SWBFI on Windows 10?

[Kit Fisto]

So my brother got a gaming PC built recently and he's been wanting to play SWBFI. I got the game on his computer and it launches fine and everything, however it lags tremendously and the audio cuts out.
Is there some special thing we have to do to get it to run on his computer because it's an old game?
Or a set of settings for video/audio to make it run?

His specs are as follows
Windows 10
AMD Ryzn 5 1600 6-core
Radeon RX580 Series
AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x67DF).

If you need more specs I can provide that, I just don't know what's relevant for this problem.

Edit: Just did more research, could it have something to do with DirectX?
He's got DirectX 12 installed.

[Led]

Is this in single player or multiplayer?

[Kit Fisto]

Singleplayer. Although he has the SWBF Spy .exe installed and that's what we're launching the game with.

[Dark_Phantom]

-Have you tried playing other games, and which ones?
-What are your graphics settings set at ingame and in the ATI Catalyst Control Center (I think that's the AMD thing)?

[SleepKiller]

If both audio and video is lagging then I'd say that points to something hogging the CPU. Finding out what is doing that is the first step in solving the problem. A simple way to try to work it out is to open up Task Manager and overlay it on top of the game.

So first open up Task Manager. The quickest way to do this is probably to hit start, type in Task Manager and hit enter. Then under "Options" in Task Manager make sure "Always On Top" is enabled. This will keep it open and displayed in game unless you explicitly minimize it.

Then click out of Task Manager (with minimizing it!) and fire up the game, load a map and note what applications are using what resources. SWBF should probably be using around 10% (or less) of that particular CPU while running, and possibly less of the GPU. If another application is spiking in CPU usage (or Disk/GPU) then you may have found your culprit.

[Kit Fisto]

SWBFII on GOG does the same thing. It doesn't matter if he's running it alone or not for either one. I recall finding a fix by editing something in his graphics settings for his computer but I can't remember what I did now. He must have updated his graphics or something...

Edit: This is what is on the GOG page for SWBFII and I recall this being the issue with SWBFII.

"AMD compatibility notice: Star Wars: Battlefront II does not support AMD Crimson Edition drivers 15.12 or newer, and requires version 15.11 (stable version) or older drivers." https://www.gog.com/game/star_wars_battlefront_ii

The question is, do you think that is what needs to be done to fix SWBFI? And does anyone remember how to downgrade the driver or whatever? I don't remember what I did initially.

[Led]

A long time ago there was an issue that the game needed to be forced to run on one CPU.  That may be a possibility as well.

[SleepKiller]

SWBFII on GOG does the same thing. It doesn't matter if he's running it alone or not for either one. I recall finding a fix by editing something in his graphics settings for his computer but I can't remember what I did now. He must have updated his graphics or something...

Edit: This is what is on the GOG page for SWBFII and I recall this being the issue with SWBFII.

"AMD compatibility notice: Star Wars: Battlefront II does not support AMD Crimson Edition drivers 15.12 or newer, and requires version 15.11 (stable version) or older drivers." https://www.gog.com/game/star_wars_battlefront_ii

The question is, do you think that is what needs to be done to fix SWBFI? And does anyone remember how to downgrade the driver or whatever? I don't remember what I did initially.

Could be, I was hoping you'd report back the results of the Task Manager experiment so we'd have more information to go on. If you haven't done it yet then I'd really suggest trying it, it could help narrow down the possible causes very quickly.

[Kit Fisto]

Apologies, I forgot to post my results on that. Sorry!

For SWBFI the CPU is under 10%, the Memory is around 20%, and the GPU is under 10%.
For SWBFII the CPU is under 10%, the Memory is around 20%, and the GPU is under 20%.


Additionally something strange happened when I was messing around with it more last night. I updated the drivers, reset the computer, then launched SWBFI and it ran perfectly fine. I decided to test SWBFII and then it lagged out again. Went back to SWBFI and that was lagging as well.

[Dark_Phantom]

That really sounds like some bottleneck or leak.  You could try the same game before and after the lag (if it does it only after a certain amount of time after a reset).

[Kit Fisto]

Sorry I'm not windows savvy, how would I check/resolve a "bottleneck/leak"?

[Dark_Phantom]

We could use more stats over time on the games.  Maybe before the lag the GPU sits at a low % and after it starts lagging it is at a higher %.  Or CPU usage is low before and higher afterward.  Short story: Get stats before and after the lag.

The AMD issue could be it - but others would have to share their experiences because I have an Nvidia GPU and am also on Windows 7.  Other (actually for SWBF2-2017) posts have shown that rolling back the driver does seem to work (people complain that many of their games get really choppy).

There are plenty of different driver options, but before running down that dark, dark road, we should try to find where the issue is.