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Best OS to run Sacred 2 on?


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I've always had issues with Vista 64 and Windows 7 64 (memory leaks, constant stuttering, and crashes with PhysX and/or Elite textures)

 

Windows XP 32bit always had the best experience for me, however support for XP with newer hardware is fading fast... first my sound card, now my video card (no SLi on GTX 6xx in XP).

 

Anyone have opinions on the best OS to run Sacred 2 on? Does Vista 32 and Windows 7 32 run it just as well as XP 32? even with PhysX and high res textures? And no stuttering or crashes? Or is XP-32 still the only way to go for the best Sacred 2 experience?

 

Edit: Also, I have tried every tweak for vista/7 64-bit OS's but nothing made it stable or fluid enough for good gameplay like it runs on XP-32, though I haven't tried vista/7 32-bit yet.

Edited by Star64
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Well, Sacred 2 on XP-32 is running flawless even with nvidia SLi unavailable on my geforce 6xx. Fluid 60fps gameplay, no hitches or stuttering with physx and elite textures enabled. FPS only drops when trees go transparent through camera. I kinda wanted to run this with all kinds of fancy antialiasing too, but I guess that's still out of reach without using SLi. 5 video card generations later and I still can't max this game out lol.

 

Also, I replaced my sound card with a X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty which has win XP drivers, and OpenAL/EAX effects seem to be working great.

 

One strange issue, is when I pop open pots and chests, the items pop up and to the ground in slow motion (Edit: even loot from enemy corpses). I don't remember this happening before. I've got the latest CM-patch 130, maybe this is somehow PhysX related? (Though I had PhysX before and it didn't have this issue)

 

Edit: also very sad to hear that closed net is gone. I assume open net is gone too since the servers were shut down? LAN play is the only option now? such a shame, this game is one of my favorite games of all time and I've found nothing quite like it.

Edited by Star64
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...

Edit: also very sad to hear that closed net is gone. I assume open net is gone too since the servers were shut down? LAN play is the only option now? such a shame, this game is one of my favorite games of all time and I've found nothing quite like it.

Yes, the Lobby is gone so Open Net also went away. Things like Tunngle still work, if you can find anyone to play with.

 

 

Regarding your OS question, it worked flawlessly on my old PC running Win7 32-bit. My new PC has Win7 64-bit and I have graphics issues, but I think those are hardware-related. Sorry, that is about all I can say on the OS question.

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Hmm, thanks. Maybe the issues are only isolated to 64-bit OS's then. I'll have to try Win7-32 and Vista-32 to see if they run as smooth, since I'd love to run this with SLi enabled. (no SLi support for 6xx cards in XP)

Edited by Star64
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I've always had issues with Vista 64 and Windows 7 64 (memory leaks, constant stuttering, and crashes with PhysX and/or Elite textures)

 

Windows XP 32bit always had the best experience for me, however support for XP with newer hardware is fading fast... first my sound card, now my video card (no SLi on GTX 6xx in XP).

 

Anyone have opinions on the best OS to run Sacred 2 on? Does Vista 32 and Windows 7 32 run it just as well as XP 32? even with PhysX and high res textures? And no stuttering or crashes? Or is XP-32 still the only way to go for the best Sacred 2 experience?

 

Edit: Also, I have tried every tweak for vista/7 64-bit OS's but nothing made it stable or fluid enough for good gameplay like it runs on XP-32, though I haven't tried vista/7 32-bit yet.

 

Welp… I've tried playing it under Windows Vista, 7 and Windows 8 (the beta). For what it's worth, I never got it properly installed under Vista - I'm thinking that hard drive is on it's last leg. I've had it installed under Windows 7 32 bit - and it works well. I've also had installation issues under Windows 8 (corrupt install files, I think). BUT... Windows 7 works best for me. Now, I don't have a SLI setup. Just a lowly GT 220 card. And as such, PhysX was never really an option for me. Yes, it's there as an option I could turn on - but doing so tends to also turn the game into a slide show.

 

The memory leaks and crashes you mention also happen under Windows 7 32 bit. That's just the way the game is - it's got issues that never were, and never will be fixed.

 

One thing you didn't mention - are you playing Sacred 2: Fallen Angel or do you have the Ice and Blood expansion as well. The one thing that DID cure a lot of the issues I had with the plain version of Sacred 2 was installing the UK version of Sacred 2 and Ice and Blood on top of that - along with the 2 patches (2.65.1 and 2.65.2).

 

Installing the CM Patch on top of it all also cleared up a few extra issues in the game.

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Fully patched to 2.65.2 it runs best on Win7 64 but it still needs the memory work-arounds.

 

Having a dual boot at the time between XP and Win7 64, it was way more stable on Win7. This may depend on hardware though...

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I never ran it on XP, but most issues do seem to have been when people ran it on windows vista/7 64bit. But then I never had any issues with the game on those two OS's personally, so it really is a strange kettle of fish...

 

But, again, as you've noted, XP 32bit is probably best :)

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I miss my old XP laptop, played Sacred with nary a hiccup for hours on end.

 

My PC win7/64 I had to save often and it crashed regularly.d I think it depends on your configurations with Vista and 7, it either works well or it doesn't. Don't kno about my current lappy win7/64 cuz I was playing it on my PC and now it doesn't have enough disk space to install ><. Who woulda thought when I got it that 250g would someday be too small :D

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Like Kiyeri said, the game runs pretty much flawlessly in XP-32 but I'm trying to narrow down if the issue is only in 64-bit OS's or not. I've read that 32bit games on 64bit have to use a sort of emulation, and they end up using more memory than if they were natively running on 32bit so this could be a major cause of most issues.

