Risen Risen - Windows 7 - Lag Problem

Tanno

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Hello, everyone.

I'm new in those fantastic forums and these forums do suit my favourite kind of game genre. I'm a RPG fan and collector. I do collect all RPG games as far as I can, even the oldest ones.

Now I'm having a problem with Risen, due of the lag in there.

At some places it doesn't have the lag problem, but in more detailed places.

I investigated this problem earlier, but didn't find the proper solution for my problem, due of the old posts runting about this problem only in Windows XP and the fail Vista. Risen is also supported in Windows 7 and works fine, but I can't seem to fix the lag problem. My PC is as follows:

- RAM 4.00 GB
- Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+ 2.50 GHz
- Graphic card NVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB
- OS Windows 7 64-bit Professional

and already passed the PC requirements' test, so why is it lagging like hell ?
 
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When you say "lag", are you talking about the framerate? I assume that's the case since you say it happens in the more detailed areas. What resolution are you running, and do you have all the options maxed?
 
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When you say "lag", are you talking about the framerate? I assume that's the case since you say it happens in the more detailed areas. What resolution are you running, and do you have all the options maxed?

Well, yes. When I mean detailed areas, I mean inside some buildings, such as the Volcano Keep.

I run it with res 1440x900. Used to run it to 1680x1050, but lowered it to fill the whole screen. I can't lower the res, because it makes the game's screen much smaller than the monitor's screen.

And I have the settings maxed, since I can run every game in high resolution and shit.

Any solution is accepted !
 
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You can change you video adapter settings to "scale" lower resolutions to fit the whole screen.

Also, I'd suggest lowering some of the settings, starting with shadows.
 
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Check your video adapter / display settings and drivers. That NVIDIA card should easily handle this game. I'd say that something is messed up somewhere. Of course, it could be Windows 7... What games have you played without lag?
 
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It has nothing to do with Windows 7. I'm more than sick of people blaming the OS for something that isn't the OS's fault. Windows 7 does not degrade gaming performance, in most cases it improves it. Ignore anyone who ever says otherwise, they're wrong and there is no argument about it- they're just wrong. :/

Risen has always ran perfectly for me. That said, a bit of quick googling shows problems with Risen and newer Nvidia drivers (!) and I see suggestions to roll back your video card drivers to version 178.24, which apparently fixes the problem completely.
 
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Check your video adapter / display settings and drivers. That NVIDIA card should easily handle this game. I'd say that something is messed up somewhere. Of course, it could be Windows 7… What games have you played without lag?

The games without lag are:

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands(I solved the lag problem there by upgrading the RAM to 4GB from 2GB).
Beyond Good and Evil(It had fast framerate, but I solved it by disabling some options due of not being supported in Windows 7 64-bit)

Only those two, since I changed the Graphic card and RAM.

The Graphic card's drivers are already updated. It's in 275.33 version.

darkling, I'd love to, but this particular version is only supported for older graphic card, but i'll try it out. Now I do see this driver version do support only the fail vista…
 
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I haven't googled, but it sounds like darkling's research is the most probable cause. Try different driver versions, or there may be workarounds by disabling features in the display adapter.
 
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Tried installing, but the installation machine doesn't want to install it, due of incompatibility. They only support the installation according to their respected OS. :/

Well, I don't think I have that video adapter... As for the workaround and stuff, I tried everything.

Guess I'll have to report that to NVidia forums...
 
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That post was really old, with the old driver #, looks like this nvidia low-fps problem started sometime in 09.. Risen is an old game now, sadly. D: Nvidia is notorious for completely wrecking support in their drivers for older games in order to build workarounds for slight performance improvements in new games.

It looks like other solutions people have posted are:
- disable PhysX in the driver control panel (most common suggested solution, seems a lot of people see big improvements from this)
- set 'maximum pre-rendered frames' to 0 in the driver control panel (less common suggested solution, I am uncertain as to whether this will really do anything)
- and if you're using multiple monitors, disable all but one (saw someone say this once, no idea here either)

Good luck
 
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I certainly don't consider Risen an old game yet, and I wouldn't be so quick to blame Nvidia either.

I played Risen on WinXP originally, but I have Windows 7 now (same version as the OP) and a GTX 470. I'll install Risen later tonight and see how it runs for me.
 
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That post was really old, with the old driver #, looks like this nvidia low-fps problem started sometime in 09.. Risen is an old game now, sadly. D: Nvidia is notorious for completely wrecking support in their drivers for older games in order to build workarounds for slight performance improvements in new games.

It looks like other solutions people have posted are:
- disable PhysX in the driver control panel (most common suggested solution, seems a lot of people see big improvements from this)
- set 'maximum pre-rendered frames' to 0 in the driver control panel (less common suggested solution, I am uncertain as to whether this will really do anything)
- and if you're using multiple monitors, disable all but one (saw someone say this once, no idea here either)

Good luck

- I can't disable it. I don't see that option of disabling it.
- I don't have that option.
- Already in one monitor. I do have two, but disabled the other one. I'll use dual monitors for work later on.
 
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Disabling PhysX in the GPU drivers probably won't have any effect. Afaik, Risen doesn't use the hardware version of PhysX, and all those calculations are done by the CPU.
 
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How do I do that in Win 7 ?

Right click on the shortcut (or the exe file in your Risen folder if you don't have a shortcut) and select properties. Then just go to the compatibilty tab and check whatever mode you want to try.

To be honest though, I highly doubt that's going to do anything. That solution generally works for games that are older than Risen.
 
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