FFVII Slows down during gameplay

[spyrojyros_tail]

Hey all,

I hope ya can help me, because the problem im running into makes little sense. Im running ffvii on my laptop

spec:
Windows XP
1Gig RAM
1.6GHz AMD Turion 64M
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon X700 (with 128RAM)

And i have the following patches on the game:
MultiPatch (music only)
High res patch
Reunion Patch

And when i run the game, the cpu usage goes to 100% and after about 15minutes the game starts to slow down. Now this may be a heat issue, since once the game launches the fan kicks in.  But the slowdown only lasts about 10minutes and goes back to normal. Then it just goes between slow and fast, slow and fast.

Can anyone help me with this!? Or has anyone experienced this problem before? Ive been searching about this problem, but to no avail.

Thanks in advance!

**edit**

Oh yeah, the slowdown usually occurs during fighting sequences and then continues after the fighting. And yes i do have all the newest drivers and stuff.

[-gone away-]

laptops have problems with everthing..

If the slow down is in relation to the fan speeding up and slowing down, you can disable the automatic cpu slowdown(or tone it down) in the bios to fix... but stay the hell away from it if you dont know what you are doing.

In some older machines the temperate readout itself can sometimes cause problems and decrease speed by up to 20% and needs to be disabled, with my bios i could disable it without disabling the automatic cpu slowdown ... so make sure yours does the same before disabling, and once again stay away if you dont know what you are doing.

[spyrojyros_tail]

hehehehe!

Man, I know where your coming from. I should know what im doing, or at least be able to understand what im doing (im doing a degree in programming) so if you can send me a link to read up on id be delighted. But in the fantastic tradition of IT, you know stuff alot better when ya screw up and start again. (However im thinking if you screw with heating you may find that your lappy wont turn on after a while.)

Hmmm, so im thinkin about it. But ya have to understand, i can sit and play this game 8 hours in a row and im sure if the fan is turned off then the lifetime of my laptop will be really reduced. Oh and ive bought this laptop about 6-8 months ago. Thanks for your reply, ill have a look, but i wont touch!

Oh yeah, and is 100% cpu usage normal during gameplay?!

[Zack]

100% CPU is normal during gameplay, well at least it is on my machine.

[spyrojyros_tail]

Well ive looked at the bios, no luck.

Nothing about the systems heat/fan, there is nothing special in the bios just opening ports and stuff thats not related to the problem... hmmm, does the game slow down with anyone else?

Well at least 100% cpu usage is normal! Thanks!

[-gone away-]

Well at least 100% cpu usage is normal! Thanks!

even a game of cards will send mine up to 100%

[Aaron]

This may be casued by the CPU varying its clock speed to save power (I had problems with FF8 and this on my laptop) like smithie hit on.  You can fix it by going to the "Power Options" control panel and setting it to "Always On" (CPU will always run full speed) or "Home Office/Desk" (CPU will run full speed when the computer is not running on battery).

You probably want to install AMD's CPU driver (direct link) if you haven't.

There may be an option in the BIOS to completely disable this feature.

This article describes what setting in the Power Options control panel does what to you CPU speed.  It is talking about Intel CPUs, but I am pretty sure that your system would follow the same policies if you were using an AMD CPU.

[spyrojyros_tail]

well ive downloaded motherboard monitor, and ive played the game for about 15 - 20 mins and there was no slowdown! This is weird cuz the program just monitors (as far as im aware). Oh yeah and all my power options are "never" which is better than the "always on" profile. (I hate it when my laptop switches itself off) But anyway ill have a read up on that soon, as for now im gonna leave it for a while (my legs are cooking!).

But i must say, the work your doing here is fantastic! The game looks brilliant now and i cant wait til the NPCs get done up too.

[Aaron]

You can change the profile to "Always On" and then switch everything to "Never."  It seems wierd, but (at least on my laptop with an Intel CPU), which profile you have selected affects how the CPU behaves (no matter what you have the other options set to) as described in the article I linked above.

[The Skillster]

shit thats alot of replies already!
Make sure its on the Mains, thats no 1 priority.
When you take a laptop off the mains it goes into speeds like 300Mhz (my centrino 1.6 GHz does), you can get ups like SpeedswitchXP which will allow you to monitor the cpu speed and gives you an idea about how it is reacting.

Check your graphics settings, Graphics on a laptop wont handle everything, and running FSAA on the high res patch will kill it.

Ditch the high res patch, does it work OK? Should do the high res patch is slow on my desktop sometimes (world map etc)

[spyrojyros_tail]

Hey! thats really weird with the power profiles, i didnt know that! But it doesnt matter, my profile is "always on" with everthing switched to "never".

The laptop is plugged in, but the one thing thats bugging the hell out of me is that this game was made almost 10 years ago now and im running it on somthing thats a hell more powerful than a playstation1. Im thinking that its probably the game struggling to work with a futuristic graphics/audio card. I dont want to ditch the high res patch, but ill try it! Oh and i might not reply often, im in final year, final semester in college as much as i love this game i need a good degree outta this! so forgive me if i do!! Thanks for the replies!

[spyrojyros_tail]

well, its no use i guess.

