FPS issue in Windowed Mode

[AcronShinra 60]

Does anyone know way(s) to force frame limiter on SC4 in Windowed Mode?

Seeing about 1000FPS in region view (measured with Fraps and Dxtory) and hearing GPU fans becoming Messerschmitt's rotor due to temperature of thousand of suns (+30 Celsius degrees outside doesn't help either) isn't most heart-warming thing to experience. I burned GPU once due to bugged frame limiter in my old MMO, so it left me quite paranoid. In city view however it limits me to 30 FPS until I try to scroll or move map, then FPS jumps like EKG of guy after heart attack.

I tried to limit frames in NVIDIA Inspector or to Force V-Sync via NVIDIA Driver Panel(wasn't surprised that it didn't work, V-Sync usually works only in FullScreen), trying to force frame limit through D3DOverrider also didn't worked. I got limit working thanks to Dxtory, but Dxtory has tendency to bug out game in many different ways under certain circumstances.

I know, I know game is old, but yeah if anyone has idea, feel free to post. Limiter works flawlessly in fullscreen mode, but I also has problems with fullscreen(messed up night time lightning, CPU usage higher than in Windowed Mode, and GPU usage almost non-existent, like game was forcing software rendering in fullscreen), but it is topic for another thread.

PC specs:

XP 32bit

Athlon 64 X2 5200+

GeForce 9800GT

4GB Ram

PS. Graphic driver settings are set on "controlled by application".

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Suggest you don't hang around in Region view.  I had no idea it did that, and there is probably no good reason for it.  The image is static until you choose to do some action.  I sure doesn't do it on my machine.  Did you try updating your driver?

 

EDIT: have you tried using a 64-bit decor Operating System.  There is no reason to cling to XP.

  Edited June 21, 2013 by A Nonny Moose  

[nakki 1]

I've been using EVGA Precision X with my Asus NVidia Geforce GTX 660 card and it works fine on windowed mode too. It propably works with any vendor's card and with other versions of nvidia series like 9800GT, atleast the frame limiter part of it. I don't know how it actually hooks itself to drivers or whatever, but you don't have to bother loading it every time you want use the limiter. Just adjust it once and it'll be there even after reboot, until you uninstall the program or update your display drivers after which you have to make the adjustment once again. Downloading it from EVGA's site requires registration but you can find legally distributed downloads elsewhere with quick google search.

 

[AcronShinra 60]

@Moose

I'll move to Win7 in near future but I can try SC4 on laptop. And yes, GFX driver up to date.

@nakki

EVGA+Riva works everywhere: Diablo3, Starcraft2, older titles Quake2, UT2004, both Fullscreen and Windowed Mode, it also works in SC4 in Fullscreen, but for strange reason it doesn't in Windowed Mode. On EVGA screen it does show 0FPS in Frame Target bar, like prog knows that sth is running, but can't intercept or detect correctly, and RIVA's FPS counter doesn't show up(yes I enabled in EVGA options to show Framerate in OSD). Have you changed any particular setting in RIVAStatistic for SC4 maybe? Messing around with them also didn't help.

Or is there sth unusual about -w switch in SC4 or just my system is screwed up.

Nevertheless, thx for input guys.

[nakki 1]

There was an option to not install Riva in EVGA installation pack (version 4.2.0) and I didn't install it because I also couldn't get FPS to show up in OSD when playing SC4 in windowed mode. I don't even have the framerate monitoring option in EVGA since I didn't install Riva. Instead I've been using Fraps to monitor the framerate and EVGA's limiter is clearly working without Riva. I haven't touched anything else in EVGA except enabled the Frame Rate Target option in main screen and set the adjustment bar to 60.

I'm loading SC4 with switches -CustomResolution:enabled -w -r1680x1050x32.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, I hope it worked.  I wonder what the big deal is with this frames per second business.  The graphics display in this program is 100% eye-candy as far as output is concerned.

[AcronShinra 60]

Update on my, now solved, problem.

After, finally, moving to Win7 64-bit EVGA is now limiting FPS in windowed mode as it should.