# What makes a game "unoptimized"



## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

Recently I've heard alot of games being branded as unoptimised but I was wondering is there any reason behind it. Many people say crysis is unoptimised because even today it can't be run at completely full settings at 60fps.

I'd like to compile a list of genuinely unoptimised games that no matter what setting you have it on you don't get half decent frames per second. I'm meaning truly broken games that just crash, terrible frames per second no matter what kind of hardware you have.

So tell me games you think are unoptimised and I'l see if I can test them. In fact we can all test them together and compile the results to find games that are fecked.

I'd like to start with GTAIV. I will post the results of the ingame benchmark to see if the game is unoptimised.

*Broken games*
Empire Total War - Several patches later and still has random crashes
Fallout 3 - Suffers audio crashes
STALKER - Crashes. Resolved through patches.
Lock On Modern Air Combat - Crashes, Low FPS no matter what settings.
Resisent Evil 4 - No official mouse support, Low FPS, No settings, Problems with fullscreen.
Neverwinter Nights 2 - Very buggy, Improved with patches but not quite done, Performance issues.
ArmA - Crashes alot due to incompatibilities and some other random shit I couldn't begin to fathom
Sims 2 - Multiple patches later and there are still bugs, performance issue's with everything.
Sim City 4 - Game runs badly on hardware mode despite advanced gpu's. Performance issues.
Battlefield 2 - Do I need to say anything ... It crashes alot <- big understatement <- very big understatement


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## ShadowFold (Apr 27, 2009)

GTAIV and Crysis are about the only games I can't max*. Everquest 2 is one of the worst but it's playable with a really good CPU.

*Max for me is 1920x1080, all settings highest, AA isn't really needed but I like it.


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

ShadowFold said:


> GTAIV and Crysis are about the only games I can't max*. Everquest 2 is one of the worst but it's playable with a really good CPU.
> 
> *Max for me is 1920x1080, all settings highest, AA isn't really needed but I like it.



Usually I don't AA at 1920 x 1080 only if I have spare fps. Really though I was reading through forums and kept seeing cryostasis was unoptimised and I figured if we could get a list of games that are genuinely broken we'd be able to see if there was anyway to fix them. Most people on the internet don't know their system well so thats another reason why I made this thread.


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## Darknova (Apr 27, 2009)

Fallout 3. It's audio engine is a nightmare. 99% of all crashes are audio related. You have to piss around with codecs, exclusions etc. etc. etc.

I love the game, but it crashes so much...

What makes a game "unoptimized" is a game that has massive amounts of problems on a wide variety of hardware. IE memory leaks, audio problems, graphical issues across the board.


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## KainXS (Apr 27, 2009)

ShadowFold said:


> GTAIV and Crysis are about the only games I can't max*. Everquest 2 is one of the worst but it's playable with a really good CPU.
> 
> *Max for me is 1920x1080, all settings highest, AA isn't really needed but I like it.



did you try cryostasis yet, that game brings my GTX' 260s to their knees and bitchslaps em


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

Darknova said:


> Fallout 3. It's audio engine is a nightmare. 99% of all crashes are audio related. You have to piss around with codecs, exclusions etc. etc. etc.
> 
> I love the game, but it crashes so much...
> 
> What makes a game "unoptimized" is a game that has massive amounts of problems on a wide variety of hardware. IE memory leaks, audio problems, graphical issues across the board.



I should have mentioned that crashes etc cound as unoptimised. I'd stop calling it optimised and say it was broke. For example Empire total war one of my favourite games ever is truly fecked. Crashes all the time for no reason.


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## ShadowFold (Apr 27, 2009)

Yes Cryostasis is a pitiful POS. I can't get above 25FPS with everything on low at 1680x1050.


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

ShadowFold said:


> Yes Cryostasis is a pitiful POS. I can't get above 25FPS with everything on low at 1680x1050.



What if our graphics cards aren't capable of playing it maxed out.


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## RadeonX2 (Apr 27, 2009)

I agree on Cryostasis as a unoptimized game I've finished the game with struggle because of low FPS it dips below 20 to 10 FPS. The game isn't GFX intensive put Cryostasis in your #1 list. 

Also Saints Row 2, even with the new patch released the game still runs sh1t :shadedshu


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

Is there anyway to benchmark it ? I'm not going to put games on without evidence.


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## RadeonX2 (Apr 27, 2009)

no benchmark on Cryostasis but I can assure you it's worse than Saints Row 2.


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

RadeonX2 said:


> no benchmark on Cryostasis but I can assure you it's worse than Saints Row 2.



Okay well I'l try get a hold of cryostasis. I can't find saints row 2 anywhere but I'l try.


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## ShadowFold (Apr 27, 2009)

Saints Row 2 runs WAYY Better than Cryostasis
I get 50+ FPS on SR2


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## RadeonX2 (Apr 27, 2009)

Have anyone tried Necrovision? well its far better than Cryostasis Im just getting low FPS when shooting or being covered with enemies.



ShadowFold said:


> Saints Row 2 runs WAYY Better than Cryostasis
> I get 50+ FPS on SR2



no stutter or hdd load? it runs 20-30 FPS with blur off on mine.


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## Zehnsucht (Apr 27, 2009)

Guitar Hero 3 on PC. It works fine for me, but look at the recommended reqs:

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
    * Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHZ or AMD Athlon Dual Core 4400+
    * Video Card (ATI): Radeon HD 2600
    * Video Card (Nvidia): Geforce 8800 GT
    * 2 GB RAM


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

Zehnsucht said:


> Guitar Hero 3 on PC. It works fine for me, but look at the recommended reqs:
> 
> RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
> * Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHZ or AMD Athlon Dual Core 4400+
> ...



For a simple guitar game there is a lot of physics and crap involved in the background. Plus the models and their hair are quite hard to render apparently.


