Gaming - DirectX 9 - XPe device

[Kristoffer Jepsen]

I'm trying to make a XPe that would run DirectX 9 Games for a gaming café. I
have managed to get DirectX9 installed on the platform, as have i installed
my video driver ( ATI RADEON Mobility 7500) However... the Frame rates in
the game (Americas Army) when compared to the same maschine with XP Pro is
really bad! What am i missing here? what else then DirectX 9 and the video
drivers are needed? any ideas? is it the disk performance? display? Memory?
Pagefile. have any of you guys tried doing this kind og device before?

/kris

 

[KM]

Kristoffer,

I guess if nobody has tried the game on XPe, you are on your own.
Exploring the app (Filemon/Regmon tools) you may be able to answer your own question - what's missing.

I know there are quite a few Gaming platforms based on XPe. But each game is an app by itself.

 

[Kristoffer Jepsen]

Yes I have noticed....
What are tose tools you mention?

 

[Kristoffer Jepsen]

I will try to post my progress here... im starting with the minlogon sample
macro.

 

[KM]

Kristoffer,

Regmon - registry monitoring tool,
Filemon - file access monitoring tool.

www.sysinternals.com

 

[KM]

Also, you will definitely need Dependency Walker 2.0 or higher. MS tool to explore PE file dependencies.

Search google for the tool download.

 

[Kristoffer Jepsen]

sorry for being a newbie, but PE File?

Also, you will definitely need Dependency Walker 2.0 or higher. MS tool

to explore PE file dependencies.

 

[KM]

Kristoffer,

PE - Portable Executable - executable (image) file (.exe, .dll, etc.).
Download and review MS PE&COFF specification.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/hardware/pecoffdown.mspx

 

[Lucvdv]

Kristoffer,

Regmon - registry monitoring tool,
Filemon - file access monitoring tool.

www.sysinternals.com

Kristoffer,

Those tools are perfect for looking analyzing applications that access
files or the registry a lot, but in this case, I think windows' own
performance monitor may be a better choice.

Maybe it's not a bad idea either to run the DirectX Caps Viewer from
the DX9 SDK on both platforms, and compare the capabilities it
reports. You probably used the display driver that came with XPe: did
you install a newer version in XP Pro? It could be that you need it
to get full DX9 support.


Use performance monitor to log CPU use, pagefile use (if you have
one),... to a file while the game is running, or if there's a network
connection, monitor it in real time on another machine.
I wouldn't try to display the graph in real time on the game machine,
as the added overhead may disfigure the results: I've seen it happen
that opening another window on top of DirectX introduced a tremendous
penalty on frame rate and CPU use, even depending on which window the
mouse pointer was over.
The game probably runs full screen anyway, so it won't be possible to
see the performance graphs.


Speaking of a pagefile, XPe doesn't use one by default: did you add
one to the configuration? Game applications are usually rather
hungry, try and see if adding more RAM or a pagefile makes a
difference.

 

[KM]

I always like a fresh view on a post

I haven't read the post carefully and gave pretty standard reply.
Filemon/Regmon tool are definitely good but may show tooheavy output in this
case.

Kristoffer, beside the great suggestions from Lucvdv, you may also try some
DirectX diagnostic tools from MS (Dxdiag.exe) and from your video card
manufacturer. E.g.,
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q190900 and
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4236.html.

The best for you might even be a testing of particular DirectX interfaces
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/directx9_c/directx/intro/tools/dxto
ols.asp).

KM

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Lucvdv,

Beside new driver (non MS one) having valid GART driver is a must.

Best regards,
Slobodan

 

[Kristoffer Jepsen]

This is cool guys, i have alot to work with now... however i broke my build
in the meantime H EHE... now all i get is a BSOD upon boot.... go figure