Low Quake3 FPS on G400Max and Athlon 700

[Hex]

Ok. I was a Geforce owner (no please dont kill me, im a convert now) i got drops down to 5fps on the card and got fed up with that, so i sent it back and got a G400max, love the card, should have got one in the first place.
I seem to be getting low fps in quake 3 :-

35.8 @ 1024x786 Max Everything, 32 Bit
35.6 @ 800x600 Max Everything, 32 Bit
44.1 @ 800x600 Max Everything, 16 Bit
50.6 @ 640x480 Max Everything, 32 Bit

I Have :

Athlon 700 (OEM)
128 PC133 Generic SDRam
Asus K7M Motherboard
Matrox G400Max.
Sound Blaster Platinum Live,
Intel 100/10 Ethernet Card.
300 Watt PSU
AGP 2x (checked to see if its on)
Had my Graphics Apendeture size @ 256 and 128, no difference.
My G400Max is sharing an irq with a place holder.
Windows 98 SR2
Latest Powerdesk, Latest TurboGL Drivers.
As far as i can tell they are installed correctly, i used the uninstaller to remove the old ones.
Can anyone help me? Thanks in advance.

--- Hex


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"There's no such thing as a stupid question, just stupid people"

[Yggdrasil]

You said that you set every video option to its maximum. Did you set texture details to its highest too ? You will use up 3 times the video memory this way !
With 32bit color depth and some additional player models loaded that's something even a GeForce or a G400 cannot handle properly. Decrease texture detail by 1 and repeat some tests.
For more info on this check out http://www.reactorcritical.com/perfo...quake3_5.shtml

Hope this helps

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The shortest distance between two points is under construction.

[Fyrespray]

On Anand's tech page he has the G400 on an Athlon 700 rig benchmarking at 80 fps odd in 640, surely a 1 notch drop on the texture bar can't make up for the 30 odd fps he is missing.

<a href=http://www.anandtech.com/html/articledisplay.cfm?document=1098&pagenum=7>Benchma rks on Anand Tech</a>

Fyrespray

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Celery 366 @ 550,Abit BM6, 128Mb PC100 Ram, G200 8Mb, AWE64 Gold, Win98SE.

[Wombat]

Do you have the drivers for the Athlon on there? It's my understanding that there is an AGP patch for Athlon systems, but I don't know for sure.

[paulcs]

Setting can make a huge difference with this game, and I saw nothing that indicated Anand had everything on maximum. The truth of the matter is, if you're expecting good framerates in Quake3, you shouldn't have everything on maximum.

This is not a question of a single setting being down a notch. You'll note the change in resolution from 640x480 doesn't make a lot of difference. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it will.

Hex, you could try driver version 5.30, which some people have found to work better with VIA chipsets than 5.41. (Be sure to use the second version of TurboGL.) However, since you got 5.41 working, and image quality seems important to you, then stick with the drivers you're using. Try using the normal settings, fiddle with the resolution, and then benchmark. The game will still look nice, and you'll get faster framerates.

If I can get biblical for a moment, you can't get a camel through the eye of a needle.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 08 January 2000).]

[fedins]

If you'd like, here are some tweaks I have put in my cfg and my fps is around 60-80.

seta cl_packetdup "5"
seta cg_simpleItems "1"
seta cg_brasstime "0"
seta cg_drawAmmoWarning "0"
seta cg_drawAttacker "0"
seta cg_gibs "0"
seta cg_marks "0"
seta cg_shadows "0"
seta in_joystick "0"
seta in_midi "0"
seta r_vertexLight "0"
seta r_drawsun "0"
seta r_picmip "1"
seta r_dynamiclight "0"
seta r_fastsky "1"
seta r_finish "0"
seta r_flares "0"
seta r_flarefade "10"
seta r_flaresize "30"
seta r_detailtextures "0"
seta r_lodCurveError "280"
seta r_noportals "1"
seta r_lodbias "1"
seta s_khz "11"
seta s_loadas8bit "1"

If you're not a fan of how the game looks these should help =)

[Fyrespray]

erk you feind. You have a card that makes it look soo pretty and you tweak it to look like quake world *sigh*

The point i was making with my earlier post was surely a G400Max can give out higher frame rates than this. I know anand doesn't say he has everything turned on but generally speaking benchmarks in 32bit quake3 are normally done under the high quality setting. This setting has pretty much everything turned on as it is so the fact he is missing 30 odd fps off anand's scores in 640 still doesn't seem right to me.

Also Yggdrasil from that webby you linked to i got the following information

Texture Setting 4 (ie full)
Amount of Textures 9.28 Mtexels
Size of Textures in 16 bit 17.7MB
Size of Textures in 32 bit ~26 MB

Now call me ignorant but a 32 MB G400Max should have no problems dealing with this should it ??? I accept that a vanilla G400 with 16MB is going to start chugging a bit i'm sure i've seen post's with loads of people getting decent framrates on all sorts of G400 boards, hell i'm pretty sure i have seen people with 400Mhz celery's equaling this guys fps scores, my G200 isn't that far off in 640*480, admittedly I have my texture detail turned down (setting 2) but i still pull 38fps in 16bit.

This might sound like i'm jumping on people a bit but to be honest i'm a bit shocked i find it hard to belive that a system with a chip that probably runs close to double the speed of mine with a much better gfx card can give scores that aren't that much greater than mine without something being amiss, hell i know people with TNT2u's that are getting 50 odd fps with it all turned on with machines the same spec as mine and its been proven that the G400Max blows the TNT2U into the dirt with the latest Turbo GL driver.

Are there any other people with Athlon systems out there who might be able to share thier fps scores or shed some light on this ??? I'm getting a G400Max around Feb with a bit of luck (if i have the cash and i also am interested in upgrading to an Athlon but surely if i do I can expect to at least double my frame rate.....

Fyrespray

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Celery 366 @ 550,Abit BM6, 128Mb PC100 Ram, G200 8Mb, AWE64 Gold, Win98SE.

[Yggdrasil]

Well let's just forget about theory for a moment. All I know is that setting texture detail from 3 to 4 will result in 15% less FPS in demo001 on my system. I checked this on 2 other systems with similar results, both have a 32MB Ram graphics card. I'm sorry but I don't remember the exact setup of the test. Take into account that demo001 is a demo with very low number of different player models so things will probably be worse in a single player game or on a deatmatch server.

So my point in my first message was if you really want to improve framerate make sure you start by decreasing texture detail.

Admittedly this does not explain the huge difference to the test results on Anand's page but then again we don't know how exactly Hex measured performance on his/her system.
Maybe Hex could clear some things up by telling us how exactly the tests were made. Did you do it with the sound system disabled or enabled ? Did you use the timedemo feature on demo001 or did you just use "\cg_drawfps 1" ? Did you adjust "com_hunkmegs" so Q3 can use more than 56MB Ram ? What about bus mastering and 32bit z-buffering ?

Happy fragging btw

Yggdrasil

Celery433@540, SBLive Value, 128MB Pc100 Ram, Matrox G400 32MB, Asus P2B

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The shortest distance between two points is under construction.

[athlet]

Ok Hex, i can give you some numbers

Athlon 500
Gigabyte 7IX
128MB PC 100
G400 16MB SH @ 153/191/153
using latest PD and turboGL

q3a - demo001

all settings at default (textures at setting 3 of 4)

800x600x16 = 53.2
800x600x32 = 40.5
1024x768x16 = 39.5
1024x768x32 = 25.5