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## Mussels (Apr 27, 2009)

i'll give some examples.

Crysis: unoptimised because it takes a massive amount of hardware power to run the game smoothly. Even systems that CAN run it, often have trouble (excessive lag in the final level, or on snow levels). An optimised game doesnt have level design that doesnt play well with its own engine!

Supreme commander: The game itself is great, and runs on weak systems... but the AI is not. Even on my PC, running a large game with 2 AI's results in a massive reduction in game speed. Single core (and low end dual cores) basically cant play with AI's because the game slows down too much (This is NOT to be confused with FPS)

Optimised games: 
Left 4 dead. High end machines can max it out for great graphics, without any issue. Low end machines can simply turn settings down and have it run great too.

Unreal tournament games: as they each come out they take a beast to run on max, but they always worked well on older machines with settings turned down (and had a LOT of options to let you choose what to turn down)

summary: optimised games are ones that smoothly scale from weak PC's to fast ones. On weak machines it may look poor, but at least it RUNS good - while powerful machines can at least crank it up.

Crysis is a perfect example of failing there, because beast or netbox, its going to lag on you at certain stages of the game no matter what you do.


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## RadeonX2 (Apr 27, 2009)

Zehnsucht said:


> Guitar Hero 3 on PC. It works fine for me, but look at the recommended reqs:
> 
> RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
> * Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHZ or AMD Athlon Dual Core 4400+
> ...



put my videocard into your rig let's see if it works fine


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

@mussels 

With crysis though I think its a misconception between a high standard of graphics and playability. The game itself isn't broken but takes a couple GTX260's run at highest settings.

Assume for a moment an 8800GT is low end graphics. It can play it quite well at high 1680 x 1050 and all the way upto the top of the range gtx295 can play it max res at very high.


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## v12dock (Apr 27, 2009)

Need for speed undercover runs terrible, the patch helped a little though.
But Trackmania Nations runs amazing for how good it looks, and the biggest advantage is that it is free!


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## Mussels (Apr 27, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> @mussels
> 
> With crysis though I think its a misconception between a high standard of graphics and playability. The game itself isn't broken but takes a couple GTX260's run at highest settings.
> 
> Assume for a moment an 8800GT is low end graphics. It can play it quite well at high 1680 x 1050 and all the way upto the top of the range gtx295 can play it max res at very high.



8800GT is still on the upper side of "mid range"

I've played the game on  an 8600GT, 8800GTX, 4870 1GB and 4870 crossfire... and i can say this: the game takes a ridiculous shitload more power, for very little increase in visible quality.


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## silkstone (Apr 27, 2009)

I don't understand why everyone bitches about crysis. I played the game using a E2180 + 8500GT medium/high settings 1440x900 no problems whatsoever. Only reason i can see someone not being able to run crysis is if they have a sub 2ghz processor and/or sub 7500GT


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

Mussels said:


> 8800GT is still on the upper side of "mid range"
> 
> I've played the game on  an 8600GT, 8800GTX, 4870 1GB and 4870 crossfire... and i can say this: the game takes a ridiculous shitload more power, for very little increase in visible quality.



I said assume. It will be low range next series. I feel crysis played very well even on low end systems. I've completed it on a 3450 before all on low but hey thats what you get for a £20 card.

The point of this thread is to identify broken games that crash alot, lag no matter what the settings etc.


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## RadeonX2 (Apr 27, 2009)

v12dock said:


> Need for speed undercover runs terrible, the patch helped a little though.
> But Trackmania Nations runs amazing for how good it looks, and the biggest advantage is that it is free!



NFS UC runs great on my rig with the patch installed. I guess the patch did really help my stutter and slowdowns without the patch the car handling and stutter is a nightmare.

I think COD4 is currently the best looking and highly optimized FPS game as of date. Any1 agree?


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

my definition of unoptimised, if it is multiformat and it runs great on consoles but shit on pc its unoptimised
a type of classic example is resident evil 4
if its graphics are similar to other games but runs really bad compared to the other games its unoptimised

if for example its empire total war and it lags bad for no reason
if its gta 4 and the draw distance is killer
if its saints row 2 and at settings that look similar to the console it runs shit

crysis isnt unoptimised its just demanding looking at the detail no wonder you take a hit! nothing else is close to it in terms of graphics

sometimes a simple patch or update can solve issues

games full of bugs are unoptimised


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

Added a few to the list so far. Feel free to disagree


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## Mussels (Apr 27, 2009)

silkstone said:


> I don't understand why everyone bitches about crysis. I played the game using a E2180 + 8500GT medium/high settings 1440x900 no problems whatsoever. Only reason i can see someone not being able to run crysis is if they have a sub 2ghz processor and/or sub 7500GT



the problem is that you add a more powerful system than yours... and it just doesnt run any faster. an upgrade that would get you 20 FPS in any other game, gets you 2 FPS in crysis.

Cod4 is also a good, optimised game. It looks good, clean, pleasant graphics - and you can get 60FPS of a radeon x1600, which is antique these days


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

stalker was really bad at the start bugs and lag for no reason

yeah cod 4 runs good and looks good on low end hardware, steam games scale well too they dont need a lot of hardware to run

i think empires total war is more of a hardware issue it takes a lot of power to render those armies and graphics for each unit and the enviroment


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## farlex85 (Apr 27, 2009)

Mussels said:


> the problem is that you add a more powerful system than yours... and it just doesnt run any faster.



Yeah I think the thing w/ Crysis is there are always spots where it will bog down no matter how powerful your system and sometimes regardless of settings. It's uneven as you said before. Someone w/ an 8500gt is used to playing games w/o terribly high performance. Someone w/ top end hardware expects a different level of performance due to the way other games perform. Crysis just doesn't deliver on this front.


