Framerate problems in high population areas

I notice a drastic slowdown in framerate when I am in highly populated areas or where there is a lot of action. Has anyone else noticed this being a pain? I have an outdated graphics card (8800GT) and I am running 64bit Win7 on my Core2 Duo. It seems to handle the game fine on ultra when there is nobody around, but things get hairy when a lot of people join in on the action. Just curious what everyone else is seeing..

In WAR, I know I could disable spell effects on everyone besides myself. Is there a similar option available in Rift? Any other tips for handling this issue besides lowering the quality slider?

How much RAM are you running? You probably should upgrade that card - you can get a 200 series Geforce for fairly cheap now.

Personally I run with a very high-end setup with everything maxxed out with no problems, so I can't really compare what I see to yours. An option would be to lower the shadow settings - that has notoriously been a resource hog since it renders moving objects constantly.

Yes, that happens to pretty much everyone I believe. You bring lots of player models and mobs together to render, performance tanks.

Make sure you have the character shadows off, turn down spell detail, etc. I agree it would be handy to be able to set spell effects self (or maybe group, etc), but I haven't seen any such option yet.

Kiylie - 4GB I am thinking of upgrading that soon, but not sure whether I should spend my money first on a new video card.

I will try out your suggestions on shadows and spell detail. Please continue to weigh in if you have new ideas to add!

To be completely honest both your CPU and GPU are and Gamebryo is not very forgiving of bottlenecks :)

Shadows, V Sync, and AA you will want to make sure are off. That'll give you the best bang for buck on performance.

I would replace that graphics card first and then get more ram later when you can. A Core2 duo is also a bit outdated now, but you should be able to make do with it as long as you get a new video card.

Boy is this a timely topic....

I've got an older Core 2 Quad CPU (6600) and did notice that when I was in the beta that my frame-rates were not where I'd like them to be with everything set to Ultra. The game engine itself seems to be very inconsistent with regards to frame-rates. At the time I was using a GTX 280 vid card.

I switched to a GTX570. The frame-rates are still not really all that much better vs the GTX280, especially when there is a large rift going on with many players around. Being the computer addict that I am I popped in a second GTX570 and am running them in SLI mode. To be honest I still am not getting all that spectacular frame-rates from this game engine that I would have thought I would. Not only that, when you run your cards in an SLI setup you can turn on an overlay that will show you how much each card is being utilized in a game. Again I have found that Rift is very inconsistent. The overlay will show wide variances as to when both cards are being used and there doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern. Best part is you would figure with having that type of video setup I could run everything maxed with AA enabled and so forth but without AA I'm lucky to get about 15 FPS in crowded areas.

After doing a lot of reading on the Rift forums and so forth I'm pretty sure that I am now CPU and board limited in regards to the frame-rates of the game. This weekend will be a good indicator as to the truth of that as I am putting together a new system that should bring this game to heel. Hopefully if things go as planned I should be on Saturday night doing some testing, if not Sunday for sure and I will keep you posted as to the results.

This game is CPU and GPU intensive. I was having this issue as well, I couldnt figure it out. Med/high/ultra made little difference framerate wise for me. I have a Quad Core Athlon X2 2.8Ghz, 8GB DDR3, Radeon HD 5770 1GB video card. So I decided to OC my CPU. I went to 3.2Ghz, same settings and saw a 15-20fps gain. From what I've read and experienced you're going to need 3.4Ghz or higher CPU to get 50+ FPS on high/ultra.

OK.... finally got the new system up and running and tested it out tonight....

WOW......

With the new system I can run the settings on Ultra with super-sampling enabled and I don't think I dipped below 40 FPS, even with raids and several people on screen at the same time. I was seeing frame-rates over 100fps in some areas. It was incredible.

I understand fully that not everyone can go out and update their entire system to get good frame-rates. My purpose was mainly to demonstrate that just updating your graphics card might not do much for your FPS if you are running an older system...

great info Dellerane! you may have saved me some cash on buying a graphics card and expecting results.

out of curiosity, what kind of hardware is your latest and greatest PC running? i am thinking it is about time i rebuild my PC.

Old System: Quad core CPU 9450 (2.6 ghz)
EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI
GTX 280 (then 2 GTX 570's)
6 gig DDR 3 1600 mhz

New system: I-7 2600k (sandybridge) 3.4 ghz
Asus Sabertooth P67 mainboard
Corsair Vengeance DDR 3 1600mhz (8 gig)
(2) GTX 570's in SLI mode

Both systems are running Windows 7-64 bit (Home premium on the older setup and Professional on the new). As I noted above I tried one, then both of the GTX 570s on the older board and it didn't make a whole lot of difference compared to the new system.