Seemingly unwarranted framing

I just recently installed CoX again, only to find that with the settings (especially texture) anywhere above medium, the framerate drops like a rock tied to a much larger rock. It seems to me I shouldn't have to lower the settings such on this game, given that mine is basically the mythical rig which could run Crysis on high.

Specs are: i7 920, Nvidia GTX 260, and 4 gigs of DDR3 (two of which are usable since I'm on windows 7 32 bit).

CoH Helper output is as follows:



---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.8---

DxDiag gathered at March 4, 2010 15:06 (-05:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 32-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.091207-1941)
System Manufacturer: OEM
System Model: OEM
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.7GHz
Memory: 4096MB
.Net Memory Report: 1201MB out of 2039MB available
Page File: 3292MB (2147MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST3500320AS ATA Device) 43914MB out of 476929MB (9%) free
E Drive: (LaCie d2 quadra USB Device) 17958MB out of 953867MB (1%) free
F Drive: (WD 10EADS External USB Device) 405201MB out of 953867MB (42%) free
D Drive: (TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223Q ATA Device) zero-size drive
G Drive: (ELBY CLONEDRIVE SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7600.16385 (32-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 260
Video Memory: 1644 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.11.9675
Driver Date: 2/22/2010 12:18:39 AM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (Creative SB Audigy 2 (WDM))
Driver File: ctaud2k.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.1371
Driver Date: 6/23/2009 1:36:24 PM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: EVGA
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: 132-BL-E758
Motherboard Version: Tylersburg
BIOS Manufacturer: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
BIOS Name: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
BIOS Version: ALWARE - 42302e31
BIOS Release: 20081205000000.000000+000

Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1664x972
3D Resolution: 1664x972 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: No
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: No

Physics Quality: None
Maximum Particles: 100
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No

Anti-aliasing: None
Anisotropic Filtering: None
Texture LOD Bias: Crisp
Water Effects: High Quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned off)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High

World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 0.860
Entity Detail Level: 1.680
Shadows Enabled: No
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: No
Suppression of Extra Player FX Enabled: No
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Compatiblity
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.000
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: Unknown bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1600.20100114.8T
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found


Anyone know what might be up?

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The first thing I notice is you've got basically no free space on your Hard Drives. Windows gets wonky with less than 20% of your Hard Drive space free. Remember, Windows was written at a time when Hard Drives were relatively small, so rather that look at the amount of Free Space in Bytes and decide if it had enough free space, many Windows routines were written to look at the % of Free Space in relation to the size of the drive. So, even if you have a 1 TB drive with 10% free space (100 GB free) Windows only looks at the percentage and several of those routines balk or have a problem since they are only seeing that the percentage is lower than what it likes. Yes, it's coding that needs to change, but Microsoft has nothing really pushing it to change this type of old coding. Meanwhile, it can cause issues.

Free up some space on C:, or better yet copy your game directory to a folder on your F: drive named CoHBackup, uninstall the game, start the reinstall and point it at F:\CoH and let it start to install then cancel it. At that point, copy the files from the F:\CoHBackup folder to the F:\CoH folder. You can then delete the F:\CoHBackup folder, and you'll have the game on a drive with enough free space. If your C: drive is still under 20%, it may still cause problems.

Another thing is that I see you have the 196.75 nVidia drivers. I've seen other problems where all they seemingly had in common was these drivers, and the problems only started after the patch on Tuesday so there "may" be some compatibility issues with those drivers and CoH. It might be worth it to go back to a previous driver version to see if that helps any.

A HiJackThis log would be helpful in seeing what else is going on with your system. There may be something that would show in that log that might point out the problem.

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If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.

Black Pebble is my new hero.

Huh. I never even thought that my lack of hard drive space might be an issue - definitely makes sense though. I'll try that and rolling back the drivers and return. Thanks!

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