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

please add saints row 2 because it looks the same as the xbox 360 version but is not as fast
please add resident evil 4 it is a horrible pc port


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> stalker was really bad at the start bugs and lag for no reason
> 
> yeah cod 4 runs good and looks good on low end hardware, steam games scale well too they dont need a lot of hardware to run
> 
> i think empires total war is more of a hardware issue it takes a lot of power to render those armies and graphics for each unit and the enviroment



E:TW runs fine at max settings but it crashes on the campaign map all the time. Also crashes when you alt tab sometimes and if you leave it on a battle too long (paused) it crashes.


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## v12dock (Apr 27, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> stalker was really bad at the start bugs and lag for no reason
> 
> yeah cod 4 runs good and looks good on low end hardware, steam games scale well too they dont need a lot of hardware to run
> 
> i think empires total war is more of a hardware issue it takes a lot of power to render those armies and graphics for each unit and the enviroment



Your right now that I look at it steam games do run great minus GTA4 but, HL2, L4D, COD4


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

enemy territory runs horrible at times on campaign at at release it was bad on my 8800gt

yeah i mean games made by valve allways run good like counter strike source, team fortress 2 and left 4 dead


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> enemy territory runs horrible at times on campaign at at release it was bad on my 8800gt
> 
> yeah i mean games made by valve allways run good like counter strike source, team fortress 2 and left 4 dead



Enemy territory ran fine with me on my 8800GT. I can't add saints row because I'm not sure of whats actually wrong with it. I wouldn't mind some proof of somesort.


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

I dont know if it was patched later but it ran bad for me, saints row 2 is not as good as the console versions 

"That's not say that Saints Row 2 always looks bad, in fact, more often than not it looks good (shoot the four-car train with a rocket to see what I mean), it's just a bummer that as soon as the game is put in motion on the PC things turn to utter crap."

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/941/941952p3.html

the whole review explains it

EDIT: im more of a joystiq reader than IGN


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## pantherx12 (Apr 27, 2009)

Neverwinter Nights 2.

if I have all settings to high on 1400x900 I get 3 fps !

even at 1024x800 it runs at avg of 20 fps.(settings on medium)


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## Lillebror (Apr 27, 2009)

Why call it unoptimised? Thats just so wrong in so many ways! If its unoptimized, it would just run crappy and slow, not buggy. To optimize, you edit your code to make it run faster, not fix bugs in it.
Crysis and gta4 is not unoptimized, they just got to much content for this generation hardware to utilize.


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

Lillebror said:


> Why call it unoptimised? Thats just so wrong in so many ways! If its unoptimized, it would just run crappy and slow, not buggy. To optimize, you edit your code to make it run faster, not fix bugs in it.



I just called it that so other people can relate to it. I know the difference but others often don't. That's why I said in another post I'd prefer to call them broke instead of unoptimised.


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## Mussels (Apr 27, 2009)

Lillebror said:


> Why call it unoptimised? Thats just so wrong in so many ways! If its unoptimized, it would just run crappy and slow, not buggy. To optimize, you edit your code to make it run faster, not fix bugs in it.
> Crysis and gta4 is not unoptimized, they just got to much content for this generation hardware to utilize.



crysis is unoptimised, because as you increase the hardware power, the games performance doesnt increase with it. you double the power available, and the game will give you 20% higher FPS. THATS where the unoptimised comes in.

I saw the edits to teh first post, please... buggy and unoptimized aren't the same thing.


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

buggy and unoptimised are probly similar but different

unoptimised means it cant run on current hardware properly, it wont run good when it should


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## Mussels (Apr 27, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> unoptimised means it cant run on current hardware properly, it wont run good when it should



a good summary!

Fallout 3: for some people it crashes with certain soundcards/audio codecs (K-lite packs FFDshow screws with it, and some EAX emulators do), but once you get it working and meet the minimum requirements, its all good news. It ran sweet for me on an 8800GT, and on 4870 crossfire i jsut get to crank the distance sliders and AA up a bit further 

demanding? yes, on high settings. Unoptimised? no, because you can adjust settings to cover a very large range of hardware combinations (lots of settings to adjust, to lower either CPU, GPU, or memory requirements)

P.S - good thread. getting lots of posts and feedback here.


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## WhiteNoise (Apr 27, 2009)

All the games I have run on my currect PC but some should run a hell of a lot better than they do...Poorly optimized games that I have:

EverQuest 2
Armed Assault
Crysis

Thats all I can think of tbh. Fallout 3 runs awesome on my PC and so does just abouth everything else. I've never experienced any audio issues with FO3 either.


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## Mussels (Apr 27, 2009)

WhiteNoise said:


> All the games I have run on my currect PC but some should run a hell of a lot better than they do...Poorly optimized games that I have:
> 
> EverQuest 2
> Armed Assault
> ...



on my auzentech with the latest drivers, they added an "EAX" button to add EAX support to vista. if i tick that box, FO3 wont load. If i untick that box, it loads and works fine.

Its a perfect example of a bug that does not effect performance.


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

WhiteNoise said:


> All the games I have run on my currect PC but some should run a hell of a lot better than they do...Poorly optimized games that I have:
> 
> EverQuest 2
> Armed Assault
> ...



Armed assault lags badly because it has a very high quality AF. It gets even more demanding the higher the view distance which can be about 10'000 feet I believe. Also the physics are crazy as well.


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## WhiteNoise (Apr 27, 2009)

I don't really have any performance issues with Armed Assault. I play the game maxed out including view distance and it runs very good. My problem with AA is I have to run it in windowed mode or it doesn't work.


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## crtecha (Apr 27, 2009)

Right now Crysis is on my last nerve although im still trying to figure out the flickering sky issue.  Im going to try g_multigpu = 1 tonight to see if it helps.  I also heard that only 1 cf bridge will fix it too.  Kinda sounds like a load to me but Ill try anything.  All other games that I play I have no issues with left4dead,portal,quake III.  I havent installed any of my more labor intense games but thus far crysis is being a total bitch


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

Can't get cryostasis to go to 1920 x 1080. It locksup. 

