My combat replays are extremely slow on WinXp

[Beorne]

I don't think it is a bug because my friends do not have this problem. My PC is not too old (2 yrs) and has 2Gb of memory, I do not have vista and I don't experience big slowings on other applications.
When I come to a combat replay with more than some hundred of units the figthing almost stops down. I experience, in fast forward, about one spell per minute.

The curious thing is that if I repeatedly press 'f' of fast forward, switcxhing it on and off, I can accelerate a little the action, about one action per pressings if I click every other second. Very strange.

Some hints?
Thanks.

[Revolution]

Do you maybe have the battle graphics set to "Too High"? It literally is too high.

[NTJedi]

Hints:
1) Update the drivers for your graphics card
2) Use task manager to verify nothing else is maxing out your systems CPU or memory.
3) As a test try playing with anti-virus software disabled, if there's no noticeable change then switch it back on.
4) Lower the in-game settings... as mentioned earlier.


Workarounds:
Hit 'W' to remove background graphics which may speed up the combat.

[llamabeast]

I reckon updating drivers has to be the number one thing to do (as NTJedi has listed it, in fact).

[capnq]

NTJedi said: 4) Lower the in-game settings... as mentioned earlier.

On my system, lowering the resolution had the biggest effect.
Hit 'W' to remove background graphics which may speed up the combat.

"May" is a severe understatement. I toggle W to scroll around the battlefield, and have to pause the replay first to avoid missing things.

[Edi]

Make sure you turn grass off. If you're using the highest graphics setting, it draws every blade of grass for ten kilometers around in the screen, though you can't see them. You'd need a 8000x9000 monitor to see them, but they're there and each and every one of them is a separate object...

[Daynarr]

Actually Beorne, it would be best if you posted what graphic settings you use so we don't guess. It's probably the best way to get fastest and accurate solution.

[Beorne]

I have recently updated video drivers.
I have put all graphics quality settings on "medium", disabled grass, disabled battle music (but not sound), put dom3 on windowed mode.

[Daynarr]

Ok, try 2 things in this order and not necessarily at the same time.
First try going to full screen to see if it helps (alt+enter is fastest way). Means, go full screen and then start battle replay, not sure if it helps if you do it during battle replay.
Second thing to try is to disable light effects in video options. It has huge performance issues on some older video cards and it may give you much better performance if you disable it.

[Beorne]

It was the light effect.

PS: the ATI Radeon 9550 is a very old video card?

Thank you all very much!

[Daynarr]

Well, as far as ATI cards are concerned i used both ATI Radeon X800 GTO with 256 RAM and ATI Radeon X1650 with also 256 MB RAM. X800 struggled with light effects while my X1650 has no problems with it. I'm not really sure what or how old cards will work or not, but I guess all less then a year old cards should work with light effects with no problems.