Halo..


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I had a search here and i couldnt find anything under 'halo +performance' so i thought id have a quick post and see what other people are finding. I also just want to vent some frustration at gearbox/microsoft.

Now im not one to buy a game without reading reviews, but ive seen reviews of Halo on XBOX and i know how good it was supposed to be. I have waited with baited breath for a conversion, so getting it as a birthday gift was supposed to be a happy occasion. However its far from it.

Started up the game for the fist time, i had it on standard settings. 1024x768 etc...

Can anyone say sliiiiddddeeeee shoooooowww. The graphics actually, to my eyes, looked kind of poor. Nice lighting effects at times but the texture detail was very rough... something didnt seem to add up.....Low FPS... Average Graphics.... Hmmm. Playing though the first level of the game and if a lot happens on screen it becomes unplayable. Not that the average FPS is that high - it seems a little 'irritating' on the FPS front, even with VSYNC off.

I would like to think my machine is a little more towards the higher-end, i have an athlon xp like most folk but i have spent a lot of time tweaking my system to be a games machine. I think a 2.4Ghz AXP @ a FSB of over 400mhz should be enough for most games yeah? It would seem not, although its worrying that on the box it tells me that the min spec is 733Mhz.. :laugh: Yeah im sure. Id like to see that. Then we come to my graphics card, i bought a 9600PRO for its overclocking potential. I have it at 560Mhz Core, 353 (706)Mhz Memory. Im not trying to use AA or AF at all here, so id expect, with these specifications, to be able to get i dunno... Say more than 20fps @ 1024x768..... :unsure: I just feel really sorry for people that are using slower systems. If i had my old machine still i would be pretty :angry: right now after reading the specs. Im just trying to put in perspective the sheer cheak they have of putting 733mhz on the BOX..

Gearbox are lazy a***holes, may they rot in hell. :whistle: I just had to say that. ;)

It's GTA3 allover again (i fell for that one too :shifty: ), except 50,000 times worse.

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Tweak it a little. Change the video settings. Change some sound settings, as I heard some sound settings impact the video performance as well.

There are two tweak guides available. I'd like to post link to one, but it contains information about a No-CD crack, so I can't post that one. :blush:

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I had a little play around and adding '-use14' to force it to use Pixel Shader 1.4 instead of 2.0 seems to help things along a fair bit. Without it actually affecting the graphics (that i can see). But its still a bit 'choppy'. I will play around with it a bit more and try and find some tweak guides. :)

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hmmm what kind of vid card you got? i have the system in my specs 40 fps EAX sound 1024x768 and 2xaa and 16xaf

EDIT/ woops i didnt read you had the 9600 Pro

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I have a AthlonXP 1800+ and GeForce 4 ti4200, runs great here. I agree that the graphics aren't that great. This is with the demo though, I don't think I'm going to buy it.

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Your a rookie, don't blame Gearbox.

I have an Athlon Thunderbird 1.3 Ghz and a Geforce 2 Ti and it runs reasonably well (considering my specs) on my system.

Yea, I have a P3 1GHz and ATI Radeon 9000 PCI and around ~30 FPS usually. I consider this decent.

There are some places where it drops to 8-9 FPS (the 1st life beacon place on Halo in legendary mode, near the end of AOTCR, end of the level Maw)

P.S. I run 640x480 :o

Edited by OptiPlex
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Your a rookie, don't blame Gearbox.

I have an Athlon Thunderbird 1.3 Ghz and a Geforce 2 Ti and it runs reasonably well (considering my specs) on my system.

Get a clue. :rolleyes:

To the others that have posted, I have been looking round and it seems some people have good results, others dont. System specs seem varied. I'm not sure whats going on but @ 1024x768 (High Detail) i get at the most about 40fps (without the vsync). Looking at something like a tree gains me about 8fps. In combat it drops to 20's... Maybe i just expected too much, being used to properly coded games must have spoiled me ;)

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Your a rookie, don't blame Gearbox.

I have an Athlon Thunderbird 1.3 Ghz and a Geforce 2 Ti and it runs reasonably well (considering my specs) on my system.

Get a clue. :rolleyes:

Anyways to the others that have posted, I have been looking round and it seems some people have good results, others dont. I'm not sure whats going on but @ 1024x768 (High Detail) i get at the most about 40fps (without the vsync). Maybe i just expected too much, being used to properly coded games must have spoiled me ;)

lol

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I have a 1.4GHz athlon and a geforce 4 ti4400 and I run it fine at 1024x768 with everything on max without any noticible lag. I tend to put settings up to max on all games and somehow I always get away without lag. I bet that will change when half-life 2 comes out though.

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Sorry i edited my post to add a bit more detail.

But anyways, its not an inexpensive title. ?30 is a lot of dosh for a poorly ported game thats frustrating to play. I mean if the objective of the game is to monitor frame rates at variouslow quality> settings to get something half-playable - its a winner.;)) This kind of half-arsed conversion shouldnt be allowed, but they know we will fall for it every time. The inferior xbox hardware can handle this game as it was meant to be played @ 640x480 then todays hi-end PC's should have no excuse. Especially as the graphics havent really changed all that much. Considering how simular the XBOX hardware is to PC architecture a conversion should have been easy. I can only assume that the chimps at gearbox couldnt read the instruction manual for their development kits.

It's been interesting playing this alpha release... now when is the final code comming out? :shifty::

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Sorry i edited my post to add a bit more detail.

