Weirdly low FPS

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

I lurk for months, then post twice in 24 hours Thanks for the answers to
my scoring thread, btw, I'll play with the bots a bit and see what happens,
and try to improve!! Now to my next issue.. poor graphics speed.

In Q3 based games (RTCW, ET, Q3) I get great rates and no stuttering. UT2003
is also reasonably good. I run RTCW with everything maxed out at 1280x1024
and get over 50 fps all the time.

In UT2004, however, I've now put my resolution down to 800x600, and in
Hyperblast (the spaceship level) I can still get it to crash down to between
2-10 FPS if I just look around outside the 'back' of the ship (where the
other ship is in the middle). Walking around inside the ship gives me about
35 fps average. Other levels are better, with some getting up to 60-70 fps
average. I've read the UT2004 optimization guide, tried Google, got the
latest nVidia drivers, but I don't get it.. how comes UT2004 is so jerky and
slow? (Clue: At 1024x768, performance is almost the same).

I've got an Athlon XP 2100+ with 512MB DDR PC2100, and GeForce Ti4200.

Should I be upgrading the CPU and/or the video card? Or do my numbers seem
abnormally low that doing the whole reformat thing would be worthwhile? With
the way that resolution only slightly improves matters (1024 and 1280 yield
/almost/ similar numbers), I'm thinking there's some issue.. or is an Athlon
XP 2100+ really underpowered for this game?

Any low spec UT2004ers.. give me your opinions (Waits for someone on a
486 with a Cirrus Logic VGA card to say they're getting better fps..)

Pete

 

[Schism]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

> Should I be upgrading the CPU and/or the video card? Or do my numbers seem
> abnormally low that doing the whole reformat thing would be worthwhile?
> With
> the way that resolution only slightly improves matters (1024 and 1280
> yield
> /almost/ similar numbers), I'm thinking there's some issue.. or is an
> Athlon
> XP 2100+ really underpowered for this game?

My cousin has an Athlon XP... I forgot... It runs at 1.67GHz.. 512MB PC133
and a Geforce FX 5200... He gets pretty decent frame rates, better than
that... Have you turned off character preloading? There are also other
tweaks you can do in the actual UT2004.ini file... although I think that
only helps with map loading... the character preloading gave me better
framerates though... you could try these settings too
http://www.unrealtower.org/faq/159

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

Oh, and I read that 'fps' thread above, which seems to be similar.. but
someone even suggested a Ti4200 on there, but I'm finding it's not enough!

Time to pull out the plastic and get that 9800Pro and Athlon 64 2800 in
preperation for Doom 3 maybe..?

Pete

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

i would say go for at least 512MB of more ram. your cpu is plenty and your
video is suffucent but your ram is lacking. ut2004 is amajor system hog,
meaning it will drain ever nit bit of resources it can and your ram is
definatley lacking.

"Peter Cooper" <x@boog.co.uk> wrote in message
news:2m3e3vFhh21bU1@uni-berlin.de...
> I lurk for months, then post twice in 24 hours Thanks for the answers
to
> my scoring thread, btw, I'll play with the bots a bit and see what
happens,
> and try to improve!! Now to my next issue.. poor graphics speed.
>
> In Q3 based games (RTCW, ET, Q3) I get great rates and no stuttering.
UT2003
> is also reasonably good. I run RTCW with everything maxed out at 1280x1024
> and get over 50 fps all the time.
>
> In UT2004, however, I've now put my resolution down to 800x600, and in
> Hyperblast (the spaceship level) I can still get it to crash down to
between
> 2-10 FPS if I just look around outside the 'back' of the ship (where the
> other ship is in the middle). Walking around inside the ship gives me
about
> 35 fps average. Other levels are better, with some getting up to 60-70 fps
> average. I've read the UT2004 optimization guide, tried Google, got the
> latest nVidia drivers, but I don't get it.. how comes UT2004 is so jerky
and
> slow? (Clue: At 1024x768, performance is almost the same).
>
> I've got an Athlon XP 2100+ with 512MB DDR PC2100, and GeForce Ti4200.
>
> Should I be upgrading the CPU and/or the video card? Or do my numbers seem
> abnormally low that doing the whole reformat thing would be worthwhile?
With
> the way that resolution only slightly improves matters (1024 and 1280
yield
> /almost/ similar numbers), I'm thinking there's some issue.. or is an
Athlon
> XP 2100+ really underpowered for this game?
>
> Any low spec UT2004ers.. give me your opinions (Waits for someone on a
> 486 with a Cirrus Logic VGA card to say they're getting better fps..)
>
> Pete
>
>

 

[Meltdown]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

Peter Cooper enlightened us with:
> I've read the UT2004 optimization guide, tried Google, got the
> latest nVidia drivers, but I don't get it..

