Gears of War (PC) issues?

[Ridah]

Sorry if you guys already discussed this somewhere, I did a search and couldn't find anything, I also tried the official GoW forums but typical of any official forum it's a cesspool.

Framerate-wise the game runs smooth as silk on my system which I am happy about, however, I run into some pretty consistent stuttering similar to when your watching a DVD and it freezes momentarily. I was wondering if anyone here has any experience troubleshooting this issue or if there were any solutions that the gaming community has come up with for this problem?

My specs are: AMD 5000+, 4GB RAM, 9600 GT, Vista 64-bit.

[rei]

gears of war vsync (even when set to on) is broken. i have to run dxxoverride that is included with rivatuner.

outside of that, it seems to crash like the bejesus for me. does it crash lots for you?

[Kareem]

I think the crashing is a result of a memory leak issue. The game would go silky smooth on high detail for me but then would stutter and crash after some time. Lowering graphics options fixed that for me.

[rei]

that's a damn shame since i CAN and want to run at max details on my hd4870.

[Ridah]

No crash issues, but then again I haven't put more than half an hour into the game. Annoying stuttering is my main issue.

[rei]

Did you try D3DOverrider?

[Ridah]

No, what's that supposed to do?

*After Edit*

I enabled D3D Overrider, I'll post what happens in the game.

[rei]

from what i can glean from other posts, vsync is inherently broken in gow pc even if it is set to 'on' from inside the game. it still stutters/tears.

d3doverrider was suggested from rage3d forums or elsewhere as the fix and it seemed to smooth it out for me successfully. except the damn game still crashes.

[Alan Dunkin]

I run it at max on my system, while it doesn't stutter there is some tearing, but it's not hugely bad. Is it just an ATI thing? I use an Nvidia.

--- Alan

[rei]

no, the tearing is no vsync. i have no blatant stutter issue just tearing. op with the 9600gt has the stutter issue that irked me.

[Alan Dunkin]

You said it only happened if you were reading from the DVD?

--- Alan

[Ridah]

You said it only happened if you were reading from the DVD?

--- Alan

I didn't say that, though that sounds like a possible cause. Once I used the overrider I've seen much less stuttering, it hasn't disappeared entirely but it's a huge improvement.

[Alan Dunkin]

My answer would be to move the game to the hard-drive so it won't run off of the DVD and see if you can't improve performance any (so yes we're talking about getting a crack).

--- Alan

[Kareem]

Is it just an ATI thing? I use an Nvidia.


Nope, I was crashing with an 8800 GTS.

[rei]

I have run it both with the DVD (it doesn't seem to stream data off it so any stuttering experienced by the OP may not be due to DVD drive latency) and a legit 1:1 image made with Alcohol 120% -- both situations crash frequently with the GFW-GOW executablew. The official forum mentions updating the GFW Live client and I had already tried that.

The DVD appears to only be read at the beginning as a proof-of-ownership test.

[Alan Dunkin]

Nope, I was crashing with an 8800 GTS.

Oh; I have a 8800 GT and it works fine, don't think mine has ever crashed, but I haven't played it in awhile.

--- Alan

[Nathan Phoenix]

I found the game ran a lot better on my desktop with a 7200 rpm hard drive than it did on my laptop with a 5400 rpm drive, despite having pretty similar cpu and gpu. I don't think it's very good at precaching textures and the game tends to chug while it loads new textures. I tend to notice this most when coming around a corner or exiting a building, and it's a slight hitch on my desktop, but a noticiable pause on my laptop.

[rei]

http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/showpost.php?p=25211723&postcount=1

I'm going to try disabling GFWLive somehow.

[rei]

I didn't say that, though that sounds like a possible cause. Once I used the overrider I've seen much less stuttering, it hasn't disappeared entirely but it's a huge improvement.

Now about my fee...

[rei]

http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/showpost.php?p=25211723&postcount=1

I'm going to try disabling GFWLive somehow.

It's confirmed. GFWLive piece of crap causes all that crashing. Doing what the link suggests by editing that cfg makes it not crash. I can't wait until Dawn of War 2 is ruined by GFWL Gold being used for online matchmaking.

[Ridah]

Can you cut and paste the instructions to disable GFWLive? There's too much shit on that page to dig through plus I'm blind.

[rei]

1. install GoW (but click more options so it doesn't run automatically)
2. install latest GFW Live
3. run GoW, setup your video settings, exit
4. run 1.2 patch (gearstu.exe) which will run game automatically (shitty feature) so you exit it afterwards

...if you patch 1.2 without running it once, it crashes.

then: preparing the GoW directory
===========================

In windows Explorer go into your Gears of War "binaries" folder - e.g. c:\Gears of War\Binaries"
Create a folder called "original"
Create a folder called "no-live"
Now copy/paste the file "WarGame-G4WLive.exe.cfg" into each folder.
Go into the "no-live" folder and open the "WarGame-G4WLive.exe.cfg" with notepad.
Delete the following line and save the file:
<Liveconfig xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XBOX/LIVE/LIVECONFIG/2007/01">

Final step - disable Windows Live
========================

Now go back to your "C:\Gears of War\Binaries\no-live" folder and copy/paste the file from here into your "Binaries" folder.
This lets you run GoW without the horrible Windows Live crashes...the disadvantage?

You cannot save or change game settings without being logged into a Windows Live account.
(you can copy the file from your "C:\Gears of War\Binaries\original" folder to your "Binaries" folder to restore Live functionality - if you ever want to change the video settings in future).

Note:changing controls is pointless - as they are always default without a Live account.
Also, going into the controls menu and back to the main menu with Windows Live disabled will permanently MUTE the sound. The only way to get it back is to quit and restart the game.

Now that you have disabled Windows Live - run the game and test. If it plays for more than 30 minutes...congrats it works!

Don't forget to run DXoverrider to get vsync to work properly.

Games For Windows didn't save PC Gaming, it fucked it over.

[theborbes]

Wow, I never had any problems with Gears of War PC crashing on me. It stuttered a lot, but never crashed. Ironically, it didn't just stutter on my machine, it also stuttered on the blackbirds that I played it on first during a media preview. So in that respect I considered it to run pretty well on my comp.

[Ridah]

Wait so if I understand correctly, you can't save your game once you disable GFWL?

[rei]

i think so. checkpoints still work.

update: new vista install, still crashhappy as hell in dx10.

[HRose]

The stutter issue was fixed for me by changing something in the ini file (the one not in the game dir).

Something about prefetching textures. On ATI.