Improved performance!

[Shinra-Zer0]

Well folks, I know a lot of you are having performance issues with Thief: Deadly Shadows and I've found something (at least for me) has improved performance considerably.

http://www.omegacorner.com

This sight has improved drivers for ATI and Nvidia cards. Speaking from personal experience this has helped game performance. I have an ATI 9600se and this new driver helped a lot.

- Shin

[BigPimpin]

Damn I was going to post this yesterday. Unfortunately the new drivers are having problems with some shadows. But this patch gives you at least 5fps improvement. I'm now running at over 48fps Beat that Nvidia.

[JVieira]

I am using the 14325a drivers from that site, because I have read in several places that they are supposed to be the best of the best for ti4200 cards. I wanted to share my experiences here because I have managed to get the game running INCREDIBLY smoother.

I saw a big difference at first when trying the 14523a driver, but I started messing with many others, mostly from nvidia directly. The game was sluggish and crappy again. At some point, I decided to go BACK to the 14523a drivers, and yet I was still seeing very sluggish performance again!

Then I remembered what I've read many times, on the importance of removing OLD drivers first. And not just by uninstalling them, but by fully removing all trace of them. This simply cannot be stressed enough!!

I then went looking for a driver cleaner that worked with XP, and found this:

http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/

I followed it's instructions, and removed all traces of nvidia drivers, and reinstalled 14523a drivers.... And... my god.. WHAT A DIFFERENCE. Not only did it get rid of the sluggishness I had been feeling the last few drivers.. It actually got smoother than it had the FIRST time I put those drivers on. It was like a night and day difference! The smoothest performance I had seen yet. Easily 5-7 frames per second more (estimate, I don't have fraps). A very, very noticable difference!

I'm curious to see if the newest Omega drivers, 15303, are even better, but I find myself not wanting to mess with it now anymore. I took the time to try several other games, and I'm seeing a HUGE performance increase in all of them. Not just that kind of thing where you think "hmm, seems faster". Undeniable, huge performance gains, across all my games.

I can't stress enough how much an improvement I have seen by switching to these drivers, and by doing it PROPERLY, by removing the old ones. I was running 56.72 forceware drivers till a few days ago, and this is a night vs. day difference. Just incredible!

[Robert_s]

WOW, thanks guys.

The difference in performance I'm getting using the 1453a Omega drivers for my Abit Ti 4200 is incredible. The game is smooth now instead of pausing and lagging intermittently.

JVieira - I tried using the latest Omega 14523a driver, but the performance was worse than latest official Nvidia driver (50.72). There is something about the 1453a driver that works well with this game, so I'm gonna stick with it.

Thanks again, great game.

[Quillan]

The Omega drivers are about the best custom drivers available, as far as I am concerned. I use them for my 9800 Pro. I don't know about his nVidia drivers, but the Radeon Omega drivers come with a custom version of that Driver Cleaner utility that installed along with it. It's well worth grabbing, in any event, if you don't have it.

[Shinra-Zer0]

I'm glad to see other's enjoying the benefit of these kick ass drivers.

[LeatherMan]

I originally used the Forceware 56.72 drivers with the demo and performance was mediocre at 800x600 with low details and vsync off. I noticed a slight improvement in framerate after uninstalling the 56.72 drivers and installing the Detonator 44.03 drivers (haven't tried Omega drivers). More important, though, is that the game feels much smoother and is more responsive now! If you don't need the 56.72 drivers for other games, I strongly recommend using an older driver.

AthlonXP 1800+ (1.53GHz)
GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB
512MB PC2100 RAM
WinXP Home SP1
SBLive! 5.1

[JVieira]

Originally posted by LeatherMan
I originally used the Forceware 56.72 drivers with the demo and performance was mediocre at 800x600 with low details and vsync off. I noticed a slight improvement in framerate after uninstalling the 56.72 drivers and installing the Detonator 44.03 drivers (haven't tried Omega drivers). More important, though, is that the game feels much smoother and is more responsive now! If you don't need the 56.72 drivers for other games, I strongly recommend using an older driver.

AthlonXP 1800+ (1.53GHz)
GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB
512MB PC2100 RAM
WinXP Home SP1
SBLive! 5.1

Seeing as you have a ti4200, please trust me on this. You will not regret it. TRY THE OMEGA DRIVERS. And make sure you remove the old drivers fully with that utility. This has been such a huge experience for me, I cannot stress it enough. I have been playing around with a half dozen games I have installed and I'm practically floored by how much better ALL OF THEM RUN. It's just incredible. I have read in numerous places that the absolute best drivers for a ti4200 are the Omega 14523a drivers, and I currently see NO reason to doubt it. I tried those 44.03, and several other 4x.xx drivers before these. I cannot stress it enough. You just have to try it. I wouldn't make such a big deal if it weren't for how much this blew me away.