You've read a lot, but did you read our FAQ? It contains a section
called "How can I get more FPS?". It would also be nice if you gave us
the OS you're using...

> how comes UT2004 is so jerky and slow? (Clue: At 1024x768,
> performance is almost the same).
>
> I've got an Athlon XP 2100+ with 512MB DDR PC2100, and GeForce
> Ti4200.

I've got about the same, but mine is an AthlonXP 2000+, and I have a
GeForce 3 Ti4200. Runs better, though. I use Gentoo Linux, and I
recomiled my own OpenAL and SDL libraries, which caused them to be
heavily optimized for my system.

MeltDown
--
!For all your UT99/2k3/2k4 questions visit UnrealTower's FAQ section:
! http://www.unrealtower.org/faq
!Home of the FAQs for agut and agut2003.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 03:25:32 +0100, "Peter Cooper" <x@boog.co.uk>
wrote:

>I've got an Athlon XP 2100+ with 512MB DDR PC2100, and GeForce Ti4200.


The Unreal engine is, and always has been, CPU bound. The fact that
resolution makes no difference in framerates is a huge clue. For
better framerates, you need the fastest processor you can afford.

As for in-game adjustments, the two parameters with the largest impact
on performance are World Detail and Projectors. Set the first to
'Low' (Medium makes no difference) and un-check the other. The game
won't be as pretty, but you can expect a 25% performance boost.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

"MeltDown" <meltdownUSE@YOURunrealtower.imagination.org> wrote in message
news:slrncfpdq7.8ei.meltdownUSE@sybren.thirdtower.com...
> Peter Cooper enlightened us with:
> > I've read the UT2004 optimization guide, tried Google, got the
> > latest nVidia drivers, but I don't get it..
>
> You've read a lot, but did you read our FAQ? It contains a section
> called "How can I get more FPS?". It would also be nice if you gave us
> the OS you're using...

Windows XP (never a good sign, but hey, this isn't my main machine ;-))

Actually, yeah, I'd read the FAQ section, as it had come in handy back in my
UT2003 days. Unfortunately none of the FPS stuff really helped much, but it
reminded me of something I'd changed in my INI file that wasn't as it would
have been by default.

That is.. precaching. So I set precaching back to true, and it has improved
things a bit.

No longer do I turn a corner and watch FPS fall to 2 for a second while it
loads up what's around the corner (?).. Thing is a lot of the 'make UT2004
faster' articles and sites recommended turnng precaching off to improve
performance!!

Thanks for the other suggestions guys. I thought 512MB would be more than
enough, given the specs Epic give, but since it seems to primarily be a
caching problem in my case, maybe more memory would help! Also.. I test on
Hyperblast 2, which is a pretty demanding slog in any case

Pete

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

Suddenly, Peter Cooper sprang forth and uttered these pithy words:
> No longer do I turn a corner and watch FPS fall to 2 for a second while it
> loads up what's around the corner (?).. Thing is a lot of the 'make UT2004
> faster' articles and sites recommended turnng precaching off to improve
> performance!!

Well, it speeds up loading and reduces RAM, but obviously there is a
cost: it will have to load the data later while you're playing.

I'd say that those with plenty of RAM and patience should probably leave
caching on for the smoothest play. Just my thought

--
aaronl at consultant dot com
For every expert, there is an equal and
opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament2003 (More info?)

IOn Tue, 20 Jul 2004 12:32:39 -0400, Folk <Folk@folk.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 03:25:32 +0100, "Peter Cooper" <x@boog.co.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>I've got an Athlon XP 2100+ with 512MB DDR PC2100, and GeForce Ti4200.
>
>
>The Unreal engine is, and always has been, CPU bound. The fact that
>resolution makes no difference in framerates is a huge clue. For
>better framerates, you need the fastest processor you can afford.
>
>As for in-game adjustments, the two parameters with the largest impact
>on performance are World Detail and Projectors. Set the first to
>'Low' (Medium makes no difference) and un-check the other. The game
>won't be as pretty, but you can expect a 25% performance boost.

I am running an Athlon XP 2000, but my ram is DDR333, and I manage
70-90 FPS in all the maps that I have played. Win2k SP4, 512Meg,
Geforce 4 TI4800 SE, AGP 8x, Msi kt4v board. I would suggest faster
ram, if the board supports it, and do you have agp 8x on your board?

[Eagle]GreatWing