Loading times and late game performance.

[steevodeevo]

Hi folks.

I've started to become very aware of degrading loading times (minutes) for scenarios, after you have completed a previous scenario in the same session and late game animation stuttering. I can't say preciseceley what release version this relates to or why I started to notice it recently, but loading of the next scenario (not so much standard turns) is taking around 4 to 5 minutes on my PC and if I play for several hours, the animations begin to stutter badly and, at its worst the destruction of a unit including the sounds, stalls completely and then the graphic and sound (explosion) eventually catch up after up to 20-30 seconds.

I'm no computer techie, but this feels like a memory issue and the progressive slow down seems like what others who know better than me call a memory leak.

I shouldn't have an issue running the game at highest settings on my Windows 10 PC, 64bit, up to date drivers, 16 GIG memory and NVidea GTX-760

Hi, DX file now attached, I knew I shoudl have attached it, just being lazy. Thanks for taking a look.

[zakblood]

as hardly anyone else has mentioned it, lets take a look all the same,

How to get a DirectX Diagnostic file:

1. click on "START"
2. click "run"
3. type in "dxdiag" and click "OK"
4. check through the tabs and perform all tests
5. click "Save all Information..." and save the text file to a location of your choice

We prefer that DxDiag files be posted as message attachments rather than pasted into the body of the post.

once the report has been made, just attach it to your post with first adding the file to a zip, which is then permitted to attach to the forum

as it maybe something that stands out, or just that you have to much loaded in the startup etc and have less resources free etc, as on a clean boot, for me it's a very small footprint and hardly uses much at all tbh, with a lot less pc used,...

[steevodeevo]

Not sure this was noticed as I edited and attached DXDiag to my original post. So this is a bit of a bump.

[zakblood]

sounds drivers are 2 years out of date, so if you can still get a more up to date version which supports win 10 etc, it may help

UTCCaptureV1

seems to be the error, so what capture software hardware are you using? and again make sure it's windows 10 compatible etc

[steevodeevo]

sounds drivers are 2 years out of date, so if you can still get a more up to date version which supports win 10 etc, it may help

UTCCaptureV1

seems to be the error, so what capture software hardware are you using? and again make sure it's windows 10 compatible etc

It's complicated!...

My HP computer is around 4-5 years old, the sound is on the MB, i,e, I don't have a separate sound card, and my sound has been flaky since Win 10. I can't update my IDT High Definition Audio CODEC beyond 2015 unless I install generic Microsoft Non-IDT High Definition Audio CODEC's but when I do that I have all sorts of problems, either headphones don't work at expense of speakers or vice versa, or indeed both get messed up.

I periodically run Microsoft Update, and it says my drivers are up to date. I also own Driver Easy Pro, which installs the IDT High Definition Audio CODECs from 2015 every time I delete the drivers and try a fresh install. Microsoft installs IDT High Definition Audio CODEC drivers from 2013 on a fresh re-install!

As for the UTCCaptureV1 I have no idea what that is. Is it a video player from Microsoft to run the video in games or a video capture app for blogging gameplay footage? If it's the latter I am unaware that I have such an app installed, at least intentionally.

I have surfed the net for 'UTCCapture' and it would seem that quite a lot of people are getting errors or crashes which reference 'UTCCapture', however I am not reading any solutions, or indeed what the root cause of the problem is. I was interested in your comments on UTCCapture, as my Panzerkreig intro video is also very stuttery and I can't seem to fix it.

Intriguingly I have re-run my DXDiag again today and I can't find any reference to an error related to UTCCaptureV1! To my knowledge I haven;t changed my config or installed progs at all since I ran the DX Diag I sent to you... The plot thickens.

[zakblood]

if it was a memory leak as such, many others would be reporting the same issues, or similar ones etc and as of yet, for me it's how the sound issues your having is part of the problem, it maybe how the setup works over time, and doesn't empty the sound files correctly, regarding the UTCCaptureV1 error, it was mentioned more than a few times in the report, and a few searches online with games gave the same error with sound, it's either hardware or software on your end, than either needs updated win 10 drivers or disabling etc, then can at least see if it is the error etc, but from this end, without more coming forward with the same error, it all points to your end i'm sorry to say atm.

as it's a nvidia card, do you use Nvidia Shadowplay? either now or in the past on the pc, as the error comes with recording software running and giving errors with win 10 and games recording etc

[steevodeevo]

Hi Zak,
I've checked, I have used Nvidia Geforce Experience in the past, but not recently. Ive determined that it isn't starting up in the background, so I don't think it's that.
I have been using the recent Microsoft Game Mode on most of my games, as Microsoft claim it makes games more efficient, I believe this has an option to record video of game play, but this is an an optional setting and I'm pretty sure I didn't have it set to on.
I have disabled Microsoft Game mode for now to see what happens.

