Dawn of War Codex

Hi, i am running the game on a rig with the following specs:
I5-6300HQ 2,3 ghz quad core
Nvidia Geforce 965 4GB
8GB RAM
Win 10,DX12
However,i am getting low fps when it shouldnt be. When i select lower resolution than 1920x1080 instead of improving it even becomes worse fps-wise.
I am thinking that the game is not optimized or not interacting well with DX12. Even when i choose medium settings the FPS dont change significantly.
Tweaked the graphic settings in any possible combination but to no avail. Any suggestions would be welcomed.I did some investigation and found out that the game is CPU heavy but cannot utilize more than 2 cores.

Laptop
Nvidia GeForce 525m
i3-2350M 2.30GHz 2 cores
8GB RAM
Win7

Can handle it on Normal-High settings

So, yea, its not about your machine. Make sure you use the right video card if you got 2. If not, then it must be Dx12 issue. Cant say for sure

DoW2 doesn't like Windows 10 from my experience, you can get large performance drops compared to Win7. Not sure about Win8.

Not to mention that Windows 10 and 8 are very prone to the almighty and never-fixed soundbug whereas Windows 7 doesnt suffer from it.
It is definitely not about your machine but rather their poor optimization of their engine and bad network code to a degree.

I don't think DoW2 supports DX12 anyway, googling around suggests to manually install DX9 if you don't have them, that should help.

I have a 970 graphics card and 2600k 3.8 ghz cpu on Windows 10. I'm also at a 1440p resolution, so my faster computer gets slowed down by the higher resolution, making it more even with you. You're not running the game on DX 12, the game loads whatever dx version it needs and does so on install. What kind of fps are you getting? I'm usually around the hundreds and it dips to around 40-50 during large team fights.

- Make sure you're not running anything in the background
- Temporarily disable firewall and see if that changes anything
- Fiddle more with settings. Make a change then run the benchmark. Turning shadows off is the largest change, but makes the game look worse
- Look for something obscure and not obvious that may be making it run worse. Like using your CPU's integrated graphics rather than your GPU's

Adeptus Noobus wrote:Not to mention that Windows 10 and 8 are very prone to the almighty and never-fixed soundbug whereas Windows 7 doesnt suffer from it.
It is definitely not about your machine but rather their poor optimization of their engine and bad network code to a degree.

I have 7 and the soundbug happens to me...

Lowering the resolution has no effect or at least not noticeably. I have 40-50fps on medium settings but ocasionally drops down to 30 in large team fights.
Weird thing is when i run the benchmark on 1920x1080 on ultra settings then i get 50-55 fps average and 25 min.

Bit of a bump here.

1. The sound bug affects all versions of Windows; the issue is with the game, and not the platform that you run it on.

Relic have (to my knowledge) made various attempts at fixing it but I believe the actual issue is deeper than expected and as such when Relic do make fixes (and they have done), they only fix symptoms. If they ever do another push for bug fixes I'm going to see if I can replicate this one properly (or get people who can). No ETA on that though, DoW III is the current (and understandable) priority. I tried last time around but couldn't get reliable logs, etc of the issue.

2. DoW II runs fine on Windows 10.

At least for an Administrator running a 64-bit version of the game (which shouldn't matter because the .exe is as far as I'm aware compiled as 32-bit anyhow. RAM requirements are in-line with a 32-bit application and unlike vDoW modders don't intentionally break that. Haven't tested ELITE in a long while, mind).

3. FPS drops that aren't affected by decreasing your resolution are likely to be CPU-bound. 8GB of RAM is more than sufficient and a 900 series GeForce GPU, even a mobile one, should laugh at the maximum recommended specs for DoW II (and Retribution runs better than the previous two versions, to boot).

So either it's a weird issue with your OEM drivers and general state of software, or one of the following: heat issues with your laptop (some laptops automatically throttle performance when temperature exceeds recommended limits), hard drive file fragmentation (shouldn't be an issue on Win10 as it has automatic defragmentation routines) or simply that DoW II prefers having a CPU with a higher clock speed. I know I used to have issues on my old (reliable) Q6600 (2.4GHz clock).

DoW II is very CPU-bound, especially on modes like The Last Stand which feature a lot of terrain deformation. Unlikely to be something that's resolved even in a theoretical future patch as it'd require significant rewrites to the core engine and tech which simply won't be cost-effective enough to be greenlit (speculation).

