Mass Effect - performance & weird FPS drop

Are you saying ME runs worse than Crysis?!

All Intel C2Duo (and above) people, please confirm!

 

Turn off AA, fixed.

 

No, it doesn't. Also compairing the 2 games in terms of performance is not that simple as they are build with different gameplay/technical objectives in mind.

What I WOULD actually say is that, FOR ME, Mass Effect's performance is INDEED the worst (actually I'd say "weirdest") out of all Unreal Engine 3 games I've played so far: BioShock, Medal of Honor Airborne, Unreal Tournament 3 and especially Gears of War. The latter runs simply excellent on 1680x1050 maxed out, meaning no glitches, no weird FPS drops or no other distracting technical problems.

Considering the graphics, AI and the overall complexity of Mass Effect's gameplay, I can't seem to agree or accept that the game should have this poor/weird performance. The fact that my FPS drops with 8 frames when I draw my weapon is simply frustrating.

I hope the patch will come out soon and that my problems are not related to hardware incompatibilities.

 

Question for you gents. Is this game worth buying? I've been looking for something good but I usually stay away from ports[shudders thinking of Halo 2]. I've read a ton of good things and I may just head down to Walmart and grab it but I'd like your opinions first.

 

I wouldn't say so.

For Crysis I had to turn my resolution down to 1280x800 and then add AA to enjoy about 80% very high settings. And then parts of the carrier portion of the game were still a slide show.

I'm running ME at 1920x1200 with everything on max. No fps probs. And it looks beautiful (dynamic shadows excepted).

I never monitor or tweak core utilization. I figure if a game runs, it runs.

 

Doesn't explain why the highest temps correspond to times when I'm in the pause menu or reading the codex.

 

Because those scenes use the card to it's highest efficiency perhaps? Less complex scenes are easier to code, and it makes it easier to use the systems resources to their fullest extent. Only a theory though.