I think armed assualt should go on that list because it still has random crashes or at least random to me they obviously have some logic causing the crash.


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## ArmoredCavalry (Apr 27, 2009)

Like you have already mentioned, Empire Total War is buggy/crashes.

For me I also have strange graphical glitches, that I do not get in any other games (weird shadows on the troops).

Another game that sticks out in my mind is Mercenaries 2. For the one day I played it, I couldn't help thinking how much it felt like a Beta.

I think the problem is, game companies want to put so much content into the game, but then set deadlines that are not realistic. This is why I hope that Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will be amazing, because Blizzard just says, "it is ready when it is ready".

Current examples of "well done/finished feel" games in my mind are H.A.W.X., and Demigod. However, both these have way less content than say, Empire Total War (at least imo).


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## imperialreign (Apr 27, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> stalker was really bad at the start bugs and lag for no reason



IDK about all that - the STALKER community has been able to nail down what causes the majority of lag with the vanilla SoC game . . . and given what the game engine is trying to handle, the amount of stuttering/lag inflicted on a system is generally the same no matter what the hardware - beefier/OCed systems aren't as afflicted.  It's not so much that the game isn't optimised . . . the engine is just trying to handle more than it should.


Clear Sky, though, definitely fits into the rank of unoptimised - the performance hits' are sporadic, entierelly dependant upon your hardware, and what DirectX render you're trying to run (e.g. DX8, DX10, DX10.1 run better than DX9).  The game still does not make proper use of multi-core systems, quad cores are the most affected by this issue.  Even with the latest patch, it's not unusual for quad core systems to only be running 50% load on only two cores.


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## MatTheCat (Apr 27, 2009)

An old one here that really gets my goat just how utterly pathetically it runs:

Gothic 2. With all settings turned up on my present rig, In out door areas I get around 17-25 FPS. This is a 7-8 year old game we are talking about here! 

Gothic 3 (But at least it runs a hell of a lot better (on my rig) than its predecessor....not even nearly as good a game though)

STALKER SoC. Not so much Frame Rate Drop as Microstutter that gives impression of 10FPS whenever around Fire.......Sound is also buggy as hell.

The Witcher... Considering that the graphics are not even that great (although definitely very pretty), I fail to see why this game increasingly lags and stutters around the way it does on my rig when you get towards the later levels.


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## KainXS (Apr 27, 2009)

I agree neverwinter nights 2 was a horribly horribly optimized game when the game came out NOTHING would max it, last card I played it, it still ran like crap.

and fallout 3 i don't know why but the fps always went from smooth(60) to 0 until it crashed wasteland, tried everthing, gave up and sold the game to a friend, had a 9800GTX when that happened too.


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## exon1 (Apr 27, 2009)

Has anyone ever played ARMA..?


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

exon1 said:


> Has anyone ever played ARMA..?



Yep like every day.


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## Black Panther (Apr 27, 2009)

Mussels said:


> a good summary!
> 
> Fallout 3: for some people it crashes with certain soundcards/audio codecs (K-lite packs FFDshow screws with it, and some EAX emulators do), but once you get it working and meet the minimum requirements, its all good news. It ran sweet for me on an 8800GT, and on 4870 crossfire i jsut get to crank the distance sliders and AA up a bit further
> 
> ...



I think FO3 is more buggy than unoptimized.
Runs fine on both my systems, despite having FFD show, despite one system being overclocked yet having dedicated soundcard, despite my other system having SLI and no dedicated sound card... Yet for some others, they have to disable FFDshow, or buy a soundcard, or disable SLI...

For me a game is unoptimized when it gives less fps or image quality than one would expect with one's hardware. 
On the other hand, a game is buggy when it performs well on one computer meeting the requirements, yet doesn't on another pc which also meets or exceeds the requirements.

Comparing Crysis with GTA4 - in my opinion Crysis is far more optimised than GTA4.
Haven't tried GTA on laptop, but on desktop I get a playable experience with Crysis and lovely graphics on high whereas on GTA4 I get crappy un-aliased graphics and flickering shadows which remind me of the quality of 10 year old games.
I suspect though that GTA4 needs processing power. I haven't played it since I got the E8400 @ 4Ghz but only with the E4300 @ 3Ghz, and I never tried it on the quad on laptop. 

Oblivion... for me that was unoptimised. It's long since I played it and I have never as yet on the laptop, but on my desktop with 8800GT and E4300 @ 3Ghz I used to get fps which would be maxed out at 60 and get sudden drops to 30 and back up. Now 30fps should be ok, but not when you have the jump 60-30-60 because that causes stutter. It'd be better for one to maintain a flat 35-40 fps rather than having enormous jumps (causing stuttering) in fps.

On the other hand, FO3 for me runs just fine on both pc's. I've read posts on Bethesda Forums from guys who have better hardware... and for whom the game doesn't even run. Which is weird, and definitely a case for saying that the game is buggy and not un-optimized.

Also, The Sims 2 is buggy.
I post regularly on TSR forums, where a lot of people just can't run the game without having it really slow... on a quad core! Their only solution would be to go in task manager to get game running on one core. 
On the other hand, I can run it on my laptop's quad with no problems...
Why should a game have problems on one quad and not another?


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

i was on campaign and playing for 2hrs then it just crashed and nothing had to restart, dont know why (empires total war)

im bumping up the gpu fan speed


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> i was on campaign and playing for 2hrs then it just crashed and nothing had to restart, dont know why (empires total war)
> 
> im bumping up the gpu fan speed



Try tickling its bollocks as well maybe it will play ball.

Cheers BP you reminded me about sims 2 and subsequently sim city 4. Those games lag like hell.