 

The game was developed on/for XP-32 though, and Vista was an afterthought. Even with Ice & Blood, latest patches, CM-patches, and every kind of compatibility and/or memory tweak I could find, the game still runs like crap on Vista-64 and Win7-64. (Like I said, constant stuttering, hitching, memory leaks, crashing). The only real solution for modern OS's is to turn off Elite textures and PhysX since those further exacerbate the memory leaks, but I'm looking to get the best Sacred2 experience with those enabled.

 

Well I'll try Win7-32 and Vista-32 over the weekend maybe and post my results here, but I still have my doubts. I think XP-32 is the only way to run the game as intended. (Or possibly XP-64 too, but I can't remember my results from that)

Edited by Star64
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I miss my old XP laptop, played Sacred with nary a hiccup for hours on end.

 

My PC win7/64 I had to save often and it crashed regularly.d I think it depends on your configurations with Vista and 7, it either works well or it doesn't. Don't kno about my current lappy win7/64 cuz I was playing it on my PC and now it doesn't have enough disk space to install ><. Who woulda thought when I got it that 250g would someday be too small :D

 

I think it's a more a question of hardware AND how you have Sacred 2 configured. Having certain things - like elite graphics, PhysX, etc... - enabled bogs the game down on lower end hardware like nobody's business. Sometimes, it's just best to just load up the game with bare minimum graphics and have everything else turned off.

 

As far as hard drives go - HATE when that happens. I recall my first hard drive (circa 1992) which was 40 MB... Coming from a system that ran CP/M from 92KB floppies, I figured the space on that hard drive was like an OCEAN of space. Little did I know that 3 months later, I was figuring out what to get rid of as I was running out of disk space. IMO, there's NO such thing as enough disk space. EVAR!

 

Like Kiyeri said, the game runs pretty much flawlessly in XP-32 but I'm trying to narrow down if the issue is only in 64-bit OS's or not. I've read that 32bit games on 64bit have to use a sort of emulation, and they end up using more memory than if they were natively running on 32bit so this could be a major cause of most issues.

 

The game was developed on/for XP-32 though, and Vista was an afterthought. Even with Ice & Blood, latest patches, CM-patches, and every kind of compatibility and/or memory tweak I could find, the game still runs like crap on Vista-64 and Win7-64. (Like I said, constant stuttering, hitching, memory leaks, crashing). The only real solution for modern OS's is to turn off Elite textures and PhysX since those further exacerbate the memory leaks, but I'm looking to get the best Sacred2 experience with those enabled.

 

Well I'll try Win7-32 and Vista-32 over the weekend maybe and post my results here, but I still have my doubts. I think XP-32 is the only way to run the game as intended. (Or possibly XP-64 too, but I can't remember my results from that)

 

It's not exactly an "emulation" - it's a subsystem (kinda like the one that used to be in 32 bit versions of Windows that allowed you to run 16 bit apps back in the day). It's called Win32 SxS (Side by Side).

 

Nor do I think it's really an issue of memory leaks entirely. If you've got 8 GB of RAM, double what 32 bit systems can ever have, you should be able to run quite a long time without having the game run out of memory. I'm thinking it's more a question of having enough horsepower (I.e. CPU & GPU) to run PhysX and Elite Graphics that might be causing the stuttering. To get those running properly, you will need a very fast CPU, AND a top end video subsystem - preferably SLI or Crossfire depending on if you're into NVidia or AMD. We're talking top end i7 quad or hex core.

 

FWIW... If I recall correctly, Sacred 2 was developed in 2006/2007 or so - and if that's the case, Vista was already in the works. Now... There were issues with drivers for Vista during that time. Namely, there was a distinct lack of drivers for many bits of hardware due to the OEMs being unwilling or unable to wrap their heads around the new driver model introduced with Vista.

 

Vista and later versions of Windows use what's called User Mode drivers - which load up with the GUI - and if something crashes, it gets restarted without bombing the entire system. XP, OTOH, uses Kernal mode drivers - which means if something should crash a driver, you will wind up with a BSOD. Whee! Fun! NOT!

 

Also, part of the issue, certain OEMs like Creative Labs were doing some rather uncool things with the drivers for their Xi-Fi range of sound cards. Namely, to get them to work properly, they had to replace some of Windows XP's stock DLLs with hacked versions that weren't nearly as stable as the ones provided by Microsoft. Whoops. Vista sort of cured that problem by blocking anyone from replacing those files. By "sort of", I mean, you could install the XP Kernal mode drivers - but you would be doing so at your own risk - in the interest of backward compatibility.

 

All that said, by the time Windows 7 came around, most of those driver issues were long resolved. Like it or not, the OEMs who were reluctant to accept change found themselves in the position of having to do so or finding their business on the side of the road.

 

Unfortunately, around this time Ascaron went belly up and got sold off. Deep Silver, for better or worse, chose NOT to invest much in Sacred 2 beyond the 2.65.1 and 2.65.2 patches that gave Sacred 2 Ice and Blood Windows 7 compatibility (and was likely in the works at Ascaron when they were shuttered) and a minor patch to fix the chat mode...

 

Had Ascaron survived a bit longer, who knows if there would have been more patches - that would have made the game more compatible with 64 bit Windows...

Edited by wolfie2kX
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