Warcraft 3 stuttering...

I ran into a problem after installing Warcraft 3 on my Acer 1410 today, it keeps on stuttering every 5 to 10 seconds. Over on top of that I hardly see anything above 20FPS (/fps). Everything is set to high, since the 4500MHD should be able to play this game. I have the latest drivers and patches, so what's going on? Almost every other game runs fine (looking at you BF2...)

My specs are:
Intel Core 2 Solo 3500 @ 1.4GHz
3GB PC2-5400 DDR2 (2+1)
4500MHD
Native resolution: 1366x768

Thanks!

 

Yeah, that computer should be able to max it out. I run it using my T500's integrated graphics mode (4500MHD) at 1680x1050 with no problems. Your problems may be caused by another process hogging your CPU's power, which can especially be a problem on single-core processors like your C2S.

Download and run Process Explorer (link in my signature). Right-click the column name area, and choose "Select Columns." Then, under the Process Performance tab, tick "CPU History." That should give you a column of graphs of CPU usage.

Open up an run Warcraft III, with Process Explorer running. When the stuttering starts, Alt-Tab from WCIII and see if any other process is using an abnormal amount of CPU.

 

It could stutter depending on the size of the map and how many units are running around.

 

As surfasb said, I've also managed to make WC3 stutter when there are lots of units on the notebook in my sig.

 

its probably because the processor isn't powerful enough to handle so many units. RTS games are more CPU intensive. The rest of your specs is fine. But you can improve performance by using OpenGL mode. Right click the Warcraft III shortcut, and add a -opengl at the end

e.g. C:\Program Files(x86)\Warcraft III\war3.exe -opengl

and out of curiosity, @sgogeta4, how can your lappy stutter when playing W3? It doesn't stutter on mine.

 

I also had stuttering problems playing it with a 3ghz core 2 duo. I solved it by underclocking the processor to about 1.6ghz. However considering your processor is just 1.4 ghz I can't imagine underclocking it further would help you...

 

I usually have hardly any processes running, currently I'm on Windows 7 RC, and I have MSSE, GTalk, Skype, and other system-started processes running. I will give the tool a shot though.

It's stuttering from the get-go, and even if it's not stuttering, the framerate is too slow, giving the fact that the GMA should be able to handle things very easily.

Hmm, I usually used the -opengl tag when running under Wine, but I will give that a try.

 

Does it stutter when you turn down the settings?

I assumed you've already tried those settings.

 

Yep it still does that. I'm going to have to do some homework right now, I'll try to get to testing war3 this evening.

 

Try setting affinity in task manager to just one of the cores for the game. Perhaps the Windows is trying to make it run between both cores but I know Warcraft III wasn't optimized full multiple cores.

 

Some good advice here, I'll try to set affinity and run via OpenGL. But I still like my highest settings in WXGA. Stuttering typically isn't a problem until I flood the screen with hundreds of units on a huge map (12 players anyone)?

 

Isn't a core solo just that? A solo core?

Not sure if setting affinity with a solo core helps any.

 

Besides -opengl, did you also try -swtnl?

 

How does swtnl improve the situation? From Blizzard, it seems like it would add more stress to the CPU.

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=21211

 

Yeah... sorry about that... I read through the whole first page and had forgotten it was a solo. So uncommon to me these days to see a solo lol... So yeah it would make no difference.

 

Part of me keeps thinking this is a driver issue.

 

Because it forces it to use software instead of hardware transform and lighting. It worked on my old Intel x3100, probably will work on the 4500 too. My x3100 was getting around 15-20 fps, when I enabled it I was getting 40ish.

And WC3 can run on a 1ghz Pentium III computer and still do fine (I've personally done this when the game first came out in 2003), the processor speed is pretty negligible in this situation.

 

For me, stuttering was caused by fragmentation (some of the data files were in 300+ pieces ) and defragging pretty much solved it.

 

First of all, thanks for all your responses!

I installed Vista's GMA drivers, since I heard that it gives better performance for dual-channel RAM. I fired up Process Explorer and then War3, played for about 5 minutes on Emerald Gardens with all 12 CPU players, and noticed that the frame rate had not impoved one bit. Moving back to Process Explorer (Alt+Tab), the CPU chart had topped out at 80% usage, so the CPU still had some juice yet. That would rule out a CPU bottleneck, and no other process was taking up too much space.

Next I tried the -opengl tag, and the framerate did improve, with averaging around 35FPS at first, but then after 1 minute of gameplay, it started stuttering, and the framerate dropped back down to ~20FPS. (same map)

Then I tried the -swtnl tag only, and the framerate in D3D mode dropped back down to around ~20FPS, and the CPU showed around 80% usage. It's getting late now, so I'm going to try under Wine in Linux tomorrow to sort out if it is really a game issue or something that's Win7 RCs fault, or maybe the driver's fault.

Unfortunately, I would ask on Blizzard's support forums, but they don't support Windows 7 yet.

Until tomorrow!

My laptop is hardly a month old, so defragmentation is hardly an issue. I believe that last week my fragmentation is sitting at around 2%.

 

try setting driver footprint to High, if you haven't already done so.

Right click desktop>Graphics Properties>3D Settings>Driver Memory Footprint=High

and also Display Settings (on the left column)>Power Settings>Good Power Savings

 

I would try to narrow down the causes. Start with a smaller map and less units on screen. Turn off the sound and music. Then work your way up.

 

I'm going to have to apologize, I've been ridden with a lot of assignments and there being a major test next week, I should start studying. I tired to load it up on Wine, but I ran into a couple of errors, I'll try to fix it and see if it runs over the weekend. It's currently installed on openSUSE 11.2 RC2, it'll most probably work out-of-the-box (Wine) in the final version.

 

Alright, I got it to work on suse 11.2 final, with the wine build I got from the Wine CVS repository. I'm guessing that it doesn't work on Win7 because I was running RC1 or either it was a driver issue.

 

yeah when i play footmen frenzy the fps drops to like 5 because of all the units.
Im on an hd 3650 btw.