Try lowering the Physics setting or disabling Soft Particles. These should have more of an impact than changing the resolution.

It really doesn't run fine on Win10 for me and various others, Administrator or not. I know of at least two other people aside from me who had to go back to Win7 just for this game (I have a Win7 partition just for DoW2). FPS is way lower on Win10 in the same system (30-40 FPS less in some cases for me) even running the game from the same Steam install location, and as an Observer your FPS can plummet into single digits for some reason.

As an aside, DoW2 really struggles to deal with large 3v3 battles no matter what your system is. It can be running at 100+ FPS and then it drops to sub 60 in a team fight, so losing a lot of framerate during big fights is normal. Your system should be fine on max settings otherwise though. I'd put the blame on Win10 environment from what I've seen.

I haven't tested Observer mode, and I remember you reporting issues on that last time I asked. Can't remember if they managed to replicate and / or fix problems there, though (and we have a new community site now which makes it a bit more tedious to search for legacy news through).

I'm not denying there might not be problems on specific peoples' setups on Windows 10, but if it was a general thing I'd be seeing a lot more reports on the official forums alone (and I do keep track of the bug report threads there). That's what I mean when I say the game runs fine.

Also happy to help step through technical support routines but I figure a lot of you have already tried most of that. DoW II absolutely can struggle on larger maps, with more effects firing (particular things that involve terrain deformation as it's calcluated in realtime; it's always being computed, basically). That's just the limitations of the game (engine). I've had those kinds of issues on all sorts of hardware (exceeding recommended specifications for the game) on all systems from Windows 7 and up (my Vista-era machine didn't have specs that could run DoW II on maximum). Windows 7 might run better for you and some others, but this isn't a guaranteed thing.

I saw a performance increase in virtually every game (and I was playing a lot of DoW II back then) when I moved to Windows 8 (and 8.1). A different (but similar) platform to Windows 10, but stuff hasn't really gone backwards for me.

Indrid wrote:It really doesn't run fine on Win10 for me and various others, Administrator or not. I know of at least two other people aside from me who had to go back to Win7 just for this game (I have a Win7 partition just for DoW2). FPS is way lower on Win10 in the same system (30-40 FPS less in some cases for me) even running the game from the same Steam install location, and as an Observer your FPS can plummet into single digits for some reason.

As an aside, DoW2 really struggles to deal with large 3v3 battles no matter what your system is. It can be running at 100+ FPS and then it drops to sub 60 in a team fight, so losing a lot of framerate during big fights is normal. Your system should be fine on max settings otherwise though. I'd put the blame on Win10 environment from what I've seen.

On top of shitty fps win 10 is also randomly removing icons/hp bars from units for me or rather it's tied to a tabbing problem from what I've noticed.

The alt-tab issue is also not restricted to Windows 10 as far as I'm aware (been seeing reports from Windows 8 / 8.1), I'd imagine it could be an issue post-Win7 and that people are simply noticing more because a lot of folks skipped Windows 8 in general. That's an assumption, though.

Gorbles wrote:The alt-tab issue is also not restricted to Windows 10 as far as I'm aware (been seeing reports from Windows 8 / 8.1), I'd imagine it could be an issue post-Win7 and that people are simply noticing more because a lot of folks skipped Windows 8 in general. That's an assumption, though.

I did not get it under Windows 8 or 8.1, but am getting it under Windows 10.

I also wish X wasn't so close to the windows key.

I only ever replicated it (once) in 8.1, and I couldn't even record it. Might be the same symptom but two different root causes? I don't know.

My experience is similar to Indrids. I tried it on each iteration of Windows since Windows 7 and I can confirm that Windows 8/8.1/10 all frequently crash due to a soundbug while Windows 7 is pretty much smooth sailing (once a year - never).

Obviously Relic is prioritizing (not really since DoW2 support is non-existent) DoW3 now but considering how long this bug has existed, it really puts the Dev-Team at Relic to shame.

Considering that Windows 7 and 8/8.1/10 differ in how they manage RAM I could imagine a run-away memory-leaking thread being handled differently on each verion, causing the soundbug to become more apparent on versions after Windows 7.
The Omnissiah has truly forsaken this game...

By your logic, a lot of developers throughout the history of games development would be put to shame, then. Statements like that help nobody.

