Q3A low fps whats wrong with my system

[sguard]

Hi,

i justed ran the timedemo in Q3A. This is the result.

demo001: 17.2 fps
demo002: 16.8

all graphic settings on high (best quality settings i believe)
32 bit color
32 bit textures
sound high

Does anyone have any suggestions to make things faster. I believe these are very low scores for my duron 1000.
PLEASE HELP!!!


my system is:

duron 700@1000
matrox G400 32 MB dh (not overclocked)
64 mb pc100 SDRAM

AGP 4x enabled
vsync off
busmastering on
z buffer enabled

powerdesk 6.20
turbogl 1.30
directx 7a

[Minstrel]

all graphic settings on high (best quality settings i believe)
32 bit color
32 bit textures

64 mb pc100 SDRAM

Without knowing what resolution you're running at (and this matters a lot), I'd say that you're trying to push your card a bit too much. 32-bit color and Trilinear Filtering put a big damper on things. You also need more RAM in your system, Q3A is probably starving for ram in a 64MB system.

You probably need to talk to a windows 9x user to know if you should be using the turboGl with those drivers, but my guess is that you shouldn't be. The ICD in the latest drivers is as fast, IIRC.

[Alec]

sguard, I agree with Minstrel. Stick in at least another 64Mb RAM , or your Duron 1000 is working for nothing.

Trilinear Filtering is too much of a performance hit (20-30%), although it makes the games look better; I´d advise you to turn it off.

I must say that if you let your Duron at default 700Mhz, you won´t see much difference in your Quake 3 scores, cause your G400 fill-rate is almost exhausted at 700 Mhz. You should try to overclock your G400 to 140Mhz graphics clock at least to see some nice improvements. There´s people that take them to 170 Mhz, which is a value that I can not even aspire to reach (147Mhz is what I got). Remember that the MAX version is clocked at 150Mhz.

The Z-buffer is always enabled. You must be talking about a 32-bit Z-Buffer. I don´t force it in Powerdesk, and I don´t think I need it. Also, it eats up video memory in Quake 3.

Soundwise, if your sound card is PCI, leave the quality sound on high. If it´s ISA, set it to low.

[sguard]

dang,
stupid me

the resolution is 1024x768
tomorrow i have 128 mb pc133 SDRAM so that wont be a problem anymore.

So, i figured out that my matrox G400 is the bottleneck for this game and not something else. I could o/c the card to 140 or something but would this be a significance difference?

I guess otherwise i should go for a Geforce 2GTS but i dont like the image quality of it.....

[Minstrel]

You should be able to get quite good performance out of your card just by backing off of some of the high quality settings.

I'd be interested in knowing what your timedemo score at 1024x768 Normal is (IE, setting graphics setting to "normal" and then increasing the resolution.

On my system (P3/450 & Win2k) I can reach a rather accceptable 50ish FPS once I massage the game settings for performance a bit. You can still make it look good without killing it

[Ryuhei]

I have been in the same spot as you many times. See my sig for my system. I was running at 1024x768 with most of the settings in Q3A on high. I was using bilinnear filtering and the I think the geometric detail was one notch below high. This gave me the graphic quality I wanted, with playable speed during the game. I ran the time demos and never got anything better than 28 FPS. I was pretty unhappy about it. I know the G400 is not a framerate card, but with the horsepower of the system I built I wanted more than 28 FPS! For 11 months I've tried to tweak this and that just to get Q3A and Counter Strike to work. I got so sick of it that I gave up yesterday and ordered a GeForce 2 GTS. Sorry guys.

------------------
PIII 667MHz
Tyan S1854 mobo, 256MB PC133
Matrox G400 MAX, SB Live! X-gamer
SCSI DVD-ROM, 18GB SCSI HD

[Marcelo]

May I have your G400 MAX once your Geforce 2 GTS arrive?

[Ryuhei]

Sure. You give me $$ I'll "give" you the card.

[sguard]

ok
here i am again

i benchmarked with "normal" settings with a res of 1024x768

results are:

demo001: 36.6
demo002 37.3

this is playing ok, but i didnt buy a g400 to disable all settings. Its now just evident for me that i cant play opengl games with high settings with my g400.

I think ill have to go to the shop for a Gefore 2 GTS if i wanna play opengl games.
someone else also mentioned that. G400 is just a bad card for Q3.


next thing im gonna try is to oc my g400 to 140 i hope. Ill post the results.

[Alec]

sguard, I beg to differ on the OpenGL side of things. I must say that Matrox´s OpenGL support is now full, as good as D3D. OpenGL, for me, is better-looking, and so, probably a little bit more demanding that D3D. With the latest drivers, subpar performance (for the G400´s capabilities) is gone. To give you an example: I play Quake 3 much smoother and faster than Unreal Tournament and Deus-ex.

[DosFreak]

AH, but on a Geforce Unreal Tournament plays glitch graphics free and extremely smoothly in Opengl.

Plus compressed textures.

He's right tho, if you game today. Get the Geforce.

(and by game today I mean all the options, high resolutions, not "cut back the graphics, turn off options and you'll get good fps ")

[sguard]

Yo Alec,

how the hell do u manage that.

i dont get it
UT runs much (andi mean MUCH) faster cause its d3d.

What drivers do u use? did u oc your G400?
what settings. Plz tell me more

[Alec]

See my specs in the signature below.


Unreal Tournament: between 18 - 60 fps in gaming (mostly 25-35 in a default map)

Settings:
1024x768, 16-bit
Maximum world and model texture quality
3D sound enabled
Other settings in advanced options is default.


Quake 3: between 24 - 80 fps in gaming (mostly 35-40 in a default map)

Settings:
1024x768, 16-bit textures and color
High sound quality
Geometry detail at maximum
Texture detail at maximum
Bilinear filtering

So you see that the framerates are higher and steadier in Quake 3. The number of bots that I use is normally 4-5. Overclocking gives me only 2-3 fps average, cause I´m processor-limited.

------------------
Intel Atlanta 440LX 66Mhz @ 72Mhz bus (Bios 14)
Intel Celeron 433Mhz @ 468Mhz
Gigabyte GA-6R7 slocket PPGA - Slot 1 converter
Hyundai 192Mb SDRAM PC100
Western Digital Caviar 4.3 Gb UDMA
Creative Soundblaster PCI128 (driver revision 2)
Creative 24x CD-ROM
Matrox Millennium G400 SH 16Mb SGRAM @147Mhz/196Mhz + attached fan (Powerdesk 6.10)
Genius desktop speakers + subwoofer
Microsoft Optical Intellimouse
Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle Pro
Standard keyboard
Standard FDD

Windows Millennium
DirectX 8

[This message has been edited by Alec (edited 17 November 2000).]

[dZeus]

3D sound enabled

That should kill your framerate, especially on a SB 128!

[Ryuhei]

Well, I got the GeForce 2 GTS yesterday. All I have to say is DAYUM! I STILL wish the G400 worked, but it just doesn't. I took the G400 out, installed the GTS, installed the detonator 3 drivers, and let 'er rip. Quake 3 in 1024x768, geometric detal highest, 32 bit color depth, 32 bit texture detail, trilinnear filtering, lightmap lighting, high quality sound, and every other setting maxed out. Results: timedemo 1=80.4 FPS, timedemo2=79.8 FPS. And NO tweaking for hours on end to get it to work. I have to admit, it's nice to actually just "plug 'n' play."