G400MAX is slow in hith resolution!! Why is that?

[DeadLee]

Hello. First of all. Im not english nor american. Therefor my english is reealy bad..

Well Ill try to explain the little problem I have with my G400 MAX card..

The problem is that I cant play quake3 or any other game in high resolution.... If I do, the game becomes so slow that I cant play. The thing is that my friend has one of these g400MAX to and he plays q3 in 1600*1200 and gets alot more fps than I do.. Strange is´nt it?? Well,. its not that I HAVE to use the resolution 1600*1200 its just that I something must be wrong when I cant! this is my computer:

PIII 500, 192MB RAM P100, G400MAX 32MB.

It should NOT be slow whith that kind of computer,.
I read something about upgrading your BIOS. Could it be that??

One last thing. All this grafic configuration things are new to me so I you find the time to answere, pleas explain shortly why and where I cand find the things that whill speed up my card,.

Thanx for all the good work! Its good to know that someone is out there helping!!

[PeTe]

You just cant play 1600x1200 in Q3A with ANY computer.. and with any video card that is available now.. So just forget it.. and turn it back to 1024x768x32 or somethin like that.. maybe your friend could get couple frames more than you, but HE CANT PLAY IT WITH 1600x1200. =)

Pe-Te

[paulcs]

Could be any of a number of things. A couple of things come immediately to mind:

CPU: Because the G400 off-loads a lot of work to the CPU, the faster your processor, the faster the G400. If your friend has a PIII 600, or he is running his CPU a higher clockspeed, he could get dramatically higher scores.

Peripherals: Some soundcards, particularly older ones, are bigger CPU hogs than others. If your friend has a Soundblaster Live and you have an older Soundblaster, everthing else being equal, he would most likely get better Quake3 score than you. When I switched from a Vortex 1 board to a Vortex 2 board, my scores increased.

I'm sure there are other factors related to peripherals and associated drivers that could be slowing you down.

Settings: There are so many settings in Quake3, and quite a few of them can affect frame rates dramatically. Just because you're both using the same resolution or color depth doesn't mean your settings are identical. Things like Dynamic Lights, Marks on Walls, and A3D sound support, just to name a few, can really affect your scores. The safest way to measure performance from machine to machine is to use the same config file.

I could sit here all day and do nothing but come up with reasons for the performance differences between your machines. There are so many variables, its like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

It is likely that it has nothing to do with your G400's. One way to test is to do comparitive benchmarks using the default *Fastest* settings in Quake3. This reduces the amount of work your videocard has to do. Are you still seeing big differences? If so, it's most likely not your board's fault.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net