Gorbles wrote:By your logic, a lot of developers throughout the history of games development would be put to shame, then. Statements like that help nobody.

The logic that they allowed a game-breaking bug to exist for years and didn't really offer any feedback as to how to resolve it, or whether they could or not?

I must admit I haven't played that many games in multiplayer too seriously but there was no such bug in any other game and in an RTS that sort of bug is so much worse.

Your definition of "game-breaking" is on you. Given that I haven't experienced the issue on Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10, across two separate gaming machines, it's hard for me to say.

Relic's history in the end days of THQ is well-documented. They attempted to replicate the sound issue during the now not-so-recent- patches to the game that implemented Steamworks fully and removed GfWL (where it applied). They couldn't. So to claim that there's some kind of "allowing" going on, and a lack of "offering" is entirely disingenuous

I'd much rather troubleshoot low FPS, myself.

Gorbles wrote:Your definition of "game-breaking" is on you. Given that I haven't experienced the issue on Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10, across two separate gaming machines, it's hard for me to say.

It's a game-breaking bug.

However I agree that Relic probably tried their best to fix it at the time.

no their never tried to fix it for dow2, in coh2 you sometimes lose sound but it come back after a 1 min or 2 least last time I played which was 5 moths ago which mean if they bothered to they can fix the sound bug for dow2 but that cant be ass to cus relic cares about their games so much

boss wrote:no their never tried to fix it for dow2, in coh2 you sometimes lose sound but it come back after a 1 min or 2 least last time I played which was 5 moths ago which mean if they bothered to they can fix the sound bug for dow2 but that cant be ass to cus relic cares about their games so much

Yes they did try or they lied about it in twitch chat.

Gorbles wrote:By your logic, a lot of developers throughout the history of games development would be put to shame, then. Statements like that help nobody.

On the not so slim chance of getting "Gorb'd" here it goes:

The matter of the fact is that the soundbug is well documented. I am saying this because you seem to hint to the possibility of this being an isolated issue that only a few have experienced on exotic machines when in truth it is the people who have gone to Windows 8/8.1/10 and not had this issue who are the minority. Insinuating that this is an exotic incidence is not helping anybody.

Second, if you have had this bug for such a long time in your game (even before THQ went down), considering the gravity of this bug, YES, it does put them to shame. Developers throughout the history of games would have had to work overtime to fix a bug this significant in a RTS that aspires to be competitive and create a competitive community. The game simply crashes in the middle of the game, hence game-breaking. No way to sugar-coat it.

Considering that no changes to the engine itself have been made (at least I think they haven't), the low fps can be caused by only two things: their servers or our GPUs/CPUs. Because of the heterogeneity of the users GPU/CPU setups we can conclude that this is not user-side or it would have impacted specific users significantly more. I say this because it is highly unlikely that all vendors suddenly made the same changes to their drivers causing this game to massively lag. Furthermore does the game not only lag for one person most of the time but for nearly all players in the same lobby which can only happen due to server-side issues.

TL;DR - Prioritize fixing gamebreaking bugs over adding new cashable DLCs and fix servers.

P.S: Relic seriously needs to work on their public appearance and the way they communicate with their customers and who they let speak on their behalf.

Whatever "Gorb'd" means. Everyone writes long posts occasionally.

Anyhow, first, some history:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2199&p=49111#p49111

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2392&p=52581#p52581

Bearing in mind I'm bound by an NDA, and this NDA covers pretty much all of my interactions with Relic including the first thread linked there, I really can't be explicit on what happened. But I sourced some common issues with the game from you guys (being one of the most-committed and best active DoW II communities - and I'm not being sarcastic). There's not much on the sound bug there, I tried to get help on that but - and I stress - I wasn't able to replicate it.

I thought I asked here as well (maybe I just sent PMs, but not being able to track started threads means I might have missed a search result), but the only thread I found was the second link there, which was after the updates to DoW II (if my memory holds).

Nevertheless, I tried to replicate it, and tried to get others to as well. The fact that someone who wasn't me had to make a thread asking for information about the sound bug suggests it isn't well-documented, sorry. I'm being as fair as I can be, here. This is what I believe.

