Solved Assassins Creed 2 Performance Issue

[M1GU31]

playing assassins creed 2 but it runs weird on my pc and runs with the same fps no matter what settings I use. Will randomly dip to 26 then go back to 45 for no reason at the most random time. I'm guessing this game is really cpu bound with the poor porting job they did.eh at least it was a bundle i bought at target for assassins creed 1 and 2 both for 10$ in a bundle. Assassins creed 1 in dx10 mode surprisingly runs better with less random jumps then the 2nd one..... The majority of the time im in the 40's but it will jump down for no reason when in certain city's. I could put it on 800x600 with all settings low and everything high on 1280x1024 and get the same fps must be cpu bottle necking eh.Also was reading around in google and that it like utilizes 1 or 2 cores out of my 4 cores and that usually overclocking the cpu helps with the stutter and sudden fps jumps Hate when games are ported badly, I mean I totally pass the recommend hardware requirement by a long jump The cpu they recommend is a Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ and the gpu is Radeon HD 3870 to max this game without problems and yet i have problems

The score i was given>

 

[smarteyeball]

It tends to dip when panning, but it should be running better than that.

At those low resolutions the CPU is doing most of the work.

 

[M1GU31]

Excuse for not knowing the term but what does the term panning mean and yeah it should run better idk whats wrong it has been annoying me for the past week.

 

[smarteyeball]

Panning is basically 'looking around'. ie You're at the top of a building and you look left to right etc.

The frame rate dips because it's drawing Polygons, applying textures etc.

When you're frame rate dips, is it only while moving or does it still occur when the character is just standing still.

 

[M1GU31]

just standing when i'm near say like a certain part of a town in the game were there's some peds soliciting, happens once in a while. Don't know if I'm getting memory leaks or what it could be or it's just the game bottle necking my cpu at certain times. It will normalize if i get off the top building were i'm staring at them and go down next to them somtimes.

 

[smarteyeball]

More peds, more things being 'drawn', more calculations. Things 'settle down' once in the buffer and/or the CPU doesn't have to calculate as much.

It is most likely the CPU bottlenecking since the GPU really only starts working hard at 1680x1050 and above.

I can't recall which settings AC2 has and which have the biggest impact on CPU workload. And if iirc, the game doesn't really utilize more than two cores that much. (it's been a while since I played it)

Have a look at the tweak guide for the first Assassins Creed. There shouldn't be a vast difference in tweakability between that and the Second game.

 

[M1GU31]

yeah I looked at the guide and it's good and all but assassins creed 2 has a bit of a different code and with a lot less options unfortunately. Anyways I think I would have to clock my cpu a bit but not totally sure how to approach it ,think il'l have to live with it until either 1 i get a new cpu or 2 i oc it a bit once I learn more about how to do it. As you can see it's really different now but works with my assassins creed 1 install which seems to be less buggy then the 2nd one which seems to be more console like sadly.Also hate how it's not taking advantage of all my 4 cores and seems to really only use the first 2 cores which i'm going to test out and see how much usage is being used when that happens by leaving task manger open then alt tabbing to see what it does because i'm 100% sure it's not my gpu since i can play bfbc2 on dx11 at 80fps with max settings and uses all my 4 cores.

EDIT: Seems installing process lasso free version seems to help and get rid of most of the stutter got it as a recommendation from a friend of mine to give it high priority automatically by letting process lasso handle the cpu usage of my system,still happens a times but not as often now.
process lasso reports i'm using around 30% of cpu usage might be a bit more since i alt tabed but runs better but like i said it's still kind of there just not as noticeable now.

 

[smarteyeball]

If you're running the AA at x8, knock it down to x4 or even x2. There's bugger all noticeable difference between x4 an x8 on 1080P anyway.

PostFX also chews up a fair bit of CPU usage.

You've 64 processes running - maybe one or more of them are chewing up cycles. Without a full view of all of them it's hard to say which you cull safely, but there's bound to be a few 'unnecessary' background processes running.

As fot the core usage, the game simply wasn't coded to take advantage of more than two cores, unlike BF2BC etc You could try setting the affinity in TM to 'force it' to try and use more than two cores. It works with some games.


Unfortunately Overclocking AMD's isn't my strong point, so I'd suggest reading some guides/posts with others who have the same/similar chip. Perhaps start a thread in the overclock section.

If I come across a good guide in the meantime, I'll post it here.

 

[M1GU31]

The thing is no matter what settings or resolution i run it at I get the same fps. running it on 1280x1024 on my monitor atm and tried it all low at 800x600 and the fps were the same as the game maxed at 1280x1024 so it has to be the cpu bottle necking

Anyways these are the process's that task manger shows running that you asked to see

 

[smarteyeball]

The thing is no matter what settings or resolution i run it at I get the same fps. running it on 1280x1024 on my monitor atm and tried it all low at 800x600 and the fps were the same as the game maxed at 1280x1024 so it has to be the cpu bottle necking

As already mentioned, the vast majority of the workload is CPU bound until resolutions of 1680x1050 and above. At 1680x1050 is when the GPU really starts to take over the brunt of the work.

While the GPU is still doing a bit of work, there will be no major difference between 800x600 and 120x1024 since you are still CPU bound and thus, CPU bottlenecked.

Anyways these are the process's that task manger shows running that you asked to see

Thanks for those.

Try disabling Spybot (if it's running in 'realtime protection mode')

Sometimes these av/malware realtime protection modes can chew up CPU cycles and cause in-game slowdowns. MSE is fine though.

Also, you can cull any Apple service from startup using msconfig

Ie AppleMobileDeviceService.exe, mDNSResponder.exe

(itunes will still work, you just don't need the process running all the time)

You also disable xfire from running at startup.

Disable MDM.exe (debugger) when you're playing to see if it has an impact.

 

[M1GU31]

okay I disabled the services you suggested to disable and surprisingly I get less dips. Dips only to 30 now and have a average of low 40's and high 30's in fps now thanks. Also O.C to 3.4GHz from 3.1GHz prior which helped some what and my temps are normal and tested it a bit and seems really stable at 30c idle and 47c under load. Again thanks.

 

[smarteyeball]

Good to hear mate - between the CPU OC and one of those processes it sounds like you're getting the right performance for your machine now