Framerate drop when casting Mana Drain

[HAWKfeather]

Some guy and me were at spider Cave in Tasengard, he was fighting there and i mana draining and we experienced, that in a certain location there, casting mana drain had a significant effect on the framerate. Location was the room at the end of that cave, the one with this coloumn of light inside

 

The effect was on both systems, he having a Gforce 9600 and me a Gforce 9500, my framerate which is constant about 60, was dropping down to 3 or 4 when casting, his was dropping from about 200 to 30.

 

My guessing is, that this is related to that coloumn of light which is at the end of that room, but not sure.

Edited February 23, 2009 by HAWKfeather

[Entropy]

The particles are big CPU drains.. but shouldn't drop that much.. Does it happen under different circumstances?

[Florian]

Mana drain uses 16 particles and hasn't been changed since Jul 8 2008.

 

Some Gfx cards suck when too many transparent particles overlap, which happens when mana drain particles fly in front of a teleporter, for example.

[HAWKfeather]

Mana drain uses 16 particles and hasn't been changed since Jul 8 2008.

 

Some Gfx cards suck when too many transparent particles overlap, which happens when mana drain particles fly in front of a teleporter, for example.

 

Tryed it again today with different camera views. It occurs in that room and in the part of the cave which is near the teleport behind the wall, but it is not necessary, that the lightcoloum is on the screen. Even with the teleport in the back and zoomed in, so that no part of it is visible, frames drop from 60 to 14, normally casting MD make a drop from 60 to 56.

Maybe calculating the light reflections from the coloumn uses too much of the CPU I guess.

 

CPU load in the cave with two spides near 25 % / MD --> 82 %

CPU load in that room, not looking at the coloumn with two spiders 69 % MD --> 100 %

 

Sempron 3200+; 2 GByte; Geforce 9500 512 MByte

 

Strange is, that it also drops on the system of that other guy, cause he said, he has a dual core CPU

Edited February 24, 2009 by HAWKfeather