Is Zero Hour really this crappy? (laggy)

[Exmortis 0]

I have read through here and at least half a dozen other sites, and it appears that C&C:ZH is just a useless game put together by a bunch of back room hacks at EA. Once again I am reminded why for the past year I have not bought one game from these idjits. I pick a nice looking game, i see EA symbol, I put it right back on the shelf and move along.

 

I have had generals for some time and been haven fun, I bought it solely due to my roomie wanting to play multi-player, and threw out my better judgement and bought an EA game. I felt dirty. But to my surprise it was relatively fun and really liked co-op play. So we buy ZH, and yes once again its typicial EA crappola. Laggy, crashy, and just out right unplayable.

 

I have a:

AMD 3200+ (2200MHz for the layman)

1GB 400MHz Kingston Ram (CAS 3-3-3 anymore is wasted cash)

A7v600 MB

Radeon 8500 (yes weak point but runs X2 and IL-2 Sturmovik ok)

Caviar SE 1200JD (thats a SATA drive)

Windows XP PRO SP2

CAT 4.9 Radeon drivers

Lian-Li Aluminum case all fans installed, True power PS dual fans.

 

Roomie

Intel P4 2.4GHz (yeah crap intel, bought it before i knew him)

512MB RAM

Radeon 9200

Windows XP Home SP2

Cat 4.9 radeon drivers

all fans, even took sides off and put big house fan blowing to ensure not a heat issue.

 

We use a Linksys BEFSR41 Broadband router lastest firmware, and D-Link 10/100 switch between us.

 

Generals played very well, almost no slow downs even with 8 players, us and 6 computers. After a whole night of problems getting ZH to work, re-installed and changes (Vsync to 75? WTF is EA up too? Can no one in that company program?). We finally make it work, and to our total disappointment nothing but unplayable lag from the game. Eventually the lag gets so bad we quit or one of our computers reboots/crashes.

 

It is not an over heating issue. I assure you, it isn't on mine and we even tested that theory on my roommates. I play any other game I own for hours, even CIVIII:PTW which is so laggy on mulit-player you would think it was an EA game (yes not a resource hog). 3DMARK will run as long as I let it, full day no problems, and it works my system much harder then C&C. I use this program alot to stress test, its a great way to stress test your system if you think is over heating or if stability is weak.

 

What I am looking for is there any way to track this down? Does everyone here just play it through the lag? or has everyone just gone back to straight vanilla Generals? How does any actually play this expansion?

 

EA complains about lack luster PC game sales.......Are they stupid? or just think we are. Unless C&C:ZH is fixed, they can count two less copies of C&C sold.

 

Back to the personal EA ban. Unless help here is found.

[chickendippers 1]

I've never had any problems running Generals or Zero Hour on either of my comps (both my Athlon 2500+ and my P3 700Mhz).

No problems with Need for Speed either.

[Doctor Destiny 41]

I've not had any problems with Zero Hour. I even got it running on my P3 like chickendippers did. Maybe you just need to tone down the particle details/rendering setting.

[Cyborg_Commando 0]

I had a little prob

but all it took was to just update my graphics driver

[Guest Azerael]

If it lags, re-install it. Might be a glitch. C&C Generals is the only RTS worth playing that has been released recently, better luck with Borecraft 3, eh?

[Saracen 16]

Perimeter *COUGH* :wink:

[Koen 2]

Perimeter *COUGH* :wink:

*HINT* *HINT*

[Guest]

I've actually had the same problem.

[GeneralZ 0]

i had lag problems with my ZH when i first played it. It tended to crash after half-hour of playtime. it would crash when loading when patched. I left it alone for a week, and when i went back to it, it was fine, no crash, patch worked fine, no lag. I still don't know why it ran smoother. But i play it now with no problems, except the occasional crash when playing or versing supw general.

[Hans5849 0]

well, you sound like you know your stuff (except that AMD thing), so im going to rule out substanderd hardware. I can't really think of any problems with your system, come on now your roomie has a better card than you and his is probably a boxed system.