Annoying problem with one game after upgrade

[MasterBlaster76]

I've recently upgraded to the specs shown in my sig - the only old component is the GPU - and I'm having an annoying problem with one particular game, as detailed below. I've asked the official forum, but no one there seems to be able to help:

I loaded up the game and it ran like crap - ten times worse than before my upgrade - so I decided to reinstall Windows; I had changed to a new motherboard after all. After that, the game ran as smooth as anything on pretty much maximum settings on 'Battle of Britain Day' mission. Then I tried to install some mods - and ever since then, the game is running like crap again. I tried reinstalling the game and v2.12/multiskin - no joy. What's going on here and how do I sort it out?

Incidentally, I also tried Cliffs of Dover and that ran well so I don't think there's anything wrong with the hardware.

Thanks in advance.

I tried defragging the drive where the game is installed, but that made no difference. I have also ensured that the motherboard's onboard GPU has been disabled in case that is causing the game to somehow use that instead of my 6850, but that made no difference (leaving it enabled made no difference either).

Here's something even more strange: when flying around, the game runs like crap but when you crash the plane and the view just spins round and round, it's as smooth as can be. That is the case whether there are two planes or a hundred in the sky. Same thing if you jump out.

I just want to find out why the game was running so beautifully and now it's running like crap! Other games are fine.

All other games are running far better than before. I hope my post doesn't sound like I'm ungrateful to all the help you guys have given, it's just I'm losing patience after having tried everything I can think of including reinstalling Windows again. I allowed it to do all the updates, including downloading ATI drivers and the game ran beautifully. Next time I ran the game, it's running like crap again - while games like RoF, CloD - hell even FSX are all running extremely decently (almost perfect in the case of RoF). The best I can get BoB 2 running consistently at the moment (after doing the procedure I listed a few posts back) is a running rate similar to what I got with my old Core 2 Quad specs - that's not really acceptable, is it?

The game in question is Battle of Britain 2 - Wings of Victory. It's a fairly old game now, which probably doesn't help but other people with similar specs to mine are not having this problem. Is it possible for a mobo/GPU combo to just not like a game for some reason?

 

[Abhas]

Try changing the AA, etc to see if the problem continues. Have you tried running the game on a lower quality setting?

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Try changing the AA, etc to see if the problem continues. Have you tried running the game on a lower quality setting?

Yep. I've tried it on absolute minimum settings, with just one plane sitting on the runway - no other planes in the mission and it still runs like crap. It didn't do that with my previous Core 2 Quad setup with just one plane on the runway.

As for AA, there is none set right now - it's set to trilinear filtering.

No one at the official forum seems able to explain this either:

Here's something even more strange: when flying around, the game runs like crap but when you crash the plane and the view just spins round and round, it's as smooth as can be. That is the case whether there are two planes or a hundred in the sky. Same thing if you bail out.

As I said, I've got other more graphically intense games like Rise of Flight running flawlessly on maximum settings! Even though this is an old game it's still by far the best representation of the Battle of Britain out there (Cliffs of Dover was a major disappointment for me) - BoB 2 was the game I was most looking forwards to playing after upgrading.

One thing the guys at the other forum said was that ATI is known to have issues with this game, but then again there are plenty other ATI owners playing it without any problems at all.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

It's sorted.

It was nothing to do with the card, or the drivers. It was the goddamn controls causing the problem. I swear to God I will never understand PCs!

Major breakthrough, guys!

I did as I said above, and the game runs perfectly (only vanilla, mind you - v2.12 is yet to be tested). Then I changed the controls to my flightstick and the game ran like crap again. Back to any other set of controls, flawless.

Huh?

Then I tried telling the game to run via mouse, but remapping the axis to the flighstick. Perfect gameplay - a solid 30fps minimum when flying right through a herd of German bombers. Hopefully I've now got this sorted out, and it very much looks like the issue wasn't with the drivers, but the controls for some insane reason!!

 

[Abhas]

Haha. Glad it's sorted out. Never would have figured out it's the controller messing things up

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Haha. Glad it's sorted out. Never would have figured out it's the controller messing things up

Nope, same here. It was a bit of luck to be honest - as well as a last throw of the dice on my account. I decided to reinstall the drivers and the game, so when I loaded up a flight and the game was running flawlessly, I believed that had done the job, but then when I remapped to my flightstick, the same terrible slowdown returned. So then I returned it to mouse as before, when I noticed even though mouse was set as the control method it was possible to remap the axis to the flightstick. I did that and hey presto... silky smooth Nazi blasting!

Thanks for your help mate.