Win2K+G400Max in HL TFC.

[Double]

Hi Guys !!

I know that there have been some other posts on this subject, and I've tried to read'em all - but my problem still exists.

I've just upgraded from Win98SE to Win2K. I am used to getting around 50 fps in HL TFC, but now it has dropped to 10-25 fps, which is unplayable. I am using OpenGL mode - my D3D mode is very ugly and corrupted.

I am using PD 5.04 - and have tried g400icd.dll from versions 5.10, 5.11 and NT4 4.51 without any perfomance gains worth mentioning. Is this really so, or does any of you have some advice?

My system is as follows:

Abit BE6 MB (Bios ver. TH)
P3 450 Mhz
256 MB Ram (PC100)
22 GB IBM Deskstar UDMA66 HD
SB Live Value
G400 Max (bios ver. 1.6-25)

If you're missing some information above, plz. don't hesitate to say so.

Best Regards all the way from Denmark

Double

[good health to all]

I know what you mean. I stop using openGL with counter strike. I use D3D instead. I see that your using 5.04 I think i could not use D3D with that version. I am using 5.11 and D3D is fine (image quality) but the performance is much better. OpenGl the best frame rate I had was 27 fps. In D3D its doubled.

Some things you have to know:

enable texture sorting in D3D or you won't see any textures.

gl_texsort "1"

use negitive numbers in decal offset

gl_polyoffset "-2"

allocate heapsize manually. If I don't I find that it takes forever for Half-life to get the memory it wants and there is always some hicupps (thrashing with hard drive).

in the shortcut on the desktop place this switch statement:

-heapsize 85000

this allocates 85 MB of ram. You can use more or less but I find this the best.

I use 800x600 because I discovered the menus (selecting sever, etc) did not always show up when I was using 640x480.

Get the new Service Pack because it does fix some DirectX problems.

Thats all I can think of.

[Ghostman]

Did you install W2K over WIN 98 SE or was it a fresh install of W2K?

Ghostman

[Double]

First to Ghostman:
I made a fresh install over win98SE I had Win98SE installed first and when I installed the Win2K i formatted the HD through the installationprocess.

And to "good health to all":
Thanks mate - It made my fps double. I'm now using the 5.11 beta drivers and D3D. But I'm still not satisfied. The D3D version isn't as pretty as the OpenGL. Its more dark and blurry - just look at the text, its not as sharp as under OpenGL. And the balck marks from the rocket and grenade explosions, you can see those through the walls - not very satisfying.
It is though better than playing OpenGL with 10 fps. But compared to using Win98SE and getting 50 fps and nice picture quality without any graphical errors, this sucks a bit.

Is this because the Matrox OpenGL driver for Win2K isn't that good yet? Or am I doing something wrong?

And once again - thanks guys for your help so far.

Best regards

Double

[Rags]

Hi Double,

I play HL/TFC almost everynight in win2k. I don't benchmark it or look at fps, but I do know that it is pretty damned smooth. I only have a 16MB G400, too. Here is my autoexec.cfg:
gl_ztrick 1 // Z buffer half range, but no clears (saves fill rate)(some beta versions of G400 win2k drivers will need this set to "1" to get rid of horizontal lines, "0" is best if it works)
gl_dither 1 // Stochastically dither 24-bit images since the driver will truncate them to 565 (on/off)
gl_polyoffset 2 // Amount of offset to apply to decals (0 disables)
gl_lightholes 1 // Apply lightmaps to alpha tested surfaces with holes (on/off)
gl_keeptjunctions 1 // Keep collinear points added by QCSG/QBSP to fix T-junctions (on/off)
r_decals "1" // 0 turns off all bullet holes, graffiti ,and explosion marks etc. About 8% fps increase if off (0).
r_drawviewmodel "1" // 0 turns off weapon model. About 10% fps boost.
gl_keeptjunctions "1" // 0 adds about 1fps. You may see some gaps in texture junctions using 0.
r_shadows "0" // 0 turns off shadows. About 15% fps boost. Shadows not recommended as they take too much of a performance hit.
cl_himodels "1" // 0 turns off high quality player models. Saves on texture memory.
joystick "0" // change to 1 if you use joystick
gl_texturemode "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR" // highest texture mode. Default is gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST
brightness "2.5" // higher removes shadowed areas and adds glow to entities. Same as gl_modulate in Quake2 (normal range is 0.0-10.0). Multi-player allows max setting of 2.5
gamma "3.0" // brightness (normal range is 0.0-4.0) Slider maxes out at 3.
gl_playermip "0" // multiplayer skin texture mode (0-4). Raising it cuts texture memory in 1/2 for each number but blurs skins. 0 is default
gl_picmip "0" // highest quality texture mode (0-4) 0 is default
gl_round_down "0" // (range 0-3) 0 is highest quality textures for monsters and pickup items. Lowering is not recommnded unless you have AGP 3D board. (default is 3)
gl_texsort "1" // setting to 1 will improve color greatly, but at a big performance hit. Set to 0 if you have a low frame rate problem. When using 1, set "gamma" to 3.0 and "brightness" to 2.5
gl_overbright 1 // Use overbright colored lighting (on/off) 1 is default. Must be on for several of these settings to work.
scr_conspeed "5000.00" // console up and down speed
gl_palette_tex "1"
r_decals "500" //Limits number of decals displayed

