T_Immortalus

I definitely vote for overheating. I have a laptop that I had to replace with a desktop for gaming because all the overheating kept forcing me to reduce the graphics settings until ti couldn't even play well at minimum.

The effect of overheating gets exponentially worse over time. Once the system has wear and tear it will perform worse at all levels. Reducing it little by little doesn't actually reduce the load int hat case. The card is still maxed out at the new settings because wear and tear has reduced its specs.

A whole computer can eb affected int eh same way.


If this is a laptop, I would say to replace it. If it's a desktop you'll just need to upgrade the hardware that has suffered the wear to new undamaged models more suitable for your usage.

You only need dual SLI for physX, actually not even SLI.
You just need 2 Nvidia cards, or a hack with an ATI main card and Nvidia second card.

One card can be set as the dedicated physX unit. You only need SLI if you're setting it up to share graphics power.


Good to know why it's grayed out though, thanks.

Occlusion doesn't play nice with FSAA I believe. I read this in MaximumPC.
I also think shadows may not play nice with occlusion as well.
I believe it best to just disable occlusion as I've never enabled it(based on MaximumPC's info) and very rarely crashed.

I don't know what caused my crashes, but they were so very rare and not very abd so I don't worry abotut hem. I haven't had one for a couple weeks now I think.

Yeah, I'm guessing he doesn't even know his desktop is really set at 1024x768. That's the only way I can think of the UI scale being limited to 1024x512 and the obvious scalign issue he experiences in full screen.


The monitor's native resolution may be 1920x1080, but someone has to manually set it to that when everything is first installed and sometimes when the graphics driver is updated.

If you don't manually set it then the monitor will display the absolute minimum resolution.
That is that way to ensure it doesn't fry an integrated graphics chip or very underpowered graphics card when starting up.



Edit:
I know this because I recently built a new computer with a native 1920x1080 monitor and had to do this myself.


Edit 2:
1024x512 would actually be a 2:1 ratio!?! I've never known any monitor or TV or anything to be at a ratio like that.
I bet it is still 1024x768 windowed mode to get something like that.

/facepalm
No wonder I'm only at 30 fps in Praetoria. I have vertical sync on. :P

I'll let you know how the change affects it in windowed mode for me with an edit shortly.



Edit:
Ok, I now get 40-50fps even in the heart of nova praetoria, but my frame rate shoots up way past 60 most anywhere else. Is there a way to limit the frame rate to 60 max so my graphics don't kill themselves trying to push to infinity?


Edit 2:
I foudn out in another thread that the /maxfps 60 command will do limit it while keeping the benefits. I'm happy now.

Be careful just assuming Je knows what is best. She does make a couple questionable statements in that post for one.

1) The GTX 460 obviously only competes with the ATI mid-range cards because it is a mid-range card. You can't expect a mid-range card to compete with a high end card very much if at all.

2) You can get the GTX 465 for cheaper than the $230 she says fr the 460 by going to Newegg.com and waiting for a sale. I got a 465 for $212.49, one of the ones that can be unlocked(voiding the warranty) into a 470. They had another sale within 2 weeks of the one I bought that had the same card at $215. Both were from PNY.

3) EVGA and XFX are not the only quality manufacturers of Nvidia cards as Je seems to think. XFX is practically abandoning producing Nvidia cards in favor of ATI now.
I've found PNY cards to be just as reliable and feature rich with nice additions on the CD and download offers for less price.
I actually took a PNY GeForceFX 5600 in my old computer when I first built it and forgot to plug int he extra power cable. I proceeded to do so while the comuter was running which caused an immediate reboot and sounded like it shorted out. The card was completely fine and still runs well to this day after 7+ years.

PNY are very reliable and a great price.




Go with the PNY GTX 465.

I just went with getting an 80+ certified PSU and multiplying the wattage by 80% to make sure it was over the minimum the card needs. That actually got me a PSU capable on running 2 of the GTX 465s if I ever add another.

The 465 is better than the 460, with the same benefits of the newer design, and ratehr closely priced too.

I got a PNY GTX 465 for $212.49 less than 2 months ago on a great sale from newegg after only spending a week shopping around and waiting for a deal.

Deals are common there, the brand is great(proven by previous mishandling of a PNY card that worked perfectly even after my error) and the 465 with 1GB ram is plenty powerful to run even Praetoria at 30 fps int he most populated busy areas with everything maxed in windowed mode with Aero Glass still enabled in Windows 7 64bit.

EVGA shipped me a dead motherboard when I purchased from them so I'm glad I didn't buy their graphics card. It may have been bad too, and it took forever to get my refund with the people not knowing what happened to it when I called.




Edit:
The GTX 465 recommends a 550 watt power supply and 2 of them needs a 750 watt PSU, fyi.

I agree about defense, which is why my build has 45.2 to ranged, melee and AoE ALL plus at least 15.6% resistance and almost 300% regen and 130% +hp.

It's a beast.


Quick link for Mid's for those curious:
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.803
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Focused accuracy is toggled off because the proc skews the numbers higher than they would be, but you can toggle it on there to see the endurance drain and about what the buffs do.
Hit the "view totals" button for all totals.

1) What's the RWZ challenge?

2) "Leave or I'll call the brute squad!"
"I'm on the brute squad."
"You are the brute squad!"
:P

3) I find it a buff to fury that helps immensely since I've never really been able to maintain fury very high for very long. I haven't had a very expensive build before though.