I have also read that Microsoft's November/ December Creator update has created a lot of sound driver issues. On messing around with mine over recent days I've had a lot of trouble getting drivers to be recognised and function properly and ive managed to disable the headphones cutting off the speaker sounds and can't get it back as of yet

[robertahyuk]

NVIDIA Shadowplay will cause some of these problems. I always make sure it is off. I do use GeForce Experience for screenshot with no problems. However, my unit is only six months old and I can just go to Realtek and update the sound drivers when needed and they haven't. I finished the game after that massive tank battle and came away with a victory.
NVIDIA Geforce Experience is always notifying me of driver updates, so I prefer using it. I've had no problem with loading or any lagging. I also had no sound driver issues after the Fall Creators update.
Sounds to me like something in your unit itself as I haven't seen anyone else with this problem.
Good Luck!

[zakblood]

Microsoft Game Mode imo should be disabled for almost all games, as it doesn't always fully get coded or supported by almost anyone atm, so for me it's something i just turn off from the start as per all my guides on any given game on test

game bar.jpg (185.52 KiB) Viewed 3942 times

[robertahyuk]

Microsoft Game Mode imo should be disabled for almost all games, as it doesn't always fully get coded or supported by almost anyone atm, so for me it's something i just turn off from the start as per all my guides on any given game on test

game bar.jpg

I agree Zak! I never use it at all. Personally? I think it's worthless. With a good NVIDIA graphics card? No need for it and Realtek for sound is pretty easy to update the drivers right from their site.

[steevodeevo]

I think im going to have to bhite the bullet and open the case and see if ive got room for a separate sound card. Realtek sounds ok, other manufacturers seem to be tardy with win 10 drivers and have some issues with Win 10, even Creative from what ive read.

[robertahyuk]

I think im going to have to bhite the bullet and open the case and see if ive got room for a separate sound card. Realtek sounds ok, other manufacturers seem to be tardy with win 10 drivers and have some issues with Win 10, even Creative from what ive read.

Realtek is a good sound system and I've never had any problems with it. Easy to update but it's rarely needed. Hope you can get an NVIDIA card for your system as you'll love it! Makes these games come alive!

[steevodeevo]

The strangest darn thing... I've finally got my headphones to kick-in again and mute the speakers when I insert the headphone jack into the front socket after almost 2 days trying to get my sound back to normal.

All this drama occurred after I made the fatal mistake of trying to mess with the sound drivers to perhaps resolve the stutter and load time issues. Ive loaded all sorts of legacy and latest drivers from IDT and Windows, researched everywhere on line and the ONLY way I can get my phones and speakers to cut in and out as they're supposed to is with this bizarre set up:

sound-issue-drivers.jpg (116.83 KiB) Viewed 3840 times

I'm not entirely sure what's going on here, or whether Device Manager is reporting properly, but this I've tested and re-tested and this is consistently what the driver arrangement has to look like in order for everything to work as it should.
To my technically illiterate eyes this seems to be reporting that I have September 2017 drivers provided/validated by Windows 10 for the speaker and headphones 'outputs' and a 2015 set of IDT drivers for the actual sound hardware. That said, I don't believe there are separate drivers for the audio outputs and the audio hardware.. it may be just that I have to fool Windows into thinking this to get things to work... Go figure..

This is the only way that headphones can be recognised as actual headphones and set as the default device and kick in and mute speakers when selected.. If not configured this way then when you open Sound->Playback Devices, the headphones are either missing altogether or only selectable as the 'default communication device' and hence can not be set as the 'default device' (audio) in Windows 10.

I'm guessing here, but it seems that if Windows doesn't consider my hardware audio drivers to be the Windows/windows validated 2017 drivers, then they are considered generic/unknown drivers and Windows won't allow me to make the headphones the default device. However, the sound hardware itself will not install the actual Windows September 2017 Drivers, even Driver Easy, my faithful Driver management tool, considers the manufacturer's (IDT) drivers from 2015 as the right ones and its' correct, no others will load other than earlier IDT drivers, which are even more finicky with Win 10 than the 2015 ones..

The real irritation is that when I roll back the hardware drivers to the IDT 2015 drivers and accept the system restart, 99 times out of 100 it applies the 2015 drivers to the speakers and headphones and I'm back to square one with the default device/cut out issues.
- above no longer accurate grrrr! I thought I had it figured!! This time I managed to get 2015 drivers matching on hardware and output devices and I can cut out the speakers when I connect the headphones jack.. its clearly sound hardware drivers and compatibility issues with Win 10 at the root however.

So it would appear I'm stuck with applying 2015 drivers on the hardware and use an as an yet not fully understood trial and error method to get Windows to allow me to manage the output devices driven by these legacy drivers to work ok.