA-driver (163.75) and the newest driver from SB.

3 Days ago i bought Prey and installed it. Than i patched up to 1.3. So far so good.
When i launch the game, i can see an very nice menu. But if i swtich into an submenue, the game slows down on 5 FPS (i let run FRAPS to see the FPS in non capturemode). Switching back to mainmenu means having 30 FPS again.
I tried to put all details and so on at lowest rate and tried to start in 800x600. The same is here

Ok, i thought to me its perhaps an problem with the menu. So i let choose the program my settings and startet the game.

In the washroom/restroom i have 40-60 FPS. When i reach the father... 5 FPS... From there... almost every time 5 FPS... The Beams from the Aliens are looking strange too. Not green... they have flickering inside ?

OK, so im searching for a way to solve this Problem

Other Games like BF2142, DAoC, Legend, Crysis, Hellgate and so on are running fine.. ok, execpt of crysis therefore i need an newer PC )

btw: sorry for my lousy english :/

[Altered Reality]

Try different renderers, by accessing the console and using the command r_renderer (or alternatively, by opening the file file preyconfig.cfg in your Prey\base directory, looking for the line "seta r_renderer" and changing its parameter).

r_renderer [best, arb, arb2, cg, exp, nv10, nv20, r200] (those in square brackets are the possible parameters) - Determines the rendering path to use. Some renderers can't run on certain hardware - for example cg is an Nvidia rendering language and can't run on ATI cards. You can experiment with these to see which is best on your system, however the best option should be set for most.

If you cannot get satisfactory performance with any of the renderers, I suggest you to try rolling back to a previous version of the drivers.

[creix]

Anyone here can tell me an well working version of nvidiadrivers ?

[Altered Reality]

Try with 91.31 or 78.01. If it still doesn't work, the problem is not with the drivers.

[creix]

Can you give me an downloadlink for those drivers ?

[creix]

ahh i found the driverarchiv at nvidia... puhh, these are pretty old.... so many newer games won´t run propper :/

[Altered Reality]

I forgot to ask you. Are you running XP or Vista?

[creix]

ups i missed it in the first post.. Win XP SP2

[creix]

btw: how do i open the console ? :/

[clayasaurus]

start -> run -> type in 'cmd' for a console on win32.

[Altered Reality]

start -> run -> type in 'cmd' for a console on win32.

That's not what he asked, he meant the game console from within Prey. I answered the question below.

ups i missed it in the first post.. Win XP SP2

If so, the problem is not with the operating system.

btw: how do i open the console ? :/

If you have a US keyboard layout, press Ctrl, Alt and ~ at the same time. If you need to use the console regularly, type the following after you opened it:
seta com_allowconsole 1
This way, you'll be able to open the console just by pressing ~ .

There's a good number of parameters you can tweak with the console, and they are all explained in the Prey tweak guide. It explains a lot of tips to improve performance: if you want to experiment, I suggest you to mak a backup copy of preyconfig.cfg first.

[creix]

Hi again.
Thx for helping me finding the console ingame
I tryied your tipps: "r_renderer [best, arb, arb2, cg, exp, nv10, nv20, r200]"

won´t push the FPS so much. Best result was with CG ---> almost 10 FPS now :/

Seems that i have to try it with an old driver....

[Altered Reality]

You may also try to check if vsync is enabled from within the game (if so, disable it), to set cm_backFaceCull to 1 to remove all polygons behind the player in the game (note: it's "cm", not "com"), to set image_filter to GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST, to set image_usePrecompressedTextures to 1 (to use less video memory), and generally any other tweak explained in the Prey tweak guide.