But anyways, its not an inexpensive title. ?30 is a lot of dosh for a poorly ported game thats frustrating to play. I mean if the objective of the game is to monitor frame rates at variouslow quality> settings to get something half-playable - its a winner.;)) This kind of half-arsed conversion shouldnt be allowed, but they know we will fall for it every time. The inferior xbox hardware can handle this game as it was meant to be played @ 640x480 then todays hi-end PC's should have no excuse. Especially as the graphics havent really changed all that much. Considering how simular the XBOX hardware is to PC architecture a conversion should have been easy. I can only assume that the chimps at gearbox couldnt read the instruction manual for their development kits.

It's been interesting playing this alpha release... now when is the final code comming out? :shifty::

Just played Halo at 1024x768 with all effects enabled and on high. No problems whatsoever. I use a Samsung LCD monitor and the Halo ingame refresh is at 72Hz at 1024x768.

Halo wasn't what it could've been on PC but I'm still happy I bought it. The multiplayer is a blast. The game isn't as polished as the xbox version, but I've seen much worse. As for the Xbox hardware being inferior, I beg to differ. On paper, its nothing compared to a modern day PC but it doesn't have to be. Play Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox and then tell me its not a capable machine. the benefit of closed hardware is that they can maximize the hardware's full potential. Instead of optimizing the performance of PC gfx cards, they just churn out another card. I swear, that its a scam between the game developers and gfx card makers. Developers make a unoptimized game runs like crap on a good computer, Nvidia and ATI get to make another gfx card to sell the masses. Conspiracy I tell ya!

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I tried it one my system it ran fine (athlon 2500 768 ram, 9600pro) i little sequences were chopy i think u just might have gotten hit with the for-no-reason-because-of-my-particular-setup-games-that-are-ported-dont-work-well bug. :D but i wouldnt blame the coders everyone else seems to have it working fine with decent specs. urs sound good prob a fluke.

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Get a clue. :rolleyes:

Your telling me to get a clue ? I know how to configure my system to run well so if anyone needs a clue it's you.

If this game can run well on such varied systems, both slower, similar, and faster than yours then it's apparent to me that it's a problem with your setup, not with Gearbox.

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Get a clue. :rolleyes:

Your telling me to get a clue ? I know how to configure my system to run well so if anyone needs a clue it's you.

If this game can run well on such varied systems, both slower, similar, and faster than yours then it's apparent to me that it's a problem with your setup, not with Gearbox.

I know how to configure my system :rolleyes: if you handent already noticed. Thats why i was concerned with the games performance. However as ive now read three reviews each commenting on the games apparent 'performance issue' im pretty sure its not an isolated issue. Im sure you didnt buy the game anyway, or you wouldnt be so lax about it. But for the people that have actually paid money they may feel a little cheated by gearbox.

The problem is not with my setup (which plays MOHAA,Q3 and anything else i throw at it fine) its with Gearbox's inempt ability to port a game from a console that so closley follows PC architecture and god damn it even uses DX. How simple is it?? You should read the interview with them on this issue posted on various sites anyway... its laughable.

Had i downloaded the demo, i wouldnt actually have paid good money for this. Its just feeding the companys that think they can get away with this sort of thing - and you being ignorant about it helps keep things as they are.

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I am relaxed :huh:. But im entitled to express an opinion on something you know. ;)

As for that jab about not being able to setup the game, well if you actually bothered to read what i said i mentioned that setting everything to 'Minimum' might be ok for some but im not even expecting AA here and the FPS it bad. Im not alone on this or i wouldnt have made such an abrubt statement to begin with.

I can get about 40fps out of it, but in 'intense' sequences its awful. The FPS drops below 30 and IMHO for a First Person Shooter thats just plain awful. My previous thinking was anything less than 60fps was bad for an intensive first person shooter but half-that.... <shakes head>. Oh well.

*edit* Incidentally i found a few guides around the web if anyones interested in the links. You know insurektion, for people that "dont know how to set up the game" ;) :rolleyes:.

http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/forums/show...sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Seems pretty decent. Just a shame such a thing is needed. :yes:

Edited by RobertH
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change your shaders

dx 9 compliant cards get bad scores because the 2.0 shader implimentation is bad, this is the one major addon wiht the PC version since the x-box cant do 2.0 shaders

change you shaders to 1.1 or 1.x and it'll be great, people with older cards wont have the problem because it will automatically use the older shader

this is what you need;

"Online gamers should know the following commands:

-use20

Without any -use command, Halo defaults to pixel shaders 2.0, provided your video card supports the feature. It?s an advanced technique for applying special effects to computer graphics at the pixel level, and no video card on the market does it very well. High-end Radeon cards out-perform their GeForce counterparts when using 2.0 pixel shaders. But to be quite frank, no one should use Halo?s pixel shaders 2.0, unless major performance enhancements are introduced in the near future.

-use14

Forces the game to use older and faster pixel shaders 1.4. You lose bump-mapped mirrored surfaces. Some effects are two-pass.

-use11

Best balance of performance and appearance. Forces the game to use older and faster pixel shaders 1.1. You lose bump-mapped mirrored surfaces, model self-illumination, animated light maps, and specular lights. Some effects are two-pass. Fog calculations are triangle-based instead of pixel-based.

-useff

For really old rigs. Turns off pixel shaders, looks pretty ugly. This may be faster for old video cards, but it is probably slower for modern ones. The ff stands for fixed function. It really does make Halo butt-ugly. No shadows, glows, or flares. Very basic fog, water, and lighting. The camouflage effect is simple and difficult to see. The only benefit I can think of is that it makes it easier to tell red and blue uniforms apart, because they become flat red and flat blue (not glossy or metallic)."

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