After much debate, I bought a computer strictly for gaming. It is a Windows 7 64-bit OS and has 8 GB of physical memory, and an AMD FX(tm)-4130 Quad-core processor, and the game itself recommends an Intel Core 2 Quad or AMD Phenom with 4 GB memory. My computer, presumably, should meet and exceed these requirements, yes?
Running the program, the initial startup configuration thinks the same and sets the settings up to high quality. Playing the game, however, results in slow, glitchy movement and response times, the FPS is somewhere between 5-15, and the graphic textures are mud. So, I'm running the game at the base settings. it runs, but the FPS is still dodgy, and the textures equally mudded, as expected. But it runs.
Then I got the wild idea to run the resource monitor while playing the game. Physical memory never exceeds more than 2gb. On a further wild hair, realizing I'd never seen the physical memory usage rise above 4gb, ever, I decided to run a second high-graphics game (that runs smoothly, as it should) at the same time as the first. Memory usage pretty much unaffected. Second game runs like a champ, even with the first game in background. Okay.... With resource monitor still open, I opened up two Mozilla browsers and went to Youtube, played two separate HD movies. Memory still plateaued at about 2.6 gb. Opened a word document, Adobe Photoshop CS2 and executed some high-memory image voodoo-- memory at about 2.8 gb. Opened up MSI Afterburner and Kombustor, ran two separate stress tests. All of these programs, running simultaneously, only eeked my physical memory usage up to a whopping 3.24 gb. Assassins' Creed (the second, high graphics game) still ran, if at .15 fps....
As a friend aptly put it, my computer is acting like a car running for all its worth in a single gear. My memory needs to upshift. How do I get that to happen, before my CPU and GPU explode from overwork while the memory just sits?
I've put a similar computer through the same tests, and it accesses its additional memory as I would expect to. So what is the problem with mine? I'm upset that I bought a computer for a specific reason that is doesn't seem capable of doing. Please help!
Edit:
After posting my question, I ran the memory diagnostic tool for Windows, and it indicates everything is functioning as it's supposed to. Ran the game's in-house Performance Tester, and it brings up the System and Video memory as 4095 MB and 4047 MB, respectively.
This lead me to wondering if my system, though claiming to be 64-bit, was running in 32-bit mode. So, on suggestion from a Super-user, downloaded and ran CPU-Z. As far as I can tell, the system is running in 64-bit mode.
Also, the game I'm trying to run is The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. After running Performance Tester (mentioned above), set settings to high, and game suddenly works, where before, on same settings, it didn't. The game is currently patched to version 3.4, the most recent release.
Graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce GT 610. Driver is up to date, version 320.49.
No comments:
Post a Comment