My system is similar to yours, but I have an even lesser CPU. I was barely getting by in Thief 3 with 800x600 and everything at the lowest levels. Now I am running at 1024x768 and I can run around and aggro 3-4 guards and have them chase me around and the frame rate stays very smooth. I litterally feel as though someone came in and put a different processor in my computer.

[van_HellSing PL]

Two questions:

1. Which drivers should I use for the 9200se?

2. Will I still be able to use ATItool? (I'm running with the softmodded Catalyst 4.4 drivers from http://softmod.ocfaq.com/download.php )

[Mantra]

Using them now. Not bad, but 26 fps isnt too great, especially with considerable drops while running around the environment (heavy lighting in dark places).

[LeatherMan]

Originally posted by JVieira
You will not regret it. TRY THE OMEGA DRIVERS.

Will do, and I will report any improvements!

[Quillan]

The Omega Radeon drivers come with ATI Tool as well, and another utility called RadLinker that allows you to create a custom profile for each piece of software.

[LeatherMan]

To start, I started Fraps and Thief: DS demo. I then loaded a saved game, ran to the bottom of the stairs and into the corner near the lighted doorway where the statue is located, looked back towards the stairs, up at the left chandelier and took a screenshot. FPS was 22 @ 800x600. This gave me a "feel" for the game and a screenshot for comparison.

I then uninstalled the 44.03 drivers, ran Driver Cleaner, then installed the Omega 14523a drivers (I chose Performance settings as they have the same image quality as the default drivers but with added performance settings). Started Thief: DS demo, loaded the same saved game, ran back to the same spot as I was earlier and took another screenshot. FPS was identical as the 44.03 drivers and the "feel" was similar.

After comparing the screenshots, I saw no discernable difference between the drivers.

So, no performance increase and no image quality increase for me, but I will keep the Omega drivers installed as I don't feel like it is worth it to switch back (what a pain compared to the Linux display drivers... ).

[drow21]

Oh, i'm getting the boost but for some reason, those drivers cause my game to crash whenever I use eye zoom. Is there a workaround or something I can do? Otherwise, i'll have to go back to old.

[JVieira]

Originally posted by LeatherMan
To start, I started Fraps and Thief: DS demo. I then loaded a saved game, ran to the bottom of the stairs and into the corner near the lighted doorway where the statue is located, looked back towards the stairs, up at the left chandelier and took a screenshot. FPS was 22 @ 800x600. This gave me a "feel" for the game and a screenshot for comparison.

I then uninstalled the 44.03 drivers, ran Driver Cleaner, then installed the Omega 14523a drivers (I chose Performance settings as they have the same image quality as the default drivers but with added performance settings). Started Thief: DS demo, loaded the same saved game, ran back to the same spot as I was earlier and took another screenshot. FPS was identical as the 44.03 drivers and the "feel" was similar.

After comparing the screenshots, I saw no discernable difference between the drivers.

So, no performance increase and no image quality increase for me, but I will keep the Omega drivers installed as I don't feel like it is worth it to switch back (what a pain compared to the Linux display drivers... ).

Hmm, sorry man!! I guess I didn't have as much luck with the 44.03's, because it was before I started using that tool to fully remove drivers, and probably had something still in there from another version that hadn't been removed. Still, I'm glad to see the Omega's work at least as well for you. I am very happy with them.

[Korso]

Ok, i know this questions are starting to be annoying, but i can´t make thief 3 to run minimally smooth on my computer. I remember i had same problems on Deus Ex 2, but with an unofficial tweak patch and some tweaks of mine i was able to play it at 1024x768 with some settings in high (except multisampling)...

But no luck woth thief, it runs slow as hell, no matter what i do,
i have a geforce4 4200, athlon xp 1800+ and 768 mb ram ddr.

I know this specs are little above the minimum, but, how the hell i am able to play far cry nicely with almost all setting at max? and same about ut2004... My bet, deus ex 2 engine hates 4200...

Thanks for reading, and hoping for answers...

BTW, i already tried OMEGA drivers the 14532 ones, but i did only noticed a little improvement... what a shame...

[Nilt]

Originally posted by Korso
But no luck woth thief, it runs slow as hell, no matter what i do,
i have a geforce4 4200, athlon xp 1800+ and 768 mb ram ddr.

I know this specs are little above the minimum, but, how the hell i am able to play far cry nicely with almost all setting at max? and same about ut2004... My bet, deus ex 2 engine hates 4200...