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

fuck lets be honest you wouldnt like it if you just played 2 hours of a game and were doing well in it
then all of that work was for nothing!


fuck this i might as well break out the old dreamcast and play some tony hawks pro skater 2!

i got a game for you far cry 1 remember how that was a bitch to play at release, i mean come on after the patches it was better but still


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> fuck lets be honest you wouldnt like it if you just played 2 hours of a game and were doing well in it
> then all of that work was for nothing!
> 
> 
> ...



I've worked on a campaign for 10 hours and its starting to crash  I'l get piccies of the great british empire.


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## v12dock (Apr 27, 2009)

Hellgate London, had to many problems with the game.....


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## ShogoXT (Apr 27, 2009)

A very good example of optimized games are anything on the Unreal 3 engine and Devil May Cry 4, a port done right! Cept for the max shadow setting, some slight banding there.


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## Polarman (Apr 27, 2009)

I usually stay away from unoptimized/broken games. I don't have most of the game on that list. Sims 2 does not give any problems btw.

It's true that many games come out unoptimized and/or broken even after a few patches. But i think there a lot more people that are using unoptimized PC's.


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## MilkyWay (Apr 27, 2009)

unreal engine 3 is excellent its coded properly and is designed to work perfect on consoles and pcs

see at first i thought my pc was at fault but the game runs smooth and decided to crap ot for no reason, lol when it ran not so smooth it was fine


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

I am going to throw myself from a building ... again. Very tense battle I was outnumbered against the polish it was 3-1 and I only had rookie inf, I was winning and it crashes  what a kick in the balls.


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## ShadowFold (Apr 27, 2009)

Unreal 3 is abysmal honestly. Almost no native AA support(not like it matters, the games run like shit either way), games that use it run like ass and I personally don't think PhysX is all that great of an engine.
It's meant for the console market, and it shows.


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## KainXS (Apr 27, 2009)

ShadowFold said:


> Unreal 3 is abysmal honestly. Almost no native AA support(not like it matters, the games run like shit either way), games that use it run like ass and I personally don't think PhysX is all that great of an engine.
> It's meant for the console market, and it shows.



but.  . . .  it works


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## DrPepper (Apr 27, 2009)

ShadowFold said:


> Unreal 3 is abysmal honestly. Almost no native AA support(not like it matters, the games run like shit either way), games that use it run like ass and I personally don't think PhysX is all that great of an engine.
> It's meant for the console market, and it shows.



UE3 has its ups and downs. Today I figured out physx is shite from playing cryostasis. Anyway On the console they mostly run fine but the games all look similar and not unique. That's a problem with the source engine as well. Usually bad ports for the pc on unreal engine suck but then you get a good one that looks good and runs okay but they don't have especially good graphics, It uses too much bloom and its either very dark or very bright. Compared to crysis etc UE3 doesn't even come near the quality.


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## FordGT90Concept (Apr 28, 2009)

The only game in recent memory I'd call unoptimize is Saints Row 2.  If you don't have a tri-core processor, don't even try to play it.


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## MadClown (Apr 28, 2009)

Fallout 3 has yet to crash on me, mabey i didnt play it long enough.

GTA 4 aint that bad compared to San Andreas when that came out.
Gears of War runs like butter.
All of the COD games are well optimized
Anything made by valve or using Valve's tech is 100% guaranteed to run at a million fps.
Far Cry 2 is a good example of how DX10 should be used, to bad it sucks.
Age of Empires 3 runs VERY good for how awesome it looks maxed out and how much shit can happen on screen.
Crysis is just too cool for us.
Anything from id is well optimized.
Now, Halo 2 is a mediocre port, shitty mouse support, bad scaling on lower hardware(not a prob for me lol) 360 buttons in place of kb buttons on the menus, poor netcode that was made with autoaim on the 360 controller in mind, i can go on.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. aint that bad, runs like orgasm on the dx8 renderer


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## ArmoredCavalry (Apr 28, 2009)

ShadowFold said:


> Unreal 3 is abysmal honestly. Almost no native AA support(not like it matters, the games run like shit either way), games that use it run like ass and I personally don't think PhysX is all that great of an engine.
> It's meant for the console market, and it shows.



Wait, what.... UT3 has always run amazingly well for me (if you don't count my old laptop with x1400)



MadClown said:


> All of the COD games are well optimized
> Anything made by valve or using Valve's tech is 100% guaranteed to run at a million fps.
> Far Cry 2 is a good example of how DX10 should be used, to bad it sucks.
> Age of Empires 3 runs VERY good for how awesome it looks maxed out and how much shit can happen on screen.



Yah, COD runs great, along with source engine games. Agree about FC2 (nice gfx and runs well, but gameplay sux big time)
Also, oddly enough AOE3 had a ton of stuttering for me, until I figured out I had to force Vsync off, and that it was ignoring the in game Vsync setting (go figure). Now I have no issues with it though, and it does look really nice (especially considering it is getting on in years).


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## EastCoasthandle (Apr 28, 2009)

What makes a game poorly optimized depends on how it's coded.  Take a look at this article some time ago regarding BF2.  



> It intrigued me why Intel CPUs have inferior performance in some games and in others they are on par with AMD.
> 
> Therefore, I have reverse-engineered Battlefield 2 game executable and come to the following conclusions:
> 
> ...




Times have changed since this article was written but the gist of it is simple; a game should fully utilize a cpu and all it has to offer.  The opposite end of the spectrum IMO is the release of a game called Ghost Busters which will utilize the CPU to do physics.

And lets not forget Quake 4 which came out with a patch (1.05 patch) to include Hyper-Threading improvements.  One of the 1st games I know of that did this successfully.  Although it took a few more patches to fix a few bugs.


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## sixor (Apr 28, 2009)

mercenaries 2, that crap is non optimezed like hell

also do not make me talk about matrix games, scarface, all nfs, tomb raider legend, gta san andreas

good games are, bioshock, ut3, gears of war, grid, pure, hl2


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## exon1 (Apr 28, 2009)

Gothic 3 pwns.






