Performance issues with Intel cpu's ?

(dfusion) #1

Does the game have performance issues with intel chips?

the reason iask is because i have:

intel 2.6ghz ( 400mhz BUS )
768 ddr ram
radeon 9700 pro
Intel mobo

and I manage to average around 50 - 55 fps, now i know people with the same setup but with amd xp2600 (and lower) that can max out at 125 fps and average 90-100.

Iv tried tweaking my cfg, which doesnt help that much iv reinstalled the game several times, Ive tried it on win xp pro, home and win2k and its the same doggy performance.

SoF2 which also uses the Q3 engine manages to get a satisfying 250-310 fps out of my pc.

also iv noticed in the console when the game loads it says “detecting CPU… Found Intel Pentium III” and i have a p4… which is what made me think it may have issues with intel chips.

If so is there a patch coming soon?
If not please lemme know anyway so i can go an rage at my pc manufacturer. :slight_smile:
thanks.

(n00ber) #2

How’d you tweak the cfg? and which cfg did you tweak? the one in your profile? or in etmain?

(Freedom[]Tickler) #3

Hey dfusion,

If you pop in a P4 2.6 gig w/ 533 bus and DDR33 Im sure youd see your rig fly like the xp2600 - of which there are 2 flavors - a 266 and a 333 FSB version. The 266 version is a dog, the 333 version can atleast make a showing. But the mobo you have matters too - you have 845PE whcih will benefit from faster ram and bus.
ET may not have SSE2 optimizations, but if you go back and read older reviews of the p4/400fsb w/ ddr 266 - youll be disappointed to see it wasnt a high performer. AMD was very happy about this - until the 533 and 800 fsb falvors came around.
If you bought this rig w/ in the last year,you shld rage at your PC manufactureer for not selling you the faster kit.

(dfusion) #4

but it still dont explain how i can pull 300 fps in a agme which blows ET away gfx wise an has large maps too… was the aim of ET to make a game run as doggish as possible by using overly large maps ? cos on any other Q3 engine (wolf included) i max out 125 fps easyily without going under 124…

and i tweaked the cfg in my profile folder.

(weasel) #5

CPU detection is meaningless, it says Pentium III for my athlon. Your performance has nothing to do with your CPU. Most of the work is done by the video card anyway. Your problem is either with your drivers or your config. I can’t help with drivers, since I’ve never owned an ATI card, but if you can post a link to your etconfig.cfg, that would be helpful. Also note that, as far as I can tell, configs in your profile directory are ignored. You need to use the ones in etmain.

Download this, put it in etmain/demos/, start ET, and in console type “/timedemo 1;/demo timedemo1”. It’ll run the demo as fast as it can, then report the framerate in the console when it’s done. I tried to make the demo so that it represented about what your average framerate would be in game. 24 is fairly accurate for me, on that map.

I get 24.0fps with the following specs:
Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz)
471MB DDR2100 RAM
64MB GeForce2 MX chipset (nForce on-board video)
Resolution is 800x600@16bpp

([=O=]SMYLER) #6

Weasel I think they’re something seriously fucked up if ET picks up your CPU as an Intel P3. I REALLY wouldn’t like that coming up in my log at all and would strive to rectify it. Wouldn’t it mean that ET isn’t getting all the 3Dnow shit and various other extensions etc ?

Also if those are your specs and thats REALLY your frame rate I’d SERIOUSLY check things over as your pretty decent machine is running ET like a dog with no legs.

Have a look man, I would.

(weasel) #7

I don’t think CPU detection actually does anything. It detects EVERYTHING as an Intel P3. Go ahead, look at your log. It’ll say P3. As far as my frame rate, could you post your config so I can try tweaking some stuff? I didn’t think this was really that bad. What do you get in that demo?

Edit: I updated the demo, I noticed it was using a custom campaign, I didn’t know if that would be a problem or not. It’s pretty much the same as the first one, and I get 37.7fps this time.

(Freedom[]Tickler) #8

Clock and bus speed matter alot in ET, and the big outdoor maps do stretch the performance of the engine, compared to moh and rtcw and even q3:ta

dfusion and I get about same performance, he has faster grfx card and I have faster CPU and bus. how you set screen res, textures and color depth will affect things too, depending in what combos theyre set.

Check to see if your grfx drivers are turning on FSAA and/or AF, either of those will drop performance.

Outside my FPS goes down, in hallways I hit 250 FPS, in rain and grass it tanks down in a firefight. Im 800x600 32 bit color&textures w/ all eye candy jacked up. I think your performance is about right

If you run at 640x480 16 bit color/textures and eye candy off, you shld see better than 50 fps avg in rain and grass - if so perhaps something is fubar.