Don't feel too bad about that. I run on a 2800+, 1.5 GB of RAM and a FX 5900 Ultra and it's rather choppy with everything up at 1024x768. Haven't bothered with 800x600 yet as I'm still tinkering with various settings first but it sure seems to be a bear on performance. It must be all those dynamic shadows (I hope).

[UltraSub]

I'm wondering why TDS performs so really choppy on my system. I mean, it shouldn't, according to the specs of my system:

Abit TH7-II RAID
P4 1.7 (Willamette)
1 GB RDRAM
Asus V9560/TD 128MB DDR (FX5600)
Windows XP clean install, running the leaked Forceware which is on Guru3D.com, ForceWare 61.11. That one made my tvout work again
Also tried Nvidia's Forceware 56.72 which is their current release now.

Playing at 1280x1024 (I play all games at that res, and it looks good on my monitor) Fraps reports frame rates of 5-10 when its really choppy, and running at its best at 15-20, but its more at 10-12.
V-sync is off, although I can't see any difference with it switched on.

Comeon, this ain't normal
Someone has tips for me? Please?? I'm pretty desperate here!

[Hew Jazz]

Guess Nvidia cards arn't a good choice for this game. My cpu is 300Mhz below system requirments and the game runs perfectly smooth with everything turned on. I suppose this game prefers ATI cards. Lucky me.

[Korso]

I agree with Hew Jazz and Nilt, a friend of mine is able to play much more nicely than me in a radeon 9200 a card that is noticiable worse than our beloveds geforce4 ti.

Well, keep hopes up for a patch or something

[commandguy]

What should i do in that Driver Cleaner program to completely remove the Nvidia drivers?

[LeMartin]

Hmm, maybe nVidia really has problems with their coding. I mean initial benchmarks of the nVidia FX line-up in Half-Life 2 showed that they were almost 50% slower than the ATi cards, a problem which has since been fixed by Valve and nVidia. The new 6800 series does not seem to suffer from the same problem.

Also, Thief - Deadly Shadows is NOT omptimized at all for Direct X 8.1 cards like my GeForce 4 Ti 4200, that, I guess, is the reason why people with GeForce FX 5200 cards (much slower than mine) have been able to run the game better. The FX series has hardware DirectX 9 coding and support.

ATi has better coding, I guess, for lighting and shadows....

[Nilt]

Originally posted by Korso
I agree with Hew Jazz and Nilt, a friend of mine is able to play much more nicely than me in a radeon 9200 a card that is noticiable worse than our beloveds geforce4 ti.

Well, keep hopes up for a patch or something

I've actually tried it with an ATI 9800 Pro XT; there's so little difference between its performance on that and the 5900 Ultra as to be pointless. I prefer NVIDIA’s drivers, personally. Let's not deviate into a holy war of ATI vs NVIDIA here, though. It's more a matter of what each individual prefers; I have both of these available as I'm a self employed geek who needs high end bench cards handy at times and have often compared them in the exact same PC.

The point of this particular thread is actually how well Thief: DS runs on a reasonably high end system. After some further tinkering with in-game settings last night I tried a clean boot (see this site for details). I discovered that even lowering everything down all the way didn't help much for me. Generally I don't need to shut all my running tasks down to lay games as they're all passive except the AV, so I didn't bother. Turns out this made a huge difference even with only a few, non-active items running. I'm now able to play at 1024x768 with all details up quite well. I had a minor stutter here and there so I lowered the Multi-Sampling to 3 from the top and all is well.

I am surprised that the few items I had loaded caused any issues as they don't do so in any other current game on this rig. If anyone's curious, I run 2 small clipboard utilities (less than 1 MB usage each) and the United Devices Grid.org distributed computing client (sort of like SETI@Home). The Grid.org thing is designed to run only when nothing else is and my logs bear this out. This version of Thief seems to be quite resource intensive, even more than most others currently on the market. Not that I'm complaining about this; I know that just because other games work fine it doesn't mean this one will; I'm just a bit surprised about it is all.

[bluestorm]

the game runs really well on my system, havent noticed anything to annoy me,,
COMPAQ Presario S6500NX (bought it about 2 months ago)
win XP
AMD 3000+ 2.16 GHz
512 meg DDR ram

had to buy a new graphics card to play this game:

ATI radeon 9200 (only one wall-mart had) but it was on the list that would work.

game settings:

brightness 6
Res 1024x768
shadow detail 3 down from the highest setting
bloom on



ive got all tasks running in the background, and i use a program called FreeRam xp pro and i maintain a 237 meg free.

but since i havent seen this game on a HIGH end system it still looks really good and plays well too..

my 2cnts worth

[styphon]

how do I check my frame rate in game? (TDS or any other for that matter)