Command & Conquer 3 - Benchmarking / Comparisons

I've just bought C&C3 for my Acer 5920 (8600m GT DDR2; 2GB RAM; 2.0GHz C2Duo). People say that they can play Bioshock and Crysis with this laptop ... frankly I mostly play old games and C&C3 is the most demanding game I've tried. The thing is, I get pretty poor performance. I have to put the "performance slider" on LOW, otherwise I get a very choppy framerate. I've also tried turning shadows off etc.

I was hoping that fellow C&C3 players could tell me how their laptops handle this game - for example the in-game settings they use; or perhaps there is something I should tweak outside of the game such as a shortcut command or nVidia control panel option...?

I don't do any overclocking and I am using 174.74 from laptopvideo2go.com - I get roughly 3500 on 3Dmark06 if that helps in comparing performance.

(Finally - has anyone actually beaten a Brual AI 1v1 ... those things are craaaaaaazy!)

 

thats odd, i can play C&C 3 on low-mid settings on my rig fine. make sure you turn AA off, and is your power management setting on "power saver"? if so, change it to "high performance" you should be able to play it on mid-high settings no problem

 

AA is off and my power management is set to "High Performance". Even at the "LOW" in-game settings I was getting some FPS drops during battles.

I don't really know what to try :S I'm not sure if this is relevant, but I installed the game to my "DATA" partition of my HDD ... this isn't somehow slower than my main partition is it? Another idea - I will try to disable Intel Turbo Memory...

Are there any 8600m GT users out there who could give me a comparison of their performance?

 

you may want to update your drivers from laptopvideo2go.com

i've had horrible performance with some of them but you just have to take some time and find the right one for your machine. it's night and day difference it's you're switching from something that's not compatible.

 

My specs are in my sig. I play C&C3 on 800x600 with everything to high(NOT ultra) except AA(off), textures(medium) and shadows(low).

And this is on a crippled x1700 with a 1.6 ghz cpu. Your 8600m GT acer should run it A LOT better than me.

 

Wow that does seem to be a big difference in specs. I'll do a bit more digging around and try various drivers etc., but if that doesn't help then I'm probably stuck!

 

Something's not right. I've also got it installed to my Data partition, so it is definately not that. Have you got a lot of processes running? Try shuting down any un-needed programs before gaming (like Anti Virus).

My ATi HD 2600 runs it at 1280x800 on High without any noticeable framerate drops. I would expect your 8600 GT to be the same.

 

I play C&C 3 Tiberium Wars on full settings with max resolution, shadowing on, basically max everything. Your computer sounds like it should run fine on low-med settings. Have you tried up-dating the drivers for you Graphics card, and up-grading the DirectX?

 

Steven - do you know what your 3dmark score is, roughly? Just that it might help to compare... I tried disabling Antivirus and it didn't make that much difference (if any). I have updated my drivers to 174.74 but I can't get them to be WHQL certified, even though laptopvideo2go says that they should be... is that perhaps a problem?

 

I've played it at 1280x800 mid to high on a 9500m gs and a 5550 cpu. Can't see how there would be much difference between them. I've also played it on a desktop 8500 gt and did about the same. Something doesn't seem right.

 

No, I've never used 3DMark, but generally the HD 2600 is a bit slower than a 8600m GT (but faster than a 8600m GS). For my laptop, Toshiba's drivers were being upated every month or two until March so I've not tried the laptopvideo2go drivers.

Anyway, it could be that you're 8600 GT isn't running at full speed. I know you have set the power profile to High Performance, but have you check the power management in the NVidia display driver? I think it is called 'PowerMizer'. I'm not familiar with nVidia's drivers as I use ATi for my PC & laptop, but you should be able to also put that to maximum performance.

The WHQL certification doesn't mean much to me: I know it means it's certified for use with Vista, but that's about it. Does it cause a UAC prompt starting the drivers or something? If they're stable and run better then I suppose it shouldn't matter. But it could mean that Vista's power plans don't change the power management within the display driver; which could be the problem.

 

What resolution are you currently playing @? Usually the 8600mgt ddr2 crap out @ higher resolutions. Try fine tuning settings a bit to get the best performance/image ratio. Turn off shadows so you can increase texture and shaders a bit.

 

I had problems for a long time with my m1710 (with a 7950 GT and 2.33 C2D). Once I upgraded my graphics drivers I went from being on low quality with low frame rates to maxed out settings with high frame rates. It truely was a day and night difference.

