Shadow artifacts and low framerate

[Miss Joanna]

I have a GTX 660, AMD-6120 FX six core, and 10 GB of RAM (yes I'm aware that's an odd amount of RAM, I don't want to explain it), WELL above what's recommended to run this game, but yet the game constantly give me shadow artifacts and a low framerate. And before you ask, yes my drivers are all completely up-to-date. (I also play at a 1600x900 resolution)

The shadow issue is that shadows seem to "break away" from items they are meant to be connected to and follow the camera, and the framerate issue is that the game loves ot drop down to something like 10-15 FPS constantly. This game is about 8 years old now, I can't really see why it'd lag this much on a more modern rig (I don't even get lag like this in much more demanding modern games like Metro: Last Light). And yes I tried this on both the highest graphics settings and lowest settings, and no matter what it's the same thing.

[KomdivCCCP]

1. Do you run it on windows 8.1? Did you install OpenAl driver? I think game's performance improved when i installed it.

2. Do you have shadows like on my screenshot? I think everyone with hardware new enough, experience it. No real solution was found to fix it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=323071904

[Miss Joanna]

I use WIndows 7, and huh I didn't know installing an OpenAL driver was a thing I could do (I'm so used to most games using DirectX or occsionally OpenGL [which is mostly used by id Tech powered games]).

And yes that's about what they look like. I suppose I can deal with the wonky shadows, but yeah this poor framerate is really annoying. Any tips on the whole OpenAL driver thing? Obviously I've never done that before and just need to make sure I don't accidentally screw something up.

[KomdivCCCP]

You can install OpenAL driver from:
Steam\SteamApps\common\El Matador\_CommonRedist, but personally i prefered to install more fresh version from: http://support.focus-home.fr/oalinst.exe
Still, i'm not sure that it will help you at all, because i have intel's core i5 3570k and looks like amd's cpus have more issues to run this game.

[Miss Joanna]

I installed a fresh OpenAL with the link you provided and then booted up the game and yeah unfortunately it didn't help. Guess maybe it is an issue with AMD CPUs. Real quick I will say it is a bit odd how the low framerate works, because it only seems to happen when looking in certain directions. For reference, when I start up the tutorial the framerate REALLY begins chugging if the camera is looking towards the shooting range. I don't know why, for some reason looking in that specific direction causes the framerate to go to crap in that specific area.

[Miss Joanna]

MAJOR UPDATE: Oh holy crap I JUST figured out how to fix the framerate problem!

Recently I learned that I can set an program's affinity in task manager on how many CPU cores to use, mostly for certain older games that don't run well on more than one or two cores (like Blood Omen 2, the game crashes if it's not running on only one core). So for the heck of it I booted up the game, checked task manager, and clicked "set affinity." Turns out that by default this game boots up with only one CPU set for it's affinity. I instead altered the affinity to use all six cores and BAM the game suddenly runs at a smooth 60 FPS!

Now I didn't test this for long so I can't confirm the possibility of this maybe causing a crash, but wow I'm surprised I managed to figure this out on my own.

[KomdivCCCP]

Did you try very first stage in nightclub? FPS still drops for me to mid 30 when gunfights starts(with vsync enabled in video driver).

[Miss Joanna]

With my CPU affinity set to use all six of my CPUs cores I mantained a pretty smooth 60 during that level (and I also have vsync forced via the nvidia control panel since the game itself doesn't have a native option).

I see your CPU is a quad core, but I'm unsure if the fact you have two less cores than I do has something to do with it, sorry.

[ttttt]

im at 1000 fps at load, 60 playing yet it shuts down and ♥♥♥♥♥ awful

[KomdivCCCP]

Well, it never crashed for me yet, without vsync i have 200 fps in quiet scenes, but it drops to 80-70 in action. Also i experience some audio crackling/stuttering in cutscenes.

[BruceCheE]

how to disable the shadows completely? i tried various things in the core config file but nothing happens. it´s still rendering shadows out of hell.

[LostPants]

It's was really laggy until I set the affinity to all 4 cores. Shadows are still bad, but atleast it's playable now..

I have Win 7 Ultimate 64bit
Intel Core i7-6600k @ 4.50ghz
Nvidia GTX 970 4gb
8gb DDR4 ram

So shouldnt be because I would have bad specs. This game is just poorly made. :D

[KomdivCCCP]

Well, it worked fine when it was released, so it's just one of the old games with compatiblity issues on modern OS/hardware.

[O4THBREAK3R]

Originally posted by SubjectDeltaZero:

MAJOR UPDATE: Oh holy crap I JUST figured out how to fix the framerate problem!

Recently I learned that I can set an program's affinity in task manager on how many CPU cores to use, mostly for certain older games that don't run well on more than one or two cores (like Blood Omen 2, the game crashes if it's not running on only one core). So for the heck of it I booted up the game, checked task manager, and clicked "set affinity." Turns out that by default this game boots up with only one CPU set for it's affinity. I instead altered the affinity to use all six cores and BAM the game suddenly runs at a smooth 60 FPS!

Now I didn't test this for long so I can't confirm the possibility of this maybe causing a crash, but wow I'm surprised I managed to figure this out on my own.

WORKED FOR ME TOO!!

Thank you very much for the help!!

[ﾚの尺り]

Originally posted by cruzfilho92:

Originally posted by SubjectDeltaZero:

MAJOR UPDATE: Oh holy crap I JUST figured out how to fix the framerate problem!

Recently I learned that I can set an program's affinity in task manager on how many CPU cores to use, mostly for certain older games that don't run well on more than one or two cores (like Blood Omen 2, the game crashes if it's not running on only one core). So for the heck of it I booted up the game, checked task manager, and clicked "set affinity." Turns out that by default this game boots up with only one CPU set for it's affinity. I instead altered the affinity to use all six cores and BAM the game suddenly runs at a smooth 60 FPS!

Now I didn't test this for long so I can't confirm the possibility of this maybe causing a crash, but wow I'm surprised I managed to figure this out on my own.

WORKED FOR ME TOO!!

Thank you very much for the help!!

It's work for me too

[Deathstruck]

Sorry for reviving this topic, but I manages to fix both using the Widescreen patch. Fixed my HUD as well.

https://www.wsgf.org/dr/el-matador

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1496-el-matador-fov-and-hud-fix/