Srsly, the worst game ever.


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## Ongaku (Apr 28, 2009)

really? awww...

The Witcher before the Enhanced Edition patch was absolute crap...it took anywhere from 2-5 mins to load the next area back when I had 2 GB of RAM...played it with my 3.5GB and still....


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## DrPepper (Apr 28, 2009)

sixor said:


> mercenaries 2, that crap is non optimezed like hell
> 
> also do not make me talk about matrix games, scarface, all nfs, tomb raider legend, gta san andreas
> 
> good games are, bioshock, ut3, gears of war, grid, pure, hl2



Bioshock had a massive problem with amd cpu's and that you couldn't get past the first area also there was no talking or sound whatsoever. I don't know if it was a problem with AMD cpu's but when I changed my athlon for a q6600 it went away.


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## crtecha (Apr 28, 2009)

This is what i did to fix bioshock and the sound issue

http://doubleparity.net/2007/08/bioshock-no-sound


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## newtekie1 (Apr 28, 2009)

Most of the time, a person labels a game as "unoptimized" whenever their computer can't play it maxed out.  People expect every new game to run flawlessly on their hardware, even mid-range hardware.  And if it doesn't, the game gets labled as "unoptimized".

What they fail to realize is that lowering the settings in the game will give you just as playable results, that look just as good or better than some of the other games which they say are "optimized".

GTA:VI and Crysis are two examples.  On max settings, both games struggle to run on even high end hardware.  However, lowering the settings, even just to high in Crysis, give an enjoyable experience that runs fine on mid-range hardware.

People often say crap like "Well HL2 runs great maxed out on mid-range hardware, so crysis should too, that is why Crysis is unoptimized".  The problem with that statement is that HL2 maxed out looks like ass compared to Crysis maxed out.  Crysis on medium looks better than HL2 maxed out.


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## DrPepper (Apr 28, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Most of the time, a person labels a game as "unoptimized" whenever their computer can't play it maxed out.  People expect every new game to run flawlessly on their hardware, even mid-range hardware.  And if it doesn't, the game gets labled as "unoptimized".
> 
> What they fail to realize is that lowering the settings in the game will give you just as playable results, that look just as good or better than some of the other games which they say are "optimized".
> 
> ...



Thats the same opinion I have.


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## KainXS (Apr 29, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Most of the time, a person labels a game as "unoptimized" whenever their computer can't play it maxed out.  People expect every new game to run flawlessly on their hardware, even mid-range hardware.  And if it doesn't, the game gets labled as "unoptimized".
> 
> What they fail to realize is that lowering the settings in the game will give you just as playable results, that look just as good or better than some of the other games which they say are "optimized".
> 
> ...



you can't compare half life 2 to crysis performance wise, half life 2 will run on any decent card thats but its old.

I had a old radeon 1900GT that would max that game like it was nothing, but tis old now

even very low end hardware could max hl2


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## FordGT90Concept (Apr 29, 2009)

I don't call a game unoptimized unless it looks and runs like crap.  That is, there's no excuse for it to run slow but it still does.  Usually that's the result of being developed to run on a console and being poorly ported to PC (like Saints Row 2).  These types of games run miserably on PC and the only way to overcome it is to have the latest and greatest hardware (still runs like crap but at least playable).  Dreamfall: The Longest Journey also comes to mind.

Really, what's the difference between consolitis and unoptimized?  Unoptimized really had no relevance before consolitis.


At the same time, games like Crysis and GTA4 that have settings far beyond what modern hardware can handle also aren't "unoptimized."  The developers just thought ahead.  In Crysis' case, it was WAY ahead but ahead never the less.  They realized that people were whining about the WAY ahead features of Crysis and removed them in Crysis' sequel.


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## JC316 (Apr 29, 2009)

Unoptimized, see Ultima IX. The worst game ever made coding wise. I tired running it on a 2900XT and it still ran at 7FPS. Hell, it ran better on a Voodoo Banshee!! I can also say that Morrowind had issues with memory leaks, thus I brand it unoptimized.


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## FordGT90Concept (Apr 29, 2009)

I think memory leaks would classify the game as "buggy," not unoptimized.  Morrowind runs well but it could run better.  The leaks in Nightfire are rather severe (always runs 100% CPU too) as it is a buggy game that never got fixed.  It will run on a 750 MHz processor and a 16 MB TNT2 card though so it is rather well optimized for all hardware.

But...never mind me as I am arguing semantics.


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## DrPepper (Apr 29, 2009)

Hmm I'd like to add cryostasis to that list but it just runs like crap. I don't know if its the effects of the game but it doesn't look good at all and even with a 8800GT as a physx card I still get crap frames. Plus its frickin boring.


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## killmess (Jun 8, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> The point of this thread is to *identify broken games that crash alot*, lag no matter what the settings etc.



Sorry but this thread is *"unoptimized games"*, optimize a program is make it run faster, not stable, not with better graphics, not with new options, or better textures, etc. You could play a game that run fast(optimized) but crush a lot(broken).


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## killmess (Jun 8, 2009)

RadeonX2 said:


> I think COD4 is currently the best looking and highly optimized FPS game as of date. Any1 agree?



I agree  
+1


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## killmess (Jun 8, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> *1* buggy and unoptimised are probly similar but different
> 
> *2* unoptimised means it cant run on current hardware properly, it wont run good when it should



1_They are not similar, they are different.
2_If it can't run on current hardware properly is a too advanced game, not unoptimized. Unoptimized is when you put it to the max 14fps, 1 level lower 17, 1 level lower 19, lowest level 21. The graphics changes a LOT between highest and lowest but your performance continues being cr@ppy.