I've had that issue somewhere before. I think it was either a problem with NoScript blocking essential items on the site to stay logged in or cookies and temporary files being erased prematurely as well as losing connection tot eh server for the sight for a second.

1) I'm a little confused about "based on the original resistance" because defense debuff resistance is not debuffed, just defense.
Both mitigation types will feel the bite of defense debuffs as I think you can go below 0% defense in the calculations the game uses, but I'm not sure.

2) Resistance is almost guaranteed to get hit by defense debuffs which will make them almost guaranteed to get hit more often even if they had no defense buffs and the enemy had no to-hit buffs.
Defense buffs and debuffs and to-hit buffs and debuffs are easily interchangeable. A debuff to one can easily be considered an equal buff to the other.





Also, resistance sets may have defense debuff resistance(likely because of the cascading defense failures), but defense sets almsot always have much more resistance to said debuffs.

My shield build in the other thread actually has 54.7% defense debuff resistance in PVE and 84.7% in PVP.
That is much higher than any resistance set can get and not far behind the king of DDR, super reflexes.

I have to disagree with this point since getting Mid's and making a very respectable couple kn/shield builds.

I will admit that it is easier to find defense set bonuses, but I counter that shield defense(and low health super reflexes or widows even more) have very respectable resistance behind their capped defense.

My second posted build, in the thread I made in this same forum, has at least 15.6% resistance to all but psionic on top of capped defense to ALL positions, also fairly high regen and health.




I continue to say they are all better with a mix, but I find survivability to be much better with an emphasis on defense with resistance and everything else secondary than resistance at the forefront.

I think this is because defense is the first line of defense. You don't need the other mitigation types at all if the attack doesn't hit at all.

I don't really need Aero Glass, and it's not really that fancy that I even really want to keep it, so how do I disable it at all times, not just while playing CoH?


Edit:
I think I found it. If it doesn't improve performance in windowed mode in Praetoria(the only real place other than special events that even pushes this beast) then I'll re-enable them because they're nice to have on.


Edit 2:
Disabling the Aero features had no effect on my performance with my GTX 465, 8GB of system ram and i3-530.
I still get about 30 fps in the heart of Nova Praetoria at any time with shadows, reflections and water on high(4/5), occlusion off, FSAA and AF 2xs, particle physics to high and everything else maxed out at the windowed version of 1920x1080 resolution.

Is that good for windowed mode?

It does this for me on a completely new built computer too.

"This application si not compatible with (whatever it calls Aero)"

I solved the issue by accident when I switched to playing in windowed mode so I could switch to other applications while playing sometimes.

Sounds like the same situation with my lag that a complete restart of CoH or my entire system is needed to fix.

I'm thinking CoH isn't clearing temporary files or memory allocation like it should be.
I'm not that advanced a computer user, but it seems to make sense that it just builds up a clog of certain systems that only a restart that cuts power and wipes everything clean will fix , at least until it plugs everything up again.

I hope they fix that. It's a pain in the butt.

I've also noticed it in other areas of the screen though, not caused by pop help.



Either way, it's pretty darn dumb that we're not able to use a tray well on the side of the screen. I guess we're supposed to block our view of the game with it instead.

The streak breaker is a piece of crap then. This is not spelled out in plain obvious English in an easy to find source in game, and the accuracy of the attack shouldn't matter.
It should be simple enough to just count the number of misses, since its purpose was to prevent missing an inordinate amount of times.

I never knew how it really worked. I assumed, from what I heard about it maybe 2 years ago, that it was supposed to guarantee a hit after 3 misses at most.
That seemed simple enough and pretty good so I never data-mined the true behavior of it.
It's simple enough to code for that.

We can't even enhance veteran attacks for accuracy, and why have them if we're not going to use them because they screw us over?


This is one stupid mechanic that was supposed to help us but got so messed up it's useless.






Also, I keep reading all over the forums that npc enemies have a streak breaker effect too.

I really really hope they don't because that make defense sets utterly useless in my opinion. If they don't work as they are intended and as you expect because the npcs get a guaranteed hit then why bother with the misleading crap?



Why can't games be "simple to learn and hard to master" and simpler while being more fun?
I would love to have the UI simplicity of Halo or the ones I saw for DCUO in this game.
It would be great to be able to use a controller for all my powers instead of needing 3 or 4 bars of 10.






Edit:
I read farther into this thread.
That sucks that npcs get streak breaker. It should only affect player attacks so we have fun and don't feel so helpless in some situations. It's just frustratign when the npcs seem to get everything and us players get nerfed or screwed over because we used a veteran attack we can't slot.


Anyway, I hate missing or hitting randomly. It would be awesome if more games could go with actual aiming like fps games.
I guess we'll have to wait for that to become more common though.



Edit 2:
Sadly logging chat seems to cause a huge amount of unnecessary lag. I had it on for a while, but turned it off because of that.

Except that the goal of the "Save Black Panther 952!" mission is to kill the malta leader who spawns in the last ambush. You are forced to face the insanity.

It's definitely not fun at all. I hope to never ever get it again and will dismiss it and spend an hour searching for another tip if I have to.
I'm also tempted to ditch a couple other tip missions because of certain messes, like Master Illusionists and their literal army of pets that don't die with them.