STEAM Mafia 2 Demo is out!

[Yslen]

Okay so with everything on high, including physX, I get a pretty dreadful 12.2fps average. What's interesting though is that throughout the benchmark my GPU never went over 40% and my CPU never went over 50%, except on one core which occasionally reached 70% but mostly sat around the 60-65% mark.

With physX on low it's much the same story, except with slightly lower CPU usage and a much more playable (though still not really that great) average of 18.8fps.

With physX off completely I get an average of around 45fps, with the CPU doing very little (as with most games I play) and my GPU going full pelt, never dipping below 98%, as you'd expect.

I'd be prepared to accept a situation where my CPU was maxed out trying to do physics simulations, but still caused a bottleneck and struggled to maintain a decent framerate, but this is just rubbish. I have hardware headroom to spare and yet my framerates suck. Oh, and I had 2GB+ free RAM throughout the benchmark too. Thought I should check that after the "Borderlands incident" of last week (latest ATI drivers = memory leak).

I'd be interested to know if any i7 owners see a similar thing in the benchmark? It makes very little sense to me. Either your GPU is maxed or your CPU is. On rare occasions both are maxed but it requires a perfect balance of hardware (usually with GPU far in excess of CPU). I've never seen a game fail to max either of the two before and STILL run badly. It happens when I have Vsync on in some games, but that only kicks in a 60fps obviously...

So, is it just me?

[Yslen]

Originally Posted by Showerhead

That's odd you get as big a drop as me yet you're using Nvidia.

Noticed that when i use Physx the CPU use never goes above 75% which is odd it runs at 60% normally would have expected it to use the rmaining 25% of my cpu to try to boost frames though i heard Physx isn't to well optimised for cpu use. (obviously)

Oh okay, if I'd read this it would have saved me making a massive post asking if anyone else had seen this exact thing.

[Shaftydude]

This game runs like dog **** on a GTX 260 216 core.

[erratum1]

Originally Posted by Shaftydude

This game runs like dog **** on a GTX 260 216 core.

Nvidia has to give you a reason to buy a gtx 480, otherwise why would you bother.

[Krikkit]

Why does everyone criticise a game because it needs you not to have maxxed the settings on a 2 year old graphics card? It's called progress.

Runs fine on my 8800GT, as lowly as it is, because I don't expect it to run with max AA and max effects at 2048*1152.

[Pieface]

Originally Posted by Shaftydude

This game runs like dog **** on a GTX 260 216 core.

Runs fine for me.

[Er-El]

-1 to 2K Games/2K Czech studio for using Physx, thus alienating almost half their audience who don't own an Nvidia card, when I'm willing to bet they could have done the same effects using a more open physics middleware such as Havok.

[Slizza]

Originally Posted by Er-El

-1 to 2K Games/2K Czech studio for using Physx, thus alienating almost half their audience who don't own an Nvidia card, when I'm willing to bet they could have done the same effects using a more open physics middleware such as Havok.

Nvidia do this for the devs in there TWIMTBP program and the devs don't need to fork out like they would for havok.
It's a extra nvidia offer them for free.
They even send over nvidia people to implement it for them.

[Grape Flavor]

Originally Posted by tripwired

Anyone else found the driving mechanics to be a bit.. well.. weird? Far too arcade-like.

Cars don't really behave as I would expect them to, especially while cornering. They all seem to slide far too easily, which ruins the sense of authenticity for me. I'll still end up buying it I'm sure, if only because I loved the original so much and crave more.

You realize, of course, they are aiming to simulate 40's-50's cars and not, say, cars like in GTA IV?

The cars are going to have a different feel than contemporary vehicles.

[DragunovHUN]

Originally Posted by Slizza

Nvidia do this for the devs in there TWIMTBP program and the devs don't need to fork out like they would for havok.
It's a extra nvidia offer them for free.
They even send over nvidia people to implement it for them.

So the correct way to look at it is not that half the users (red) get cheated out of shiny, but that half the users (green) get extra shiny as opposed to no shiny.

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

Originally Posted by Er-El

-1 to 2K Games/2K Czech studio for using Physx, thus alienating almost half their audience who don't own an Nvidia card, when I'm willing to bet they could have done the same effects using a more open physics middleware such as Havok.

Follow the link in Slizza's post and it tells you how to optimise the physics so it can run on the CPU.

Originally Posted by Slizza

The deal with the physx.
It's bugged and doesn't install the physx with the demo.
It will run better if you uninstall physx then manually install the physx from the game mafia ii directory.

If you still need more frames then the biggest frame rate killer is the dynamic cloth on npc.
You can disable dynamic cloth on the npc though and just have it on Vito.
guide here.
http://physxinfo.com/news/3628/mafia...x-performance/

The quote below is from the link.

Originally Posted by Physxinfo

And finally. With our tweaks it is possible to play Mafia II with APEX PhysX enabled – purely on CPU.

All fancy particles and impact debris (our CPU was enough for APEX Medium settings, GPU PhysX disabled in drivers), some clothing simulation – running around 30+ fps.

Looks like a nice deal for non-hybrid ATI users.

[knuck]

I just watched a trailer and it made me wonder; why do cars in third person game suffer from that much body roll ? It's ridiculous. You barely touch the steering wheel and the car looks like it wants to do a barrel roll

[Yslen]

Originally Posted by Krikkit

Why does everyone criticise a game because it needs you not to have maxxed the settings on a 2 year old graphics card? It's called progress.

Runs fine on my 8800GT, as lowly as it is, because I don't expect it to run with max AA and max effects at 2048*1152.

The graphics still look very DX9 to me, and run fine on my old 4850. It's the physics that I'm annoyed about, because they don't run very well on a CPU at all. It's not even using 100% of the CPU! It all looks like an attempt to shift Nvidia GPUs to me.

[erratum1]

Originally Posted by knuck

I just watched a trailer and it made me wonder; why do cars in third person game suffer from that much body roll ? It's ridiculous. You barely touch the steering wheel and the car looks like it wants to do a barrel roll

They are 'old' cars and your probably taking a corner at suicide speeds, I think they look quite good in game.

[[PUNK] crompers]

played the demo too many times now, cant wait for this to come out! if the story is good and the voice acting is as nice thoughout could be a real stunner.

[knuck]

Originally Posted by erratum1

They are 'old' cars and your probably taking a corner at suicide speeds, I think they look quite good in game.

4:00 exactly

[WildThing]

Originally Posted by LeMaltor

Anyone tried the file that stops the timer? My anti virus went crazy so I hex edited it instead and it works

Just found THIS. Works for me, it's really simple to do in case anyone is not familiar with Hex editors, like me .

[LeMaltor]

Originally Posted by WildThing

Just found THIS. Works for me, it's really simple to do in case anyone is not familiar with Hex editors, like me .

Yeah that's the way I did it too

[pimonserry]

My 4870 got a C grade

Bear in mind, I didn't even look at the settings - just installed, started, hit benchmark.

Edit: default settings are 16xAF, 0xAA, No PhysX, VSync on, other settings on High.

Double edit: anyone else's screen incredibly dark once they've exited the game?!?!

Triple edit:

Originally Posted by tripwired

strange problems with monitor brightness on ATI cards ... hit Ctrl + Alt + Del, then Esc

MASSIVE THANK YOU!

Quadruple edit: Actually playing the game, in indoors areas (the distillery) it seems to my untrained eye to get an average of ~20 fps.. but I did put PhysX up to Medium

It's quite fun though, not sure I'll buy it as moving to Uni in the coming months and not taking the desktop with me...

[Pieface]

I got a D grade of 2GB of Ram