Why does SafeDisk screw with my game performance?

[GothicOne]

I have no performance issues with RTCW, America's Army, Unreal Tournament 2003, MechWarrior4, Morrowind, Star Trek Elite Force, all Rainbow Six series games. I own all of these titles and more and have no issues at 1600x1200 and have good to excellent FPS.

I bought IGI2 and can't even run it at 640x480. It is extremely jerky and jumpy outdoors and indoors and worse when I am near AI models. I grabbed a No CD patch for it and tada it plays perfectly smooth at 1280x1024x32.

My questions are...

In general why does SafeDisk screw with my game performance?

If Safe Disk (1 o r2) only checks the cd at the start up why does it continue to hinder performance?

I read that the multi-layered encrypted wrapper that secures the CD-ROM content runs ALL THE TIME. Can this be what is causing problems?

I need this information so I have something to fight back with. People on the game company forum do not believe that SafeDisk hurts performance.

Thanks for your help.

[TippeX]

almost every api call is handled through the safedisc handler, thats one reason for the slow down/performance hit... it will be hit more if the game uses safedisc api etc.. safedisc does hinder game performance... when morrowind came out i remember on their official forum they were recommending people to get the 'unwrapped' exe

[krondike]

Shouldn't "ripped" .exe file goes bether? Becuase when it's rippid it's the version that's run in the memory...after the digital signature and stuff like that..... anyone that can give information if it's bether to use ripped or unwarped...

[ByteMare]

First of all, this sentence:

"when morrowind came out i remember on their official forum they were recommending people to get the 'unwrapped' exe"

hahahahaha!!:D You made my day, they had to crawl back to the sandbox and confess that the copyprotection was and still is ****!

Secure? No, not this time!

"Uncrackable"? No, sir!

"safe...eh..disc"? Quit it, guys, that joke isn't funny anymore.

A "ripped" ( I prefer the "cleaned/unwrapped but wtf) don't (as TippeX mentioned) pass all the calls through the sd stuff AND if you cut out the "regular" (if any) cd-check, you almost certainly get better performance. Besides, sd seems to kinky with some program and annoying....

"Debugger detected! *bang!*(Hell, I didn't have a debugger installed...but 10 mins and a reboot later I had :D )

[GothicOne]

Thanks for the replies. So if I understand this correctly... while the game is being played the game's executable is still running SafeDisk instructions?