ET under LINUX or WINDOWS XP PRO

(dfusion) #1

I was wodnering which is best fps wise for the agem, if people cna post what fps they get with high detail / low detail cfgs an theyre ssytem spec on both formats please.

Due to my 2.6 having a crappy 400 mhz bus my fps arent all that great an was wondering if linux would boost my fps?

If so what cant linux do that windows can?
pros cons?

Can i make a dual boot between Xp pro and linux?

I really know nothing about linux just that everyone seems to say it runs faster.

thanks in advance.

(CPU) 1-Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2.60GHz, 2599MHz, 512KB (57% Load) .:.
(RAM) usage: 173/767MB (22.56%) .:.
(GFX) RADEON 9700 PRO - Secondary,
(Display) 1024x768/32bit/85Hz
(OS) Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1 (5.1 - 2600), (installed for) 1w 5h 30m, (uptime) 18m 4s .:.
(HDDs) 101G/111G(91%) free

([=O=]SMYLER) #2

Well for a start what are you gettin’ ?

(dfusion) #3

thats what im askin aswell :stuck_out_tongue:

to put it blunt i know nothing about linux except its supposedly alot faster than windows.

an which version an all that would help me gamewise

(dfusion) #4

i jus looked at linux mandrakesoft, very smart indeed, would my r9700pro be compatible with t etc?

(Ozzie) #5

Mandrake will allow you to install a dual boot system, in fact do most of the work for you. I would suggest that you back up your hard drive first as it will resize your current windows partion. It should also support your 9700 radeon card.

I personally prefer linux over windows, but I have been running it for a long time, but I’m not sure jumping into linux just to play a game is questionable. Looking at the specs of your system, I don’t understand why your not getting good fps. I have a 950mhz athlon, and a 2100athlon that get very good fps, the 950 is running win XP pro, the other is running Linux. A friend of mine is running a pII, and gets playable fps from that system running 98se of all things!!

Did you build this machine yourself? or is it a name brand? Do you make sure as little is running as possible before you start the game?

As most of my friends will tell you, I am a linux bigot, in fact the sign over my door at work says’Friends don’t help friends run windows’, but if issues other then the OS are causing the problem, as I suspect, changing the OS to linux will just frustrate you when you don’t get the improvement you suspect, and ultimatly sour you for linux.

Lets see if we can’t figure out why your not getting good fps, that others are, on the system you have before doing something radical, like changing OS’s.

([=O=]SMYLER) #6

Well if you don’t know what you’re gettin’ now how will you know if something else will beat it ?

Also man don’t put your PC down as there are a lot of people would interfere sexually with an alsation for that PC, take Ozzies friend for example, he’s putting on rubber gloves and getting out the lard for a lubricant as we speak :smiley: .

(dfusion) #7

ozzie theres no way i can get more fps out my pc, my lack of kowledge when choosing cpu and mobo at the time was poor, a 400mhz bus is really not worth the money.

i just wanted to know is it true that linux is noticeably faster than winxp pro? linux mandrake for eg.

and will it benefit me as a gamer?

(g00se) #8

Slackware 9.0 [ 2.4.20 ]
Intel Penitum II - 398.273 MHz
352MB bus clock speed is 99.5675 MHz
/hda - 80026 MB w/8192KiB Cache UDMA(33)
nVidia GeForce2 GTS [ 1.0-4496 ] - GPU 300 MHz 65536 kBytes
XFree86 [ 4.3.0 ] - Game at 1024 x 768…monitor is at Pixel Clock (108.00 MHz), Horizontal Sync (67 kHz), Vertical Sync (75 Hz).

BTW…I grabbed most of this info from dmesg, xvidtune, Xf86.log, etc.

I used to play RTCW w/ no lag.

I now play ET on < 24 person servers with minimal lag. It can get a little laggy if you are around a couple of Level 3 field ops. All and all it works real well for a 5 year old processor/board.

WRT Linux. If you want to gain control of your computer and don’t mind reading a bit…well…you be the judge.

(Ozzie) #9

dfusion,

Linux tends to utilize hardware better then windows, in most cases, will you notice the difference, I not sure. Will it benefit you as a gamer, that depends on your choices of games, q3 games seem to be mostly ported to linux, but a lot of others are not, so if you play ET, RTCW,Doom, etc then you will be happy with linux, on the other hand if you want more varity, dongeon seige, GTA, Black Hawk down, you will be disappointed.

I use linux in a development enviroment, so I’m compling, doing research on the web (I might have 10 browsers open at the same time), moving large blocks code to production servers via FTP, and at the same time, others are accessing my CVS repositories via the network. Linux is well suited for for these tasks because of the fact that it is a multi-user/multi-task/networking OS. Windows was not designed for this workload, therefor befor you start playing a game you must make sure that all non-esential (for gaming and networking) applications are shut down, I even do this on the linux box, but it is not always necessary. In fact, 5 yrs ago, when I wanted to sell my boss on the idea of utilizing linux for an application we were building, I set up a pII running linux, loaded apache and our web application. I sat him and 9 other users down infront of networked machines and had them access/use the application. I then went to the linux box and fired up doom. The application users would not have known I was playing (they saw no latency) had it not been for the guy in the cube behind me, laughing as I was getting frag’d. From that point on, my boss would not even consider purchasing windows for our production servers.

My point is this, linux is faster then windows as you put more and more load on it, but if you just want to play a game, your learning curve would be better spent finding out why your ‘monster’ machine runs slow. One thing (this happened to another m8) make sure your virus checker is not schedualed to do a full disk scan or update itself during the time you normally game.

