Slight pauses every 10 seconds or so

[OvermindDL1]

Every once in a while, playing 1.3 pb (or latest) I get a pause.  Example, as you can see by this picture, I get on average about 400fps while looking at a base, and about 500 looking at a landscape, but every ten seconds or so it drops to about 2fps, it only does this in some select maps, still isolating (do not play much) which ones, but does anyone else experience this?

[Bull Dog]

You must be playing on a LCD monitor.  Me thinks a crt would be having massive tearing problems.

[OvermindDL1]

Yes its an old lcd, but the purpose of this post was not fps.

[Fonbu]

Hi I find playing with Vsync turned on makes it alot smoother gameplay.

[OvermindDL1]

VSync only sets a max refresh rate (to the monitor vertical frequency to be exact).  I usually play with it on, I forced it off to see what my fps were, didn't help/hurt the freezing, that seems to be CPU based freezing...

[Bull Dog]

These are just pure suggestions.  First are there any programs running the background that could be causing problems.  Loading up the Task Manager and keeping a history of the CPU usage while the CPU is idle may indicate something is amiss.

If you do see spikes in the CPU usage while the System is idle.  Then try to track down which program in the Processes tab.

Well I hope I haven't Insulted your intelligence or anything.....you are one brainy guy.  

[Red Devil]

Do you have those options set in gameprefs that give extra time to the cpu for calls from other progs?

[Spacecomber]

This is a wild shot in the dark, but are you running an Athlon 64 with Cool 'n Quiet enabled?

Or, are you running a Prescott Pentium 4, which has built in thermal throttling?

[Bull Dog]

Well I do know for a fact that Overmind has a AMD64.  But about the Cool and Quite tech I dunno.

[OvermindDL1]

No cool and quiet, and it does not do it on all levels.  Heck, I play HL2 at max quality with never a slowdown, so I do not think this would be a problem for BZ2...

[technoid]

OM, you stated that you're seeing the pauses in 1.3pb.... is it also happening in 1.2?  Also, is this in SP/IA or in MP?

[DarkFox]

Is your CDdrive empty?

[OvermindDL1]

Don't recall in 1.2, have not done it in far too long, and things have been and have not been in the cd drive, it never spins up when something is in, so I doubt it is cd tracks or whatnot...  This is BZ2...

[technoid]

Again, I ask... is this happening in SP/IA or in MP... or both?  
Please list the suspect maps as well, if you can remember.

[Avatar]

The COW map shows a similar issue.

I believe it's because of the high number of ships embedded in the map.  BZ2 seems to "run through the list" of objects every so often and if that list is long it can show up as a pause.

OTOH I've also had things like that happen with long view distance maps without fog, like the COW map.  (no fog on the moon).  This could also be texture dependant...

I used to get a 'pulse' every few seconds that was caused by my cheap sound card (and equally cheap drivers).  It disappeared when I switched to an SBLive card.  When I had it I noticed it most on Bridges for some reason...

That's all I can think of to check...

-Av-