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## killmess (Jun 8, 2009)

Mussels said:


> a good summary!
> 
> Fallout 3: for some people it crashes with certain soundcards/audio codecs (K-lite packs FFDshow screws with it, and some EAX emulators do), but once you get it working and meet the minimum requirements, its all good news. It ran sweet for me on an 8800GT, and on 4870 crossfire i jsut get to crank the distance sliders and AA up a bit further
> 
> ...


 

Agreed!
+1


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## killmess (Jun 8, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> Armed assault lags badly because it has a very high quality AF. It gets even more demanding the higher the view distance which can be about 10'000 feet I believe. Also the physics are crazy as well.



If it has a very high quality AF, and the view distance "can be" about 10'000 feet, it's an advanced(or good looking) game, not unoptimized, you can disable some graphics and get quite some speed(I think. I don't have the game).
 Now, if you disable AF, and put the view distance to the minimum, reduce the resolution, antialiasing, effects, etc. and you only get 10 fps more, that's unoptimized.


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## p_o_s_pc (Jun 8, 2009)

TDR 2000 old game but doesn't run on AMD systems without crashing and random crashing even on Intel system


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## DrPepper (Jun 8, 2009)

killmess said:


> Sorry but this thread is *"unoptimized games"*, optimize a program is make it run faster, not stable, not with better graphics, not with new options, or better textures, etc. You could play a game that run fast(optimized) but crush a lot(broken).



It's my thread about identifying truly unoptimised games, I explained that I was going to refer to broken games as unoptimised even though thats the wrong term.



killmess said:


> If it has a very high quality AF, and the view distance "can be" about 10'000 feet, it's an advanced(or good looking) game, not unoptimized, you can disable some graphics and get quite some speed(I think. I don't have the game).
> Now, if you disable AF, and put the view distance to the minimum, reduce the resolution, antialiasing, effects, etc. and you only get 10 fps more, that's unoptimized.



Also I didn't say arma was unoptimised. I was saying despite its older graphics it lags because of its AF and AA which are very high quality filtering. If you turn the settings down you get much more FPS. I'd say the game was optimised 

Also don't post 5 times in a row use the edit button.


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## Mussels (Jun 8, 2009)

Killing floor is unoptimised.

The game has a bug, where if hundreds of specimens are killed in the same place, your FPS drops by looking there. the game is unoptimised, because tweaking the code could increase performance drastically.


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## DrPepper (Jun 8, 2009)

Technically thats a bug I'd think. It's near impossible to optimise a game without sacrificing functionality and visual elements although it can be done and in a few cases there is just downright unoptimised code.


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## ShadowFold (Jun 8, 2009)

Mussels said:


> Killing floor is unoptimised.
> 
> The game has a bug, where if hundreds of specimens are killed in the same place, your FPS drops by looking there. the game is unoptimised, because tweaking the code could increase performance drastically.



I never get that? I always play on modded servers with hundreds of them on screen too. Altho I do agree it's not optimized at all. I couldn't get it to run good on my onboard HD 3300 no matter what I tried  I have it going all maxed out 8x AA / 16x AF and I never see anything lower than 60 with vsync on.


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## Mussels (Jun 8, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> Technically thats a bug I'd think. It's near impossible to optimise a game without sacrificing functionality and visual elements although it can be done and in a few cases there is just downright unoptimised code.



bug is so loosely defined. the program doesnt crash or give erratic behaviour - performance simply drops when specific situations occur.


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## DrPepper (Jun 8, 2009)

Mussels said:


> bug is so loosely defined. the program doesnt crash or give erratic behaviour - performance simply drops when specific situations occur.



Indeed but it could be said that the program isnt functioning properly if that happens.


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## Mussels (Jun 8, 2009)

ShadowFold said:


> I never get that? I always play on modded servers with hundreds of them on screen too. Altho I do agree it's not optimized at all. I couldn't get it to run good on my onboard HD 3300 no matter what I tried  I have it going all maxed out 8x AA / 16x AF and I never see anything lower than 60 with vsync on.



its not hundreds on screen - its where they died.

Play a game on long and hard, and you'll find by round 10 that simply looking at the kill spot (say, the doorway where 90% of the specimens died that round) that your FPS will suddenly drop.

if you use the in game FPS command (stat FPS in console) its easier to see, the game drops visual detail to keep the FPS up, and the in game FPS counter changes color when that happens, so you know for sure.

Oh and i've never seen it happen in a game with less than 5 players, the more players the more specimens, so i guess its more likely for a few hundred to die in the same spot.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 8, 2009)

I second mercenaries 2. I picked up cheap to compare to my ps3 version.  I had to turn off water effects to get playable performance, and even then it still runs like crap.   There's no reason a console should be able to play a game better than someone with a decent PC.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jun 8, 2009)

Mussels said:


> bug is so loosely defined. the program doesnt crash or give erratic behaviour - performance simply drops when specific situations occur.


A bug is simply where an application does something unexpected.  Crashing is how the operating systems respond to a fatal bug.


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## Ramo1203 (Jun 8, 2009)

I have yet to have an issue with Fallout 3, some bugs but "unoptimized" is the wrong word. Most people don't update their driver and stuff, resulting in majors problems sometimes. Other than that Crysis, GTA IV are examples of "unoptimized" games for me. But Left for Dead and Farcry 2 run really great even on modest computers!

I wonder about Crysis? Why is the original "unoptimized"? They released Warhead and I'm guessing that it's the same engine however Warhead which came out a year later runs smoother so does that mean that they were just lazy and they didn't spend time optimizing the game?


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## Mussels (Jun 9, 2009)

Ramo1203 said:


> I have yet to have an issue with Fallout 3, some bugs but "unoptimized" is the wrong word. Most people don't update their driver and stuff, resulting in majors problems sometimes. Other than that Crysis, GTA IV are examples of "unoptimized" games for me. But Left for Dead and Farcry 2 run really great even on modest computers!
> 
> I wonder about Crysis? Why is the original "unoptimized"? They released Warhead and I'm guessing that it's the same engine however Warhead which came out a year later runs smoother so does that mean that they were just lazy and they didn't spend time optimizing the game?



crysis merely took .ini tweaks to get it to run right. those tweaks were used in warhead.


