Mass Effect 1 running very slow/lag

[lotusmonk]

Hello, newbie here.
I just bought a new laptop so I was thinking of working through my long "to play" list which dates back to 2005. I´ve bought a couple of games and really looked forward to Mass Effect. Yesterday I installed it and found that it´s unplayable and running very slow (despite that I run Bioshock 2 perfectly and the test at game-debate.com says I should be able to run it with mid-high settings: {HIVATKOZÁS TÖRÖLVE}http://bit.ly/V4QiYM ).
My specs are i5 3210 (laptop), 6GB ram and integrated intel HD4000 graphics (I know, not the best but works).
Would anyone be able to help me out with this? Is there anything I can do that does not involve buying a new video card/pc?

[peter purvis]

... I got exactly the same problem ... running Bioshock 2 at 60 - 70 fps ... Mass Effect is running around 20 fps, sometimes dropping to 5 fps. Changing the settings from ultra-high to ultra-low to anywhere inbetween makes no difference. I've tried messing with Nvidia control panel settings and everything else I can think of, but it's still crawling along.
I'm running XP with 2GB ram, AMD Athlon 64 5600 and Nvidia 8800 GT. My specs aren't great but I ought to be able to run ME comfortably.

[lotusmonk]

Hi Peter. I am sorry to hear you have troubles too.. but kinda glad that I am not alone in this. I have been looking for a reason and I´ve been told that my integrated intel HD 4000 is most probably the cause. Since then I tried Fallout3 which did not want to run but after downloading a workaround .dll it came on. So I am thinking if there is any workaround for ME1...

[Raz]

Its a CPU thing. Your computers are too 'good', as weird as it sounds.

Mass Effect only uses one core, and even years later its still not quite optimized properly.
(Trying to set it to 2 cores just makes the game freeze up)

Try setting the compatibility mode to 'XP service pack 2'. Not 3. Make sure its 2.
I know that usually doesn't do anything useful for most games, but in this case it actually works fairly well.
It cleared up a handful of little issues I was having with it.
(Sadly not the infamous 'black texture' bug though)

Its a quirky little game to get working, but its well worth it.

[peter purvis]

... bah, it's got me beat ... i've tried everything I can think of ... but I got to play it before I play ME2 (which runs fine by the way) ... my best compromise is to go offline, run it with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ settings, with steam in offline mode and turn off some security stuff like firewall and peerblock ... it don't look good, but (for most of the time) I can just about get a playable frame rate ...

[lotusmonk]

IT WORKS!! Razrien! I tried the fix with compatibility mode XP sp2 and got nowhere, but now (after trying out ME3 demo and seeing how awesome it is) I tried it with Vista SP1 and it works!! :D

[Raz]

lotusmonk eredeti hozzászólása:

IT WORKS!! Razrien! I tried the fix with compatibility mode XP sp2 and got nowhere, but now (after trying out ME3 demo and seeing how awesome it is) I tried it with Vista SP1 and it works!! :D

Congrats :)

[peter purvis]

... yes, glad you got it going ...

[lotusmonk]

eeh.. for some reason it was back to square one the next day.. no idea why. I tried restarting, other compatibility modes, disabling CPU cores, everything I could find but haven´t been able to reproduce that one time that it ran smoothly.. I have been able to run it on my older laptop however, so I am playing it there..

[Scrapjack]

Sadly it's a "normal" thing, Mass Effect 1 was a very ♥♥♥♥♥♥ port very ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ optimized. There's literally no way to run it really well unless using super low setting or a super powerful pc.

[Klutch]

Computers should be optimized for games, unfortunately most basic models will be balanced for other uses. The best advice I could give you is to start with all graphical settings at the lowest, excepting resolution it should be at Native. Second I would suggest doing some research on your processor and games, For instance on mine I have a AMD processor and graphics card, can run extra fast on one processor, I just need to configure it inside the Cataylist Control Center. And thirdly, laptops will always crap out when you need them to work, its kind of like a car with no low gears, it drives fine on flat surfaces but give it a hill and well, you get the picture.

[Arran]

Razrien eredeti hozzászólása:

Its a CPU thing. Your computers are too 'good', as weird as it sounds.

Mass Effect only uses one core, and even years later its still not quite optimized properly.
(Trying to set it to 2 cores just makes the game freeze up)

Try setting the compatibility mode to 'XP service pack 2'. Not 3. Make sure its 2.
I know that usually doesn't do anything useful for most games, but in this case it actually works fairly well.
It cleared up a handful of little issues I was having with it.
(Sadly not the infamous 'black texture' bug though)

Its a quirky little game to get working, but its well worth it.

Worked perfectly, thank you very much, mine was at an estimated 5-10 fps and I didn't want to just skip to 2. Came back to thank you while a hi-res texture mod downloads.

[Raz]

horselips48 eredeti hozzászólása:

Razrien eredeti hozzászólása:

Its a CPU thing. Your computers are too 'good', as weird as it sounds.

Mass Effect only uses one core, and even years later its still not quite optimized properly.
(Trying to set it to 2 cores just makes the game freeze up)

Try setting the compatibility mode to 'XP service pack 2'. Not 3. Make sure its 2.
I know that usually doesn't do anything useful for most games, but in this case it actually works fairly well.
It cleared up a handful of little issues I was having with it.
(Sadly not the infamous 'black texture' bug though)

Its a quirky little game to get working, but its well worth it.

Worked perfectly, thank you very much, mine was at an estimated 5-10 fps and I didn't want to just skip to 2. Came back to thank you while a hi-res texture mod downloads.

You're very welcome :)

[Hernok]

I have a lot of problems with this game with windows XP, but with the same pc, and Windows 7, all problems was gone.

[Start_Running]

Here's an idea...change the filtering to point or linear and ... open dxdiag and run all the tests n your graphics card.

Conversely you can try, uninstalling, and then going into Prog > Steam> Steam App>Common and Deleting the Mass Effect Folder (after you've uninstalled. it from the menu. Then reinstall it.

[DrowningBlue]

I found a sure fix. This is an ENB. http://www.enbdev.com/download_mod_generic.htm Download the zip and put the contents of the Wrapper version into the same directory as the masseffect.exe. (Binaries folder) If installed correctly the game should take a bit longer to start and you should see some green text to the left once the intro video starts. In the citadel I got 30 FPS, now I get 100+. Also this wouldn't hurt to install either http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachment.php?s=c8cee3b4b64c5e6db630775da1b15062&attachmentid=34392&d=1269231650 . Just open it up and point it to your masseffect.exe, then check the box. This allows the game to use more than 2 GB of ram. I am using the Origin version (I know...) but I'm pretty sure it should be the same with the Steam version.