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Season 1 problem I was too lazy to post about...

TrogLlamaTrogLlama
edited August 2007 in Game Support
Whenever I play any of the Season 1 games, I end up having to wait about two minutes (or maybe it just SEEMS like that...) to change locations. I'm staring at the screen and listening to stuttering music tracks, wondering what's going on.
Changing the graphics to low does nothing.
I believe the problem to be related to my 503 MB of RAM, but I'm not quite sure.

Comments

  • AdamGAdamG
    edited August 2007
    503MB? That's the most oddball combination of memory size I've heard of, in well, ever, I think. :/ Yes, you could get some memory issues with a combination like that because OSes and games just aren't usually made to handle that kind of memory size. Sometimes they will work ok, but sometimes they won't work at all, or you'll have problems like this. It's most likely what's causing the problem.

    Do you know what size/type all of your memory modules are?
  • Harald BHarald B
    edited August 2007
    If they are normal sized modules, it's probably 256 + 128 + 64 + 32 + 16 + 8 (losing 1MB through rounding error), which is a pretty insane setup. Or if there are eight memory slots involved slots it might be something more bizarre like 256 + 128 + 64 + 32 + 16 + 4 + 2 + 1.
    TrogLlama, if you get similar issues with other games and the os in general, you may want to try using only the 256MB and 128MB modules. It's hardly an ideal fix, but if it helps at least you'll know what the problem is.
  • marsanmarsan
    edited August 2007
    I'm getting curious what kind of motherboard you got which handles such bizarre combination of memory modules... not to mention so many of them. I think all of the motherboards I've had the last 7 years doesn't handle memory modules below 64 mb(except the first one, which handled 32 mb modules I think). The motherboard I had before that had something like 72 mb of memory(something like 8 + 16 + 16 + 32), and that was after I had filled all the memory slots.

    Do you know what type of memory you got as well?

    Harald B: isn't it more logical that he has two 256 mb memory modules(256 + 256 = 512) or four 128 mb RAM modules and that he has some problems with one of the memory modules which prevents him from using the last 9 mb of the memory he got. I'm not sure what that would, perhaps a damaged memory module or a misconfigured BIOS(or a faulty BIOS). Perhaps such could happen if one mixes a lot of different types of memory modules too(different speeds and different types).
  • TrogLlamaTrogLlama
    edited August 2007
    AdamG wrote: »
    503MB? That's the most oddball combination of memory size I've heard of, in well, ever, I think. :/ Yes, you could get some memory issues with a combination like that because OSes and games just aren't usually made to handle that kind of memory size. Sometimes they will work ok, but sometimes they won't work at all, or you'll have problems like this. It's most likely what's causing the problem.

    Do you know what size/type all of your memory modules are?

    It seemed pretty odd to me, as well, but...
    ramcountub9.png
    Okay, so it's 504. I think that some of my memory is just acting screwy or something, and I know I've had problems where my compy wouldn't boot up and the only solution was to pop the memory out and back into its slot.
    Also, the only memory modules I have are the ones that came preinstalled.
  • AdamGAdamG
    edited August 2007
    Is it a Dell or HP? That would explain everything. :/ I suggest you take all of your memory modules out, look them over, and write down the all the information you can find listed on each one. As always, handle just the edges of the modules and be careful not to zap anything. After you're done, tell us everything you can about your memory modules.

    One thing is certain, you have some bizzare memory. Maybe some of the memory chips on one of the modules failed, and for some reason the rest still work? I don't know how that could happen though. I'm sure there is some kind of built in protection for that. I bet your memory is from some wierd memory manufacturer in China that no one has ever heard of.

    Marsan has a good point about your motherboard. It's very possible that there is a problem with it. If there is, then it would have to be replaced. When you examine your memory modules, be sure to find out as much about your motherboard as you can too. It could also be a misconfiguration in your BIOS, but this is most likely a hardware issue.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited August 2007
    Does this happen every single time you change environments, or only the first time per play session that you visit an environment? For instance, if you go to Bosco's once, does it have a huge load, but then the second time you visit, it comes up very quickly? Or is it always slow.
  • TrogLlamaTrogLlama
    edited August 2007
    Jake wrote: »
    Does this happen every single time you change environments, or only the first time per play session that you visit an environment? For instance, if you go to Bosco's once, does it have a huge load, but then the second time you visit, it comes up very quickly? Or is it always slow.

    Almost always. Sometimes it's just a couple of seconds and pretty smooth transitioning, but that's rare.
    Also, I just remembered that the fact that the audio always stuttered led me to suspecting the problem to be related to loading the music.
  • xChri5xxChri5x
    edited August 2007
    It used to do that for me when i only had 256, but then I upgraded to 768 and it's alot better. Although some places do lag. Especially at the white house.
    The odd thing I don't get is that when I'm not running anything my computer is still using up about 256mb's of ram or more. I'm baffled.
  • fpostmafpostma
    edited August 2007
    xChri5x wrote: »
    It used to do that for me when i only had 256, but then I upgraded to 768 and it's alot better. Although some places do lag. Especially at the white house.
    The odd thing I don't get is that when I'm not running anything my computer is still using up about 256mb's of ram or more. I'm baffled.

    That is because you still run windows or any operating system. That's not 'free' or something :) The only time you do not use memory is when the system is turned off.

    TrogLlama, it's not that surprising that most transitions are slow. They probably can not be cached/stored into memory so every location has to be loaded from disk. Sometimes you might get lucky when you do location1->location2->location1.

    Do you know what type of mainboard and graphics card you have?
    (could be the gfx card uses main-memory)
  • TrogLlamaTrogLlama
    edited August 2007
    fpostma wrote: »
    That is because you still run windows or any operating system. That's not 'free' or something :) The only time you do not use memory is when the system is turned off.

    TrogLlama, it's not that surprising that most transitions are slow. They probably can not be cached/stored into memory so every location has to be loaded from disk. Sometimes you might get lucky when you do location1->location2->location1.

    Do you know what type of mainboard and graphics card you have?
    (could be the gfx card uses main-memory)

    I've got a crappy built-in graphics card. I generally don't play computer games that end up being graphics-heavy, so it's not been a big problem as of yet.
  • fpostmafpostma
    edited August 2007
    TrogLlama wrote: »
    I've got a crappy built-in graphics card. I generally don't play computer games that end up being graphics-heavy, so it's not been a big problem as of yet.

    It does explain your strange memory-available number though :)

    Besides, a lot of people underestimate graphic demands from Sam & Max. It may not be a FAST game but has quite a lot of data which it needs to store somewhere.

    Upgrading your memory to 1Gb should help a LOT with the slowness. Initial location loading will still take time, but after that you can walk around much easier.
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