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Relic not fixing it means very little. Valve recently fixed a hitbox issue with TF2 that's been a competitive game for years. A hitbox issue the community have been noting for years. They finally fixed it, in late 2016 or early 2017 (I don't have the reddit thread to hand; I think it was this year). It ruined class changes for an innumerable amount of players over the years. Now, Valve have a lot more resources than Relic have ever had. But then, I don't know Valve's internal structure either. They might have their reasons, they might not. Didn't stop TF2 from being the juggernaught it has been.

Developers need to be able to reproduce a bug in order to even attempt to fix it. The sound bug wasn't reproduceable, and I got no useful information in the way of logs, crash dumps or <anything> from anyone who suffered from it. Despite in good faith making a thread for bugs in Dawn of War II, on this very forum.

So it annoys me when you try and paint this false picture and preface it with "I don't wanna get Gorb'd".

Relic have introduced no DLC to Dawn of War II barring the Necron update to TLS which also came with bug fixes (their Anniversary update). So they absolutely did prioritise fixing issues. They stripped GfWL from vDoW II and CR. They stripped GameSpy from vDoW. Instead of killing MP entirely, they moved all of the DoW products to their Battle Servers (which they perform regular maintenance on).

You don't seem to know what you're talking about, in my opinion. Assuming no changes in the game engine or product code, there are far more variables than just "your GPU" or "their servers". You even use the word "heterogeneity" but you use it wrong - that very heterogeneity that you claim means that because of the diversity in hardware variance across the Dawn of War playerbase, it's incredibly likely small subsets of users will have weird and unexplainable issues with certain software updates to various parts of their system. Display drivers, firmware updates, DirectX versions, OS upgrades, read / write permissions, you name it.

Your example of a bunch of players lagging in a game could be anything. It might be Battle Server issues (which they regularly maintain). It could be their implementation of client-server messing up wrt. syncing to the player that has the performance issues (this is the kind of issue that requires server maintenance). It could be every single player experiencing a clientside FPS issue. Not every instance of "low FPS" is the same thing. You could have ten different "low FPS" bugs in Dawn of War II Retribution, I don't know. And they'd all have ten different root causes.

If you want to help, help. Give logs, submit BugSplat reports. I've been upfront in saying that you shouldn't expect DoW II support; it's not their focus. When there was a focus on DoW II I came and reached out to you folks. That said, don't make tedious posts about how developers need to be shamed for not being allowed to fix bugs because their managers have them working on different products.

I don't speak for Relic, you see. I walk a very fine line between an NDA and genuinely wanting to help the community. Which includes you folks. We can disagree over balance, design, competence, whatever, but DoW II is still my favourite DoW product and I love seeing it supporting (officially or by modders). But if that comment about "who they let speak on their behalf" is aimed at me, that's just laughable man.

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Anyhow, go ahead complain that you got "Gorb'd" and you don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm tired. It's a Sunday morning, I'm revising for a driving theory test and I made the mistake of trying to post in here (an unofficial modding forum that I post as a regular member as) r.e. technical issues for a game I've helped out with technical support for for close to 8 years. My bad.

Consider for one second maybe that all the bug reports we sent to Relic directly via the dump report tool is our way of helping fix this issue. You saying we are not doing so is just another reason why I think you are trying to make this into some exotic thing that happens on very very few occasions, which in turn pisses people off. What is the point in sending error reports to you if we can just send it to Relic directly, since you keep on repeating that you are not related directly to Relic? I can randomly go through my friends list on Steam and ask and I will get the same answer 95% of the time: Yes, I have experienced the sound bug at least once/Yes, lags keep affecting me from time to time with no apparent changes having been made to my system.

You seem to not have understood my talking point about client-side heterogeneity. People who are in the same lobby, who are all experiencing the same framedrop all of a sudden with different PC setups would suggest that this is more likely to be a server issue than on the client side.
You keep on extrapolating from your own experiences. The myriad of people who are reporting the same issues over and over again should be an indicator that there is something wrong with the server performance at the moment since this didn't happen before.

I say Gorb'd because this is what you always do: People report issues and you immediately make it your top priority to cast doubt on each and every single one of these reports because Relic can not possibly be held accountable. This is my definition of being Gorb'd.

When there was a focus on DoW II I came and reached out to you folks.

You are indeed a generous god, Gorb, but see above for why you may not have been the recipient of said bug reports.

That said, don't make tedious posts about how developers need to be shamed for not being allowed to fix bugs because their managers have them working on different products.

As a paying customer I will, at each and every turn voice my dismay with the conduct of the company i bought from. It's called feedback/criticism. Why you are always making it personal or about you is beyond me.