 

I guess different drivers could be the "holy grail", but I've already tried a couple with no success ... I think I will leave testing 100s of different drivers as a last resort. After all, I've been using some of the more popular ones anyway (e.g. 174.74) which were released after C&C3. But I do take your point ... which drivers are you using out of interest? I know you have a different GPU but maybe your driver is optimised for C&C3?

Anyway, I'm about to go and disable absolutely every single process and try and play C&C3 ... I guess that may give an indication of what is causing the laptop to underperform. Cheers for the help so far guys!

(P.S. Any other 8600m GT users out there who could lend a hand?)

 

Wow 3500 3dmark06 should give you medium performance on C&C3. There must be problems with your graphics setting. Make sure that in your Nvidia control panel, V-sync is off and that you're letting the application decide appropriate settings. Otherwise, why dont you try some overclocking if you need the performance boost. Another source of the problem could be that your gfx is underclocking due to high temperatures. So you'll need to monitor temps when you game.

And dude, i just beat an insane AI 1v1. took me 3 tries but finally took him out using NOD early bike/scorpion rush tactics. I think theres no way to beat these guys unless you sabotage them early. 2x resource advantage is just too much.

 

try disabling audio acceleration.

 

Sorry for the delayed response but thanks for all the help so far.

For some bizarre reason I can now play the game at my default settings (High @ 1024x768) without getting any slowdown except for smoke ... I'm not entirely sure why it suddenly plays much smoother, since it used to only be this smooth at Low!?! I turned off High Quality audio as well but I don't think that was the main culprit. I've even been playing at Ultra High quality @1024 res and it was also smooth... Although if I bump the resolution to my native 1280x800 it does become less smooth.

I'm not entirely sure what has caused this increase in performance. Perhaps it was turning off "High Quality audio" in-game. I'll do some more tests with it on / off. The in-game video settings don't seem to be that relevant anymore - Ultra High was smooth even with AntiAliasing etc. I might try playing a larger map just to test it out some more.

It just feels as though my graphics card has suddenly come to life!?! Yet my laptop feels much cooler than before!?! I haven't even changed drivers or BIOS fan settings etc... Very weird! Maybe there is hope for the 8600m series yet!

 

I have identical specifications.

I play it at 1440x900 everything max except shadows on medium and it runs smoothly.

Although before It used to be sluggish as hell.

Tell me, is the sluggishness like stuttering like frame skipping or is it like say scrolling around the map feels slow and the units move very slowly.

If its the latter then I had that problem too, my units would take ages to move, kinda like in slow motion.

I fixed it by updating to the latest version, I think 1.09 and running the game in administrator mode (right click the shortcut and select run as administrator if on vista).

You might also want to download drivers from laptopvideo2go and get the latest directx version.

 

Command and Conquer 3... is this Red Alert 3 Beta you guys are talking about!?

 

luffytubby - I'm talking about C&C3 - Tiberium Wars (it's about a year old now I guess).

Blackbird - I would describe the sluggishness as "slower scrolling" and slow motion, as opposed to stuttering frames. It's very playable on ultra high @ 1024, but ultra high @ 1280x800 was when it began to get slower ... although this sluggishness used to happen at medium settings, so I've already had a big improvement!

The strange thing is that I haven't updated / patched the game (I was already on 1.09), or changed my graphics drivers. I will try to run the game in administrator mode and see if that helps too.

 

You could also try running it in xp compatibility mode.... right click shortcut > compatibility and change it there.

if running in administrator mode doesn't help then you could also try using a crack.. this will stop you from putting the disk in the drive all the time when you need to play, and perhaps help with the sluggishness (if its related to security features)

 

hi~i love cnc3 so much` now im playing the Command & Conquer 3 Kane's Wrath``my card is 8600m gs and i oc to 550/1250/750 .it can play the Middle with 3 High setting smoothly`

 

Well, sorry if I'm wrong but... isn't this game just capped at 30fps? So no matter what settings you use, you can't get over 30fps.

I play at 1440x900 high settings and some medium like shadows and I get 25-30fps most of the time so its very playable.

Of course when super big battles commence I get less fps, but nothing game breaking. Maybe you are being too picky, or maybe you are getting our card downclocked

I am heavily against turning powermizer off, and forcing hardware to run at 100% performance all the time. Its just stupid: you get much hotter hardware for almost 0% gain since the computer throttles back up when performance is needed. Except in the case of downclocking but if my theory is correct, it is heavily related to temperature only, and a bug probably derived by the defective GPU design. Powermizer does not fix this.

anyways.... maybe you are being too picky on this game?

 

Patching C&C3 removes the max 30fps cap so it's likely something related to the game engine or graphics drivers that's preventing the OP from the full experience.