// Internet Multi-player
cl_nopred "0" // 1 will turn off your player prediction. Always leave on 0
cl_predict_players "1" // 0 will turn off prediction of other players. Always leave on 1
cl_nodelta "0" // 1 will turn off delta compresion. If you have to set to 1 to get rid of packet loss (u-remove errors) then you should find a better ISP
pushlatency -200 // prediction....should be set to a negative (-) value twice your average ping. (ie: 100 ping would set to -200)
rate "3500" // watch netgraph (r_netgraph 1)and change setting until satisfied (set from 2000-25000).
fps_modem "31" // caps frame rate at 31 fps for modem play (stops freezing gameplay). Watch netgraph (r_netgraph 1) and adjust between 20-40 until best results.
fps_lan "40" // lan or cable modem frame rate cap (stops freezing gameplay). Watch netgraph (r_netgraph 1) and adjust between 20-40 until best results.
fps_single "100" // singleplayer frame rate cap
cl_allowupload "1" // toggles uploads
cl_allowdownload "1" // toggles d/l's

// Sound
_snd_mixahead "0.100" // change to "0.200" if your sound studders. default is 0.100
_snd_noextraupdate "0" // change to "1" if sound stutters

Rags

[Arsa]

I guess that opengl is now common for all windows drivers?

[Double]

Thank you very much Rags, I'll try this tonight and get back to the thread tomorrow.

I too play TFC/CS almost every night and was therefore very bugged by this problem. I hope a solution is near.

One question though: Are you using the 5.11 beta drivers? If not which version then?

Best regards

Double

[Rags]

No, I am not using the same drivers as you. I am currently running internal Betas, but I have used the ones you are now, and the release before them, both ran fine for me.

Rags

[good health to all]

D3D does make things darker and the text is blurrer. You really notice the blurry text in the console.

The things to make your life more brighter:

lightgamma 1.9

the default is 2.5. The lower the number the brighter the graphics. This is the single best CVAR to use to make things brighter. Unfortunally this CVAR is disabled in Counter strike beta7. You can set it to 0 and there will not be one shadow a player can hide in and you not see him. If this works then use it. It does it in real time so you can be playing the game and set the variable and you will see immediate results. If this does not work, as in CS b7, then these are the variables I set to make my life brighter.

gamma 8
brightness 2
texgamma 1.6

The decal thing is annoying. But the extra frame rate is worth it.

The frame rate difference is just maturity level. Matrox has been working on win9x drivers for much longer. Win2000 implements a different way of using drivers, WDM? This new method added to the learning curve. So in time the performance will equal out.

Rags,

if openGL performance is pretty damned smooth then D3D will be super damned smooth.
Its just a win2k thing that D3D has better frame rate. I think?

[Rags]

Good Health,

Nope. Not at all. D3D sucks in HL/TFC. Period. Image quality sucks, game play is choppier, text in menus are near impossible to read. I have never seen a need to use anything other than OpenGL in HL/TFC since Matrox released their ICD for the G200. There has to be something amiss with your system if D3D is better. Just so ya know, D3D in HL is built off a "Wrapper", not too dissimilar to the wrapper Matrox had for the G200. It basically takes OpenGL calls and then converts them into D3D calls. This is inefficient, all the modes cannot be used (since frame-rate would be totally unplayable). The only problems I had with TFC under win2k was with very early drivers.