In order to remove confusion, i thought of this last night.

Optimised game: something that runs at its best, as you would expect it to do. (ugly but fast at low settings, linear progression - the higher the settings, the slower it gets)

Unoptimised is something that doesnt do this. Low settings take the same hit as medium while looking noticeably worse, a game that only needed minor changes to get improvements (you know, someone to spend 10 hours trying different ini files, or tweaking a map layout).

The key to an unoptimised game is that it only needed a small amount of effort to get it working perfectly, but it was never done. Crysis needed a few tweaks to make it run better, and the general public could do it.


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## Black Panther (Jun 9, 2009)

What I can say is about what makes a computer game 'optimized'.

Assassin's creed runs fine on any system I test it on.


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## CrackerJack (Jun 9, 2009)

Sims 2 runs flawless on both of my systems(Vista x86 & Win7 x64) Never had problem with anything

Battlefield 2 yeah that's a different story, that game will crash just about all the time. I've tried different OS, GPU and CPU's. And still does it. Hell half the time it would crash just start and exiting the game


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## DrPepper (Jun 9, 2009)

Black Panther said:


> What I can say is about what makes a computer game 'optimized'.
> 
> Assassin's creed runs fine on any system I test it on.



Well what have you got to say about optimized games  ?


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## FordGT90Concept (Jun 9, 2009)

Earth-3 engine (used for Earth 2150 titles) has to be the most optimized I've ever seen.  It has run flawless on every computer I tried it on from 700 MHz AMD Athlons to Core i7.  It even has a lot of features that, to this date, are rare (like weather patterns, ability to tunnel underground, and modular units).


Freelancer runs great on a wide range of hardware too.  It was also (still is) quite innovative in most regards.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 9, 2009)

Try world of warcraft in a 40 man raid on a city with anything over 800x600 and low detail 

ANY computer will cry xD (Infact, blizzards servers cant even handle wintergrasp anymore.)

And original halo plays like poo.


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## CDdude55 (Jun 9, 2009)

Hitman: Blood Money: Loads of glitches but still an awesome game.


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## CrackerJack (Jun 10, 2009)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> Try world of warcraft in a 40 man raid on a city with anything over 800x600 and low detail
> 
> ANY computer will cry xD (Infact, blizzards servers cant even handle wintergrasp anymore.)
> 
> And original halo plays like poo.



 Yeah, Dalaran is terrible. I'm only getting around 30fps 

specs on the side
1366x768
Max or Ultra settings


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## olithereal (Jun 10, 2009)

CrackerJack said:


> Yeah, Dalaran is terrible. I'm only getting around 30fps
> 
> specs on the side
> 1366x768
> Max or Ultra settings



Yeah Dalaran is just retarded.


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## Havoxx (Jun 21, 2009)

I've played my good share of games, WoW included, it does lag like hell, however, not that bad, 800x600? Cmon, I run my raids at 1920x1080, I do have to shut down a lot of addons though, as those are what cause the lag I think...


I think the most unoptimized game I've played this far, has to be Cryostasis, it's a complete waste of time, you can't get it to run well even at the lowest possible settings. Crysis, I think the main problem was all the foliage, the excessive amount of trees to cover up the fact it wasn't that pretty. 

I know of one game that I played Anarchy Online, 2 years ago, that game was unoptimized, and now it's taken a complete turnaround, back then at 1600x1200 I'd lag all over the place, now at 1920x1080, not even a hiccup. Everquest 2 is pretty unoptimized, it doesn't look that great, but it's impossible to get 60FPS, at least for my card at extreme detail.

Finally, I'd have to add, I think the BEST optimized game I've played, is Prototype, that thing just does NOT lag, no matter your settings. I think the whole unoptimized thing is as someone said though, it's more of a problem of crappy ports from console. 

*fanboy inc* Anything ported by Microsoft, usually works perfectly.


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## ArmoredCavalry (Jun 21, 2009)

Havoxx said:


> Finally, I'd have to add, I think the BEST optimized game I've played, is Prototype, that thing just does NOT lag, no matter your settings. I think the whole unoptimized thing is as someone said though, it's more of a problem of crappy ports from console.



Yeah, you are right about no lag, but personally I think the graphics on Prototype aren't that great.

Also, welcome to Tech Power Up.


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## Mussels (Jun 21, 2009)

prototype lags nicely on my housemates machine on his 8800GT. the game seems to drop details to try and keep you at 30FPS - but thats lagging, IMO.


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## BababooeyHTJ (Jun 21, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> Usually I don't AA at 1920 x 1080 only if I have spare fps. Really though I was reading through forums and kept seeing cryostasis was unoptimised and I figured if we could get a list of games that are genuinely broken we'd be able to see if there was anyway to fix them. Most people on the internet don't know their system well so thats another reason why I made this thread.



I have a 25" 1920x1080 monitor and 4x MSAA is manditory for me. Thats why I can't stand GTA4, A game made in 2008 that dosen't support AA. What kind of crap is that?



Darknova said:


> Fallout 3. It's audio engine is a nightmare. 99% of all crashes are audio related. You have to piss around with codecs, exclusions etc. etc. etc.
> 
> I love the game, but it crashes so much...
> 
> *What makes a game "unoptimized" is a game that has massive amounts of problems on a wide variety of hardware. IE memory leaks, audio problems, graphical issues across the board.*



This I agree with this but "unoptimized" has become a buzz word much like "microstuttering" that is just used way too often and most of the time in the wrong circumstance and I can't stand hearing either one most of the time.


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