Full Game with Demos affecting Performance?

[Riotlung]

I remember reading somewhere sometime ago that installing the game when the demo is there could affect the installation or running of the game. Problem is, I've actually done all that for all the 4 games, and I've uninstalled the demos as well. Would I need to reinstall the main game since I'm noticing that the game is running more poorly on my desktop (where the demos were once installed) than on my laptop (no demos)?

The Soulstorm demo did encounter performance issues on my computer, however.

[TBS]

Having previously had the demos installed wont cause performance issues. You should update your graphics card drivers and I would suggest that four partitions is probably a bit excessive, but otherwise your PC seems ok.

How bad is the performance?

[Riotlung]

Okay, having read that the latest forceware drivers do not cause Neverwinter Nights and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory to have severe graphical glitches, I updated. The main menu used to be capped at 75 FPS before the update, but now it shoots up to 100 plus. I start up a game as Dark Eldar 8 players Demes Northlands Quick-Start.

The game starts out with average 100 FPS, and then starts to drop quickly to about 60 on average. 2 minutes into the game, it starts to enter the 40+ range. In battle, I start to hit 20 or 10 FPS. In huge battles, I'm below 10.

I'm running all Low settings, except for Medium Textures, and Full 3D camera. Everything else is Low or None, including Shadows and Persistent Bodies/Scarring.

Regarding 4 Partitions, no, it's 2 different hard disks, each partitioned into 2, which makes 4 drives. Dawn of War and all the expansions were installed on the newer hard disk.

I've attached the updated dxdiag file. Help!

[Riotlung]

I'm quite anxious to find a fix to this. Does anybody have any solutions? I've disabled vsync, and I've set my maximum prerendered frames to 0 (and it seems to improve the FPS by a tiny little bit). A fight between an Archon with 3 Incubi, 2 full Mandrake squads (no poisoned blades), a full Warrior Squad against about 9 CSMs, a Chaos Lord, some Cultists and 2 Listening Posts (one with turret) early game brought be to minimum 12 FPS.

Hard disk has been defragmented. Is it as simple as the GeForce 6600 LE being way too lousy a video card to give me half decent performance in Dawn of War?

[Kapp'n]

Is it as simple as the GeForce 6600 LE being way too lousy a video card to give me half decent performance in Dawn of War?

My second computer has a 6600 and can run the game on highest fine, and the rest of the spec is worse that the one in your computer. Your card is alittle dated now but I wouldnt have thought it was a hardware problem (only perhaps those partions)

[Riotlung]

A 6600 LE is weaker than a 6600 if I'm not wrong.

Would installing Dawn of War on the hard disk that has Windows on it (ie C: and D: ) make it better? I'd guess reformatting and reinstalling Windows isn't going to help at all.

[TBS]

Reformatting can help performance, some people like to do it every few months - if youre happy to do that then its worth trying.

Remember that the system registry is part of windows - any software you have installed to other drives should be reinstalled as well.

[Kapp'n]

A 6600 LE is weaker than a 6600 if I'm not wrong
Perhaps, but I cant see it having a big difference in performance running DoW.

[Riotlung]

Perhaps it really isn't the graphic card then...

In any case, I'm going to reformat the desktop tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm playing the game on my laptop, with RAM upgraded to 2 GB to kill the loading problem (it was at 512 MB previously). So even if the reformat doesn't work out, my laptop will play it darn fine. I'm keeping the settings low to ensure smooth and consistent FPS, though I can't help but keep Textures at Medium and bring FX to Medium.
(Note: The demos have never been installed on my laptop before...)