fps question

(Steuernol) #1

So yesterday, I went out and bought a radeon 9800 to replace my geforce 4 ti4400, and the radeon works great in every other game, but in et it actually had worse fps then the geforce, anybody got any ideas why this would happen? I used to stay at 90 fps, and drop in some of the more intensive areas (fps is still locked too lazy to unlock it) with the radeon it seems to stay around 50 fps, and drop to under 30.

My system:
Athlon XP 2000
512 Megs Corsair RAM
Radeon 9800 pro
Sound Blaster Audigy

ET settings:
pretty much default, resolution is at 800x600 (too lazy to change and it keeps reseting cause of the profile bug thingy), pretty much every thing else on high.

Thanks in advance.

(I have searched the forums, and couldn’t find an answer in the other fps threads)

(Sauron|EFG) #2

Which Catalyst version? There were some performance issues with some versions (supposedly resolved in 4.2).

(Steuernol) #3

I grabbed the latest, so I got 4.3 installed.

(Sick Boy) #4

Don’t let your lazyness spoil your graphics :slight_smile:
http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&t=3883

And maybe check your config for the r_ati_trueform and r_ati_fsaa stuff

(Steuernol) #5

heh, alright, I got off my sorry butt, and created the batch file.

I looked around for some info couldn’t find anything on those 2 cvars, didn’t see them in the game either

I did see

r_ati_fsaa_samples and r_ati_trueform_tess are they related, and if so what do they do?

Thanks for the help.

(BondyBoy007) #6

I’ve heard ATI cards are not as good with opengl as Nvidia cards are and Nvidia are not as good at directx as ATI is.

Guess what the ET engine uses?

But even then I am suprised about your drop in fps, I had a similar drop but that was when I swapped out my ti4600 for a 9600, but your 9800pro is better than the 9600 I had

edit** and those are the cvars sickboy was refering to, change them to 0 if 1 (usually have to do it in game)

(bacon) #7

ATi cards are only slightly slower than the new nvidia cards in OpenGL, but they’re a lot faster in DirectX because of the shader support.

@Steuernol: Do you have dynamic lighting on? Or other high-end graphics things?

(Steuernol) #8

yeah, i got the settings maxed out pretty much, but even on lower detail settings, it seems lag. I was playing with some settings, and it is bearable now most of the time. Just now on battery at the initial allied spawn i was getting 15 fps, just move a little bit up the beach and it would go up to about 60, then on top of the beach on inside the base, jump over 100 fps. Really strange, I’m thinking it might be a driver issue, I might also try adjusting the options in the ati control panel towards better performance

(BondyBoy007) #9

to have such a dramatic variation in fps there must be something strange happening, it doesn’t sound normal

(next_ghost) #10

yeah, i got the settings maxed out pretty much, but even on lower detail settings, it seems lag. I was playing with some settings, and it is bearable now most of the time. Just now on battery at the initial allied spawn i was getting 15 fps, just move a little bit up the beach and it would go up to about 60, then on top of the beach on inside the base, jump over 100 fps. Really strange, I’m thinking it might be a driver issue, I might also try adjusting the options in the ati control panel towards better performance

The same (EXACTLY the same values), Radeon 8500LE 128MB, Celeron 1.8GHz, 256MB DDR266!
Seawall Battery values:
Beach spawn: 25fps
Assault ramp: 50fps
Inside forward bunker/main house: over 100fps

No matter what settings I use (64048016, lowest detail or 1600120032 highest detail), I have ALWAYS these values.

(bubba g) #11

I would suggest a driver issue - did you ensure that you had completely removed the nvidia drivers before you installed the ATI card?

I run a 9800pro, use the 3.9 drivers, and have my frames capped at 76fps, but if I uncap my rate I get a pretty constant 80-90 fps with this card at 1024x768

(bacon) #12

Try this (if you have the ATi Control Panel installed):

  1. Goto Desktop Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> 3D
  2. Click the OpenGL radio.
  3. Try lowering the setting of “Use recommended settings for:”

Does it increase your FPS when you do that?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I was getting 50-60FPS (but sometimes as low as 20FPS) before I defragged my hard drive, now I get 100-200FPS (as low as 70FPS).
Don’t use the windows defragger, it sucks. O&O is much better (you can get demo that lasts for 30 days).
My specs: AthlonXP 2000+, Radeon 9500 Pro, 512MB DDR

(Gautama) #13

I’ve got exactly the same problem…

I bought recently a Radeon 9800 Pro,and with my old config (95 Fps in 1024/768 with my Ge-Force 4 Ti 4200 O/c),and the same tweaked Cfg,i do worst with my Radeon 9800 (sometihng like 85Fps),with a Demo i play like a Benchmarck.

And the worst,is that now,i O/c my P4 from 2.1 to 2.6ghz…

My Config:
Pentium 4 2.0a Ghz @2.6Ghz
His Radeon 98800 Pro IceQ
512Mo Pc3200 Samsung
Sound Blaster Live
Catalyst 4.3(This is Worst with the New Omega Driver).

And I’ve got a Friend that play on Jedi Knight 2(Quake 3 Engine also),with Radeon 9800 Pro,and he’v got the Same Problem…
But in Direct-X with 3dmark 2003 or Farcry,everything run fines…Really don’t Know what’s going on…

Bacon:i Try what you recommended,this increase a little bit (+5 fps,max on my timedemo),but not what i expected for a Radeon… :angry:

(Steuernol) #14

Yeah, I tried those things too, Bacon and not much improvement, I will try rolling the driver back to 3.9 later today.