Rags

[good health to all]

"...takes OpenGL calls and then converts them into D3D calls. This is inefficient,... "

Doesn't have to be at all. Say your just wrapping each function of openGL with D3D (in the best case senerio, it usually takes multiple D3D function calls to equal one openGL function call) In the worest case senior you add on extra function call for every openGL function to the stack. This is ineffcient and does add overhead (memory) and extra processing (function pointer calls). But if they did it right there should be no overhead at all with wrapping openGL calls with D3D. All they need to do is inlined all the openGL functions. Poof! the overhead is gone.

I have no idea about image quality or what ever concerning TFC because I never play it. All I can talk about is counter strike. The image quality is lower when it comes to text, the HUD and decals but the colors and textures I don't notice any dramatic differences.

This whole issue about frame rate and image quality, this is all I have to say:

When it comes winning in a fire fight you must have good control (skill of course too). You can't have good control with 20 or less frame rate. While I like pretty graphics I like winning more. In win2k I get the max 27fps in OpenGL. Yeah things look better but my control is horrible. Its not fun being a ghost in CS. But I guess it gives me more time to admire the excellent image quality of those graphics.

Why can D3D be faster then openGL? Here is my hypothesis. DirectX is probably imbedded into win2k. IE is embedded why not DirectX? It wouldn't suprise me if microsoft has DirectX calls hooked into the kernel (they do with the GUI). Or tricks like to skip OS layers in win2k which OpenGL has to go through. Only to make DirectX faster then openGL. There could be a ton of different efficientencies Microsoft used. They did write the OS and DirectX.

All I know for sure is D3D is faster. And frame rate is king in winning (if equally skilled). High frame rate = good control.

[Rags]

I don't think you understand. The D3D in HL/TFC is actually slower. I am not comparing using benchmarking, or displayed frame-rate. I am comparing actual gameplay. The gameplay in HL/TFC is VERY smooth in OpenGL. I don't get stutters, I don't get choppiness, even in heavy firefights. Anyone who says frame rate is king is full of it. I used to whoop people's asses with my G200, which has considerably lower framerates than my G400 in TFC. I played on dialup, and had my framerate capped at *gasp* 25 FPS....for both my G200 and G400. Now that I am on cable, I bumped it up quite a bit, but still have it capped. And I still have no problems whatsoever with choppiness, or getting my ass kicked.

Wrappers are very inefficient. Period. They make twice the calls that you normally would to do the same thing, sometimes more than twice. This is why some features are disabled in D3D. Because the game would be unplayable. I don't care how well coded the wrapper is, it will never be as good as the actual native code.

Rags

[good health to all]

Wrappers are inefficient but it is about how much. The wrapper can't be adding to much overhead if I am getting better performance with the wrapper then using the real thing.

It is true there is studdering when using D3D but it disappears after you first gone through a round or two. It probably has to due with how each API initializes the graphics. openGL must go and initialize everything in the beginning before you even see anything. D3D initializes the graphics the first time it sees it in the game. So the first bomb explosion, first shooting the weapon, first time seeing an animation, etc has a stutter because it is loaded into memory. This is annoying. But once everything is in memory it is clear sailing. The stuttering is gone and you end up with higher frame rate. So the end justifies the means.

All this talk of openGl made me go back and try it again. After trying it I went back to D3D, even with all its little annoyances. Once you get use to the higher frame rate its very hard to go back. When I was using openGl for the longest time I got use to the 20 ish frame rate and adjusted my game accordantely. But now I feel like I am drunk or shooting on a boat during a storm. The control feels laggy. For good control all the frame rate has to do is stay above 20 but it doesn't in opengl.

Can any one remember the CVAR to see the frame rate in the upper left corner I forget it. I thought it was:

cl_drawfps "1"

but I can't get it to work.

[good health to all]

I do want to say that Matrox does have one of the best D3D drivers out there if not the best. So it should be no supprise that D3D has better performance then openGl. Wrapper or no wrapper.

Opengl, sorry Nvidia wins.

Good example is my friend has a Geforce 2 and in UT using D3D I get equal sometimes better performance and I have a plain G400.

[This message has been edited by good health to all (edited 29 August 2000).]

[Rags]

Sorry. You are incorrect. D3D does NOT give better performance in HL/TFC. There must be something wrong with your setup if you are getting better framerates with D3D. My framerates are no where near 20ish in OpenGL. It's more like 40-50ish in gameplay. And this is running 1024X768.

I am starting to feel like a broken record here. But what I say is true. Maybe your machine is a rare case, but I doubt it. I really believe that if you are getting crappy performance in OpenGL, then you have your settings wrong somewhere along the way.

Rags