Sorry this was long winded, but it drives me nuts when someone tells someone else, linux is faster then windows, but does not quallify the statement :banghead:

If you would like me to try to help you tweek your system, feel free to PM me and I will see what we can do, or you can try the Mandrake install (PLEASE BACKUP HARDDRIVE FIRST) , although I generally try not to support a machine that I did not install.

(dfusion) #10

youv been SO much help thnaks.

I actually understand a little about linus now :slight_smile:

and yes its mostly Q3 engine games i play an the reson my ‘monstor machine’ is performing so poor is because of a 400mhz cpu bus which leaes alot to be desired :confused:

I get playable fps now after some tweaking (55 capped but it fluxes from 40-100 outside) I cap it because any decent gamer will know its easier to play with 55 capped than it plumiting from 100–>40 because you notice it so much.

If i create a dual boot between xp pro and linux i should be fine then :slight_smile:

what abotu drivers etc? hows that work if i only have say win2k drivers for my sound card? or soemthing.

also can i still sue apps designed for windows in linux?
you mentioned if iw anted to play games such as dungon siege etc etc id be dissapointed, in what way? ess FPS and quality etc than windows xp pro? or just the same, becase if its tjus the same ill be happy cos a boost all be it just with Q3 engine games is still a mgiht advantage over the ‘extremely stable’ xp pro :slight_smile:

thanks for the feed ack, really appreciate it.

(Ozzie) #11

One of the nice things about Linux is that most drivers come with the install set, un-like windows when your done with the install, now you have to go to all the card manufacturers to get the updated drivers. I have been running ATI cards for a long time, my first was an ISA card (and it was bleeding edge at the time). You did not list your sound card, what is it? If SoundBlaster the drivers are there. Next would be network card, did not see it listed in your post, but most standard cards are supported.

The reason I said you might be disappointed if you play othe games, is that there are not linux versions of the games. Dungeon Siege for example, is a MicroSoft game, and I can’t see them ever porting or allowing someone else to port to linux. A program must be coded and complied for the OS for it to be able to run on the OS. Now there are windows emulators, WINE being a prime example, but the problem with emulators is that what you have is your native OS, in this case Linux, which runs you emulator (another program), which then runs the program. So in most cases you will not get the performance that you would by just running windows nativly. Because you are creating a dual boot system, your better off running native windows programs from your windows boot.

With the exception of using WINE as above, you will not be able to run your windows programs, like MS Office, but, the Linux distribution, Mandrake in this case will offer you many optional programs to replace your windows apps (openoffice for example will provide most of the functionality of MS Office and ever read and write to natvie format that can then be opened by MS Office) and are included in the distribution.

Mandrake is not the only Linux distribution, someone else mentioned Slackware, I have not run it sence the mid 90’s so I will not comment on the state of the distribution, many people run it and swear by it, but I can not comment on it at this time. Most of my machines run debian in one form or another, but I would not suggest it to a linux noob (in this case I don’t mean noob in a bad way). There are many others, but again without running them personally, I refuse to comment on them. One of the biggest complaints about Mandrake by linux people, is that it looks too much like windows, but in this case, with you being new to linux and knowing windows, I think it would have the lesser learning curve.

You can download the Mandrake iso images and burn your own CDs (although you did not list a burner in your specs), but unless you have a broadband connection, I would suggest you find a boxed set.

Oh, one more thing, BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE BEFORE YOU START!!!
I know I have said this already, but I can’t say it enough, so BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE BEFORE YOU START :bump:

(Riftgarde) #12

Under XP, Did you…

Have unneeded services enabled?
Run over 1024x768 desktop and use a wallpaper?
Have themes running?
Have excessive programs running in the system tray?
Have obsolete registry keys?
Have indexing enabled on drives?
Have game folders under ntfs compression layer?

I have a AXP 2000+, 333mhz fsb, ti4400, 512mb ram and get 40-125 (60 capped) under XP.

XP looks like W2K and uses 73mb upon boot.

If people weren’t jerks and attacked computers or wrote viruses, I might get it down to 50-55mb usage.

(dfusion) #13

yeah iv tweaked my xp pro pretty well, looks like win 98 etc no themes, no wallpaper, the usual shit, my game cfgs tweaked to high fuck an i use rage3d to get the msot out my 9700pro.

AMDs are generally much better with ET than intels, from what iv seen anyway, i know some people with p4 2.6#s but they got the ht 800mhz version an seems to perform well, i guess i wont be making the same mistake twice :).

just about to install linux on a seperate 20 gig partition :slight_smile: ( burning to cd atm)

hopefully linux will please me till i can afford to build my own pc, last time i buy a ready built one, even custom spec ones they always fob you off with some cheap shit :confused:

(dfusion) #14

errr btw :s i just tried to start d/l linux et to put on cd an save time but it throws up a 260 mb txt file… :o

im guessing you need linux to downlload it? or do you import that txt file into the linux console an then it installs that way?

(Ozzie) #15

It is a self-extracting ‘text’ file. Really it is a shell script with the actual code tar’d at the bottom. The script will untar the bottom of the file when it runs. Also you will probably have to make the script executible, so you will not be able to run it from the cd because a cd is read-only

(puds) #16

Errr, you have a better machine than me, but i dont seem to be suffering that much from FPS issues.

I have P4 2.4, 9700 Pro, 512Mb RAM (Win XP Pro sp1) and the only time where i suffer from FPS issues is when Im lurking in the leaves and bushes in the Radar map - oh and i run on high detail

Could you be looking for a complicated answer when theres an easier one?

ie - have you tweaked ET settings for your RAM and Net connection…
this is what i have for 512k DSL.

seta com_maxfps “76”
seta cl_maxpackets “38”
seta rate “15000”
seta snaps “40”

these can go in your etconfig.cfg file…