In my mind you are basically akin to this person when you sound like you do

Adeptus Noobus wrote:Consider for one second maybe that all the bug reports we sent to Relic directly via the dump report tool is our way of helping fix this issue. You saying we are not doing so is just another reason why I think you are trying to make this into some exotic thing that happens on very very few occasions, which in turn pisses people off. What is the point in sending error reports to you if we can just send it to Relic directly, since you keep on repeating that you are not related directly to Relic? I can randomly go through my friends list on Steam and ask and I will get the same answer 95% of the time: Yes, I have experienced the sound bug at least once/Yes, lags keep affecting me from time to time with no apparent changes having been made to my system.

You seem to not have understood my talking point about client-side heterogeneity. People who are in the same lobby, who are all experiencing the same framedrop all of a sudden with different PC setups would suggest that this is more likely to be a server issue than on the client side.
You keep on extrapolating from your own experiences. The myriad of people who are reporting the same issues over and over again should be an indicator that there is something wrong with the server performance at the moment since this didn't happen before.

I say Gorb'd because this is what you always do: People report issues and you immediately make it your top priority to cast doubt on each and every single one of these reports because Relic can not possibly be held accountable. This is my definition of being Gorb'd.

When there was a focus on DoW II I came and reached out to you folks.

You are indeed a generous god, Gorb, but see above for why you may not have been the recipient of said bug reports.

That said, don't make tedious posts about how developers need to be shamed for not being allowed to fix bugs because their managers have them working on different products.

As a paying customer I will, at each and every turn voice my dismay with the conduct of the company i bought from. It's called feedback/criticism. Why you are always making it personal or about you is beyond me.


In my mind you are basically akin to this person when you sound like you do

If you're submitting BugSplat reports, that's great. So's clarifying what you meant by your description of in-lobby framerate drops (which wasn't the original thing that you said). But if you'd said that in the first place, maybe I'd have known that! Sadly, you don't ever seem to do so.

But that was a single line (or two lines) out of the rest of what I said. What people on your Steam list say is irrelevant. It's all irrelevant. This was all invented as a reason to justify a one-liner put down of Relic's competence. You've dropped virtually every point I responded to and focused on the only two that you could plausibly argue against.

The same goes for framing a one-liner put-down as "criticism". Feedback is meant to be constructive. Complaining on a third-party site about a popular fan-made modification about the priority of Relic's bugfixing attempts isn't feedback. It isn't constructive. And it's a shame that you defend yourself (or others) in this manner.

That's more of "doing a Gorb" than anything I've done here. That's an intentional attempt at getting me to respond so you could patronise me further.

You ask me why I'm making it personal when you started your post with "I don't want to be Gorb'd" (paraphrased)? That's personal

I'm out; I don't want to clog up this thread further. Respond as much as you want to, I'll read it, but I won't reply any more.

I've had crashing issues with certain nvidia drivers for my 970 (as did PhatE) until we both rolled back to an older driver version for months. The newer drivers have worked well enough for about a year now. Generally speaking I haven't had a lot of server related issues.

Regarding Win10, DoW 2 worked better in Win 7 for me. Less crashes and mildly better FPS.

Ever since DoW left p2p connection, obs has been fucked. Low FPS and the game lags behind when obsing.

For fps dips I would monitor temperatures, CPU/GPU loads, check drivers and as mentioned make sure you use the correct GPU.

Do you have performance issues in other games?

Nurland wrote:I've had crashing issues with certain nvidia drivers for my 970 (as did PhatE) until we both rolled back to an older driver version for months. The newer drivers have worked well enough for about a year now. Generally speaking I haven't had a lot of server related issues.

Regarding Win10, DoW 2 worked better in Win 7 for me. Less crashes and mildly better FPS.

Ever since DoW left p2p connection, obs has been fucked. Low FPS and the game lags behind when obsing.

For fps dips I would monitor temperatures, CPU/GPU loads, check drivers and as mentioned make sure you use the correct GPU.

Do you have performance issues in other games?

Yes, windows 10 literally doggy styled half my games and crippled the other half, I have tried to fix DoW2 on W10 for more than a month with everything I know, guess what, turns out W7 is still the best thing out there.

Win 10 works great for me on all newer titles. Just some older titles seemed to run better on Win 7