Lag in all Windows Touhou games

[DarkslimeZ]

Alright, so this has never happened before maybe a couple months ago or so, but it seems to be way worse now. I'm experiencing quite a bit of lag in every Touhou game, such that depending on the game/position within the game my FPS is between 50 and 58.

For example, in EoSD, the in-game FPS jumps between 52.00 and 52.94. Other games are similar.

I've tried windowed and fullscreen mode, forcing 60 FPS, using the vsync patch, enabling/disabling vsync in my graphics card settings; nothing works. I'm on a relatively powerful PC - 2GHz dual core, 2GB of ram - with a pretty good graphics card, a Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS. This problem has only begun recently. I've tried rolling back my graphics card drivers and closing out all programs that are using memory, and also setting the programs to run on a single core, yet nothing seems to be working. Any tips? This seems to only be happening with Touhou. I'm on Windows 7, but again, that hasn't caused problems before.

Probably irrelevant, but CPU and GPU temps are normal. CPU usage for TH06 is anywhere from 15~25%, and the full 50% of one core if the window is unfocused(no clue why that is).

[Agent of the BSoD]

Well that's a new one. I was going to suggest vsync but you beat me to it.

Do you have your locale set to Japanese (or app locale)? Also, I've got Windows 7 too, and one thing that caused it to lag is the desktop changing backgrounds while playing. Don't know if you're doing that...

If that doesn't work, or you're meeting those requirements too, I'm not really sure what's going on. Maybe your computer doesn't have all the right drivers for DirectX for the previous versions, like 8 and 9. Microsoft has those available to download somewhere. Also, make sure that dxdiag doesn't show any problems.

[orinrin]

Well that's a new one. I was going to suggest vsync but you beat me to it.

Do you have your locale set to Japanese (or app locale)? Also, I've got Windows 7 too, and one thing that caused it to lag is the desktop changing backgrounds while playing. Don't know if you're doing that...

If that doesn't work, or you're meeting those requirements too, I'm not really sure what's going on. Maybe your computer doesn't have all the right drivers for DirectX for the previous versions, like 8 and 9. Microsoft has those available to download somewhere. Also, make sure that dxdiag doesn't show any problems.

Notice how he said it only started to happen recently.  Which means everything was fine up to this point.

[Agent of the BSoD]

Notice how he said it only started to happen recently.  Which means everything was fine up to this point.

Yeah, but the things I mentioned could have changed. Maybe not the locale but the background stuff could have.

[DarkslimeZ]

Dxdiag is showing no problems, my computer is set to Japanese locale, and I don't have a rotating background.

It's not a random lag sometimes, it's a consistent lag all the time, which is the weird part.

[Momiji]

What kind've monitor is it, and what refresh rate is it set to?

[DarkslimeZ]

The monitor is a SE198WFP widescreen monitor, at 1440x900 with refresh rate at 60Hz. The refresh rate was actually the first thing I checked.

Edit -- Actually, I noticed something strange in the NVIDIA Control Panel. On the Change Resolution screen it lists my monitor's native res as 1440x900, but for some reason it labels 1280x1024 as recommended(a resolution I cannot actually achieve with the monitor). However, on the Adjust Desktop Size and Position screen, it says that the native resolution is 1280x1024.

This has come up before. NVIDIA apparently has no support for my specific monitor, as a few other things don't work, such as cutting off non-widescreen applications.

Though, none of this is really news, I think; it's been this way for quite a long time.

Edit 2 -- The driver for the monitor that came for my computer is XP/Vista-only, and Dell doesn't actually have a Win7 one.

[Agent of the BSoD]

Have you tried updating it with this driver? This one is directly from nvidia, which I matched based on what you stated was your OS and graphics card.

[DarkslimeZ]

The 64-bit version of that 260.99 driver is the one I'm currently using, yes.

[Romantique Tp]

Maybe you should consider getting a better graphics card ? A old 8600 GT or 9600 GT should be good enough to prevent this kind of stuff from happening in the future. (The performance boost over a 8400 GS is pretty noticeable too)

[Romantique Tp]

On a possibly related note, seems like 260.99 is a little glitchy. Try 258.96 or older, it might help.

[DarkslimeZ]

The 8400GS was for my slimline computer; I do think there's a better graphics card above it that would fit(in the 9000 series), but again, this sort of thing never happened before a certain point. I will go try 258.96 today though.

Edit -- Nope, didn't work. This is so weird. I've been playing Crimzon Clover lately, and even that holds a steady 60.00 FPS exactly the entire time.

Edit 2 -- I tried reinstalling UFO from the CD, and even using the DirectX downloader program thingy, and it still runs at like 52~54 FPS.

[Agent of the BSoD]

Oh wow. That really is weird. Touhou isn't eating up all of you ram space is it?

If the graphics card you're using right now worked earlier, it shouldn't be the problem.

At this point, with all you've done, I'm not sure what to suggest. Have you defragmented your computer lately? Or used Disk Cleanup lately? (this is really all I can suggest at this point)

[DarkslimeZ]

Nope, RAM usage is normal.

My computer is probably due for a defragmentation at some point, so I'll be doing that regardless. Though again, that says nothing of other games having no lag...

[Agent of the BSoD]

Though again, that says nothing of other games having no lag...

Yeah, that's true. Sorry, I've got no clue as to what is slowing them down.

[Momiji]

Have you tried playing with processor affinity for the game you're running?  Disable all the vsync stuff in your drivers and game and everything, and force the game onto one of the cores.

[DarkslimeZ]

Done all that. I've actually been experimenting for the last 2~3 hours.

I give up. I actually happen to have a second Win7 installation on another hard drive partition; I installed TH12 on there and it runs fucking perfectly. Here's the problem.
1. It's not a graphics card problem or a graphics card driver problem. The other win7 was using the Microsoft WDDM version of my graphics card driver from about a year and a half ago, so I reverted this one to that same driver, and had no effect.
2. It's not a problem with processes being open. I checked. I closed every single problem.


...okay so, as I was typing the stuff above, I tried disabling some stuff in the device manager. AS IT TURNS OUT, when I install my graphics tablet, it installs devices for both the pen and the mouse. Yeah, my graphics tablet has a mouse. I found that if I disabled that device - that isn't even fucking plugged in, and hasn't been for the last eight months or so - the game runs flawlessly.


what the fuck. I've been working on this for the last three hours and this is what i get.

i have no fucking clue why this just happened recently. the tablet driver was installed possibly more than a year ago.

[Agent of the BSoD]

...okay so, as I was typing the stuff above, I tried disabling some stuff in the device manager. AS IT TURNS OUT, when I install my graphics tablet, it installs devices for both the pen and the mouse. Yeah, my graphics tablet has a mouse. I found that if I disabled that device - that isn't even fucking plugged in, and hasn't been for the last eight months or so - the game runs flawlessly.


what the fuck. I've been working on this for the last three hours and this is what i get.

i have no fucking clue why this just happened recently. the tablet driver was installed possibly more than a year ago.

Welcome to my life! :V (seriously)
Glad it is working now!

[DarkslimeZ]

Upon further thought, the device for the virtual BD-ROM drive I had going for Comiket may have been contributing. That's only been on for a couple weeks. Anyways, thanks for all your support, everyone~