Perfect Dark runs at about 1 frame per second using Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6

Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 seems to work well for most of my games (including GoldenEye) but for some reason I cannot use it with Perfect Dark - the frame rate is just ridiculous, sometimes less than 1 per second. When I use Jabo's Direct3D6 1.52, I get a great framerate (better than with Rice's plugin) but some of the things like the SpyCam are just black screens, which makes some things difficult to do. I have version 1.0 and 1.1 of Perfect Dark according to the ROM details and both have the same problem (I don't even know what the differences are between the two versions anyway).

I've tried playing full-screen, in a window, at low and high resolutions and I've tried ticking and unticking pretty much everything to no avail. Has anyone encountered this before? I don't get why the newer version of the plugin is sooooooooo slow just for these two games - my system is clearly fast enough, evident by the steady 60fps when using the older plugin.


Thanks for any help.

X-Fi6 said:

Proof?

Click to expand...

As I said, with Jabo's Direct3D6 1.52 plugin I can play the game with a very constant frame rate (although there is a bit of slowdown when there are many enemies etc.). Something weird is clearly happening to make it over 60 times slower with the newer plugin.

X-Fi6 said:

What are the specs of your system?

Click to expand...

Intel Core Duo T2300
4GB DDR 667MHz RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X1300
Windows XP Professional SP3

Clements said:

You might want to use Glide64 for the CamSpy/IRScanner parts, provided your video card is suitable.

Click to expand...

I did try that plugin but from what I remember it wasn't very good. Not only was it slow but it didn't support widescreen properly. :/

Well in a situation like this I would update my graphics card drivers but because I have a "mobility" card, you either have to rely on the ones provided by the laptop manufacturer (which is useless, Dell's drivers for this card are 2 years old) or you can use the Mobility Modder to modify the desktop radeon drivers so that they install on machines with mobility radeon cards...however, the program doesn't work properly for the latest drivers so I'm stuck with the ones I've got for now.

I know it's not necessary to have the Camspy etc (in fact I'm on the last mission now and I've made it fine so far) but I was just curious as to what could be causing this, plus I assumed there might be some improvements in the rendering with the newer version.

By the way, I've never tested Jabo's D3D8 plugin during "regular gameplay" because I've never got past the Nintendo logo - it'd take years lol.

Oh, they've actually let people install their mobility drivers again? They used to work and then about a year ago they stopped working (the installer would say that you need to visit your laptop manufacturer's site for driver downloads), at least for certain OEMs/cards.

I'll try it now.

EDIT: Nope, still the same uber slowness with the newest drivers. DList is at near 100% all of the time, even during the "product identification" stuff at the beginning. By comparison, DList is at less than 10% using the 1.52 plugin during this part.

No effect...

OK I downloaded Glide64 Napalm and it runs the game generally more smoothly than Jabo's D3D6 1.52 plugin and also renders the CamSpy properly (haven't tested any other special effects), albeit with a lot of slowdown.

However, there are problems. Firstly, it won't run in full screen - the screen is just black and when I revert to windowed mode it stays that way and I have to close/re-open Project64. Secondly, it doesn't support widescreen full-screen resolutions like 1280x720 that I like to use, even if full-screen mode worked.

EDIT: I tried using the wrapper and plugin found here but this plugin also has some really weird problems. Firstly, when in full-screen mode, everything is upside down...., secondly, while is supports widescreen resolutions, it just centres a 4:3 image in the 16:9 frame. This would be fine for 4:3 games but Perfect Dark can be run in anamorphic 16:9 mode and the plugin doesn't correct for this. Thirdly, sometimes when turning around, everything apart from the guns, UI, etc. will just go black.

So basically, Glide64 just doesn't work properly for me.

A little update: I've tried Project64 1.7.0.49 Beta with the included graphics plugin Jabo's Direct3D8 1.7.0.53 and it's about the same speed as Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 under Project64 1.6.

On a slightly better note, I managed to find a better audio plugin to stop the stuttering every few seconds. Still, it would be nice to use newer graphics plugins. <_<