Running SS2 on Windows XP, I'm getting 16 FPS on low graphics. I had hoped for a lot better, so I'm wondering if I am doing something wrong. Graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce 9400, I've got 4 GB of RAM and the processor is plenty fast.

If I run it at medium, every object in game is replaced by its 2D generic placeholder (like when a ship is detectable but not visible). On high, all objects are simply invisible. Even on low I sometimes get everything replaced by wireframes (usually doesn't last long at least).

I'm getting about 60 FPS having set my graphics card to best performance and reduced all graphics options to minimum. Even like that, I still get the same issue when I go up to medium graphics.

So yeah, you've given me confidence that something is going wrong. Any suggestions?

Bizarrely, deploying my Aegis drone immediately solves the wireframe problem, and in some cases it comes right back as soon as the drone decays.

Thanks for the advice. I updated everything as you suggested, including the driver from the NVidia site. It unfortunately hasn't gotten rid of the problems (low FPS on low graphics unless performance > quality selected, placeholder images on medium, no images on high).

I don't have any whitescreening problems, actually. I kind of doubt that my graphics card is dying since it works fine for everything else I do.

I just talked to a teammate who runs Windows 7 and apparently he's encountered the same wireframe bug. It kicks in at seemingly random times, but can be countered 100% of the time by laying a drone, and often simply letting up on the thrust key will do the trick. He's using an AMD Radeon card, so it's not just that.

It sounds like I've pretty much stumped you, but any other ideas would be appreciated. I can make do with what I have, and without the wireframe thing I'd be content, but with my hardware I feel like I should be able to do better...

mine was exactly same as yours enek until the "xp fix" patch went in. That fixed it for me.

i unfortunatly have yet to encounter that so called wireframe issue on any of my test machines (11 machines. 8 of those are balanced for a relatively wide hardware spread).

4 intel cpu
2 core 2 duo
1 with nvidia 9600gt
1 with ati radeon x1600
2 pentium D
1 with nvidia 9600gt
1 with ati radeon x1600
4 amd cpu
2 Athlon X2
1 with nvidia 9600gt
1 with ati radeon x1600
2 Semptron
1 with nvidia 9600gt
1 with ati radeon x1600
(those were built from spare parts i had lying around from when i managed/hosted multiple servers).

i also have offcourse my main machine, but thats not really a good test.
I have an old pentium III 966 with 1gb memory and an geforce mx 440 se

3 laptops (1 triple core with amd ati hd4570 4gbmemory, 1 hexa core Radeon HD 6750M and 12gb memory, and 1 intel gma i dont remember what crap kind of card).

When i try to reproduce a bug and or optimize performance, i run it on just about all of those machines. So there has to be a trick to get that wireframe bug (that or its a software issue, either drivers, windows or directx).

i do wish i had a wider spread of video card to run it on, but gpu were not exactly a priority nor what died most when it came to servers so heh.

so i guess if its a graphic card incompatibility bug, its something neither the gts 450, the radeon hd 6750, the radeon hd 4570, the geforce 9600gt, the ati radeon x1600 or the geforce mx 440 had >_>

The placeholder also make no sense at all (there is no code that know if a model is rendered correctly or not and replace it with a placeholder >_>).

To me it sound a huge lot like your experiencing memory corruption. I sure as hell hope you do not have the multithreaded load enabled right ? enabling that came with a warning about such bug on many systems (if you created a threadload.txt file in your ss2 folder then you read it).

The Internetz, you just won it Jey.

Thanks for all the information, Jey.

This is an Intel Core 2 Duo. I have not enabled multithreaded loading. I have updated windows and drivers, so I would guess that I have DirectX 9 or whatever is required. If not, how should I get it without running the risk of messing anything up more?

Would running SS in compatibility mode help at all?

Maybe. I've heard from a couple people that running in windows 98 compatibility mode helped them.

for the runtimes, make sure you let the patchbot run dxsetup.exe. if for whatever reason your system is blocking its execution, it could explain your issues (try running it manually, its in your ss2folder->actions->dxredist->dxsetup.exe , or something like that , going from memory here).

Manually running dxsetup.exe seems to have made a big difference. I can now see everything properly on Medium and High graphics, and haven't seen any wireframe problems on Low graphics yet. However, I still only get 15-25 FPS on Medium and High (graphics card set on max performance), and the game is visibly choppy. A single client takes between 5% and 50% of my CPU, from what I have seen.

Any other silver bullets you can think of?

what kind of core 2 do you have ? judging from your fps, i would guess in the 1.8-2.0 ghz range ? If thats the case, just wait for next patch (which should happen sunday), it include another batch of performance optimisations that should allow you to get an extra 10-30 fps depending on your settings.

SS2 is currently mostly limited by the cpu unfortunatly. While as time pass the performance will be optimised in a way that it use less cpu. There is still a bit to go before were at that point.