I just played the game clean and its still slowing down. Does this happen with anyone elses game?

[Midgar]

Is this event random? Try to reinstall it, maybe it will be better...
Right now I assume the following:
Maybe you have a virus
Perhaps the setup was corrupted

Also did you install the drivers as a result of the slowdowns or did you do it before? Could the patches be the source of the problem?

[Great Sephiroth]

Try to install the 1.02 patch found in qhimm

Here


I had the same bug before and with that its all resolved

Great Sephiroth

[spyrojyros_tail]

Hi guys, just to answer a few questions.

Yes the problem is random, but you can expect it anytime you play the game, however the problem usually occurs during fights and continues on for a 10 minute period then stops, then starts at random again, but i can never play the game for a half an hour without it happening.

There are no viruses.

Setup might be corrupted, but i dont think so, if it was corrupt then it would skip a file or not install at all.

The only drivers I installed was the update of the AMD processor and it was a result of the slowdown.

OH and I played the game clean again! No slowdown, but i really dont have time to test it all the time. (i.e. playing for about 30 mins then uninstalling and reinstalling again p.s. all this uninstalling/installing sucks)

Ill use the 1.02 patch, thanks Great Sephiroth. I seen it before but totally forgot to use it *doh*. Thanks to everyone who has helped, ill screw about with it for a while and come back with results and post them.

[ChaosControl]

I dont i read it here so anyway, do you have any programs running on the background? (in windows) like a virus scanner that might check at random times or something

[spyrojyros_tail]

yeah, there is norton antivirus running in the background. But i have all the automatic stuff off (it makes no sense when an antivirus program slows your computer down! and antivirus software creates a lot of problems, but that is another rant) anyway ccApp.exe takes up about 13k mem usage and Smc.exe takes up 9K, but i believe them to be within reasonable limits. And i dont think that they raise during playing the game

[Midgar]

Chaos is right. They do raise randomly. If you are always on the internet then you should block out all traffic for a little while, or stop the internet unless you are downloading or something. Then you can disable the firewalls with no risk of attacks from the internet. If that doesn't help then why don't you clean up your CDs, reinstall it, and then try again? Be sure to save your .ff7 files!

[ChaosControl]

if you want to be sure its not some program on the background running I recommend formatting your comp and re-install, then firstly (after you installed all drivers etc.. (so no antivirus or anything)) install FF7 with 1.02 patch, try again and if it still resumes i think its a hardware problem

[spyrojyros_tail]

sorry for the late reply, but here are the results!

Nothing works... im sickened. Im thinking its either an overheating problem or the fact that the program designed to work with advanced graphics cards. The patches dont seem to affect the speed of the program, so kudos to the coders!

But it just looks like that it shouldnt be run on a laptop, thats the long and short of it.

Well, not all is lost! Ive about 2 old windows 98 computers that are gonna be thrown out, so ill be messing about with those two! Still sickened about the laptop though.

Well thanks anyway guys, you have been very patient.

[CkRtech]

Yo -

Hey - while laptops are in a breed of their own, you should still be able to run the game on hardware like that. Sure, it's old...but outside of video drivers, there usually isn't too big of a problem running FF7.

I just wanted to chime in since you said "Still sickened about the laptop though."

While clean installing the OS is an option, it is always good to try to salvage the current one as best you can. Laptop manufacturers love to run their own software in the background. You checked background processes and all that - but if you are experiencing slow down playing a game that was made for a CPU of 1997 speed, then *some* process has to be robbing CPU time from the game.

Also - 100% CPU usage is not normal. It should be just under that.

I would take a look at your Event log (My Computer->Manage) and make sure there aren't any errors logged in there during the times that your computer slows down. Also - check for software updates for applications you run. You said you have the latest drivers, might as well check software too. (Trying to find that rogue background process that might be causing you trouble - it could even be a Service having issues)

run msconfig and check out your Startup tab to see if anything looks out of the ordinary. You could even post a screenshot here if you want.

Finally, use a full install of FF7 and try to get the CDs out of the equation. You could even try running the game without sound, in software mode, etc...and see if perhaps your audio or video hardware itself is in a bad mood. (a reinstall driver scenario rather than just an "update driver" scenario)

Good luck.

[spyrojyros_tail]

Thanks for the advice, but i for now i dont have any time to look at why the laptop slows down during ffVII, im doing my final year project for my degree (its worth 25% of my degree), so all my time is spent on that. Ill come back to this post in the future, but for now its on the backburner!

Thanks everyone, great forum

[dziugo]

The reason why it slows down is that your CPU speed varies... FF7 uses rdtsc instruction to measure your system speed (counts how many ticks are there per second) and use that constant (as it is calculated when running FF7 and never changes) to set a frame cap... Oh, and guess what happens if the speed of your CPU (and clocks per sec) changes? Yeah...

If the speed goes down, it takes more time to process a frame AND FF7 adds another delay, so the delta in rdtsc matches. Thanks go to FF7 programmers.

dziugo

P.S. Sorry that I'm hijacking this thread, but: Is there any person (reading this of course) experiencing CosmoCanyon crash willing to test a new fix? PM me.