Weasel q3 is optimised for SSE intructions, I dont know what 3D Now instructions ET has, but it shld see your chip as an AMD - tho AMD XP chips also support SSE -

(weasel) #9

Actually, it doesn’t detect my CPU as a P3, I forgot. It doesn’t detect one at all.

PIXELFORMAT: color(16-bits) Z(16-bit) stencil(0-bits)
MODE: 4, 800 x 600 fullscreen hz:N/A
GAMMA: hardware w/ 0 overbright bits
CPU:

However, earlier I have this:

GL_VENDOR: NVIDIA Corporation
GL_RENDERER: GeForce2 MX/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!
GL_VERSION: 1.4.0 NVIDIA 43.49

It still knows about the 3DNOW and SSE. The CPU doesn’t mean anything.

(Weaver24) #10

what?

(Freedom[]Tickler) #11

weasel

a g2 mx card geting 37 isnt too bad. the mx versions of nvidias cards are aimed at the budget market, so youre doing pretty good.

I wouldnt sweat the log entry, if ET runs well, youre ahead of the game : )

(SCDS_reyalP) #12

The GL_RENDERER comes straight from your OpenGL driver, so it doesn’t say what the game thinks you have, only what your video driver thinks you have.

FWIW, my athlon XP + via kt226 system reports AMD w/3DNOW as CPU in both RTCW and ET. Perhaps this has to do with chipset drivers ?

Given that you have a gf2mx, I’m not surprised at your FPS.

To the original poster:
That does seem quite low for that spec of a system. Make sure you have latest drivers for everything, and don’t have FSAA or anything silly like that turned on.

([=O=]SMYLER) #13

Actually thinking about it man there is a big difference between our machines and your fps ain’t all that bad for a GF4mx, one thing I noticed was the drivers you’re using. Now these are beta but I have NO problem at all and we all know that bigger numbers in drivers supposedly lead to a karma filled existence, so here are the Detonator 44.65 beta drivers:

http://www.warp2search.net/download.php?op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=182&ttitle=Beta%20Detonator%2044.65%20Windows%202000%20/%20XP

(Sauron|EFG) #14

I think the CPU detection actually is a CPU Extention detection, i.e. ‘if SSE then P3 else if 3DNow then AMD’ (or something)… Unfortunately for P4 owners the engine has no SSE2 detection/optimization.

My Thunderbird 1200 is identified as “AMD /w 3DNow”.

([=O=]SMYLER) #15

The Tbird 1200 was and still is a fine chip and it’s to this game (and the cpus) credit that the two of them can run quite happily along together. What vid card and memory you got in your box Sauron ? You evil tower dwelling type you.

(dfusion) #16

the guy who said it uses the cfg in etmain, iv never actually noticed that cos whenever iv tweaked my profile cfg its worked so i suggest you do try doing that too.

It would be nice if an admin could comment.

(Freedom[]Tickler) #17

OK dfusion,

since youre so persistent I did some digging around for old reviews. Learned a few things too.

The 2.4ghz was the last p4 to use 400 FSB. If you have a 2.6 P4, it shld be a 533 FSB chip.

heres a link to a review at anand tech where they use rtcw as a bench, using a geforce4 ti4600 - which is pretty close in speed to your radeon 9700 pro if no AA or AF is used -
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1605&p=8

if you still have wolf installed, run that demo and compare, shld be somewhat equivelent.

Perhaps we shld start a benchmark thread, get people to post system specs, game specs and what their avg FPS is.

If you can tell me more about your rig, Id be happy to look it up and poke around for benchmarks to get a comparison. Could just be that ET is kickin the snot outta our rigs, and we shld be grateful they dont spark hiss catch on fire and burn thru the floor.

(dfusion) #18

maybe my mobo has it default to 400mhz BUS, if so how can i change this? dotn just say bios plz as im a utter fool when it comes to using the bios.

Im 100% sure windows recognises my chip as 400mhz bus, in several sys reports such as dxdiag, my intel cd, and various others it says im using a p4 2.60ghz running at a 400mhz bus.

(Freedom[]Tickler) #19

feel free to poke around in there, you can always use the ‘exit discarding changes’ option if you think you buggered it up.

check to see if CPU is set to auto in advanced bios options section - thats usually what it is called.

heres alink to a bios otimization guide, that explains in laymens terms all the different settings -

shld help you navigate thru it, if you have 2 PCs online, boot your gaming rig to BIOS and use other to navigate the guide.

gl

(dfusion) #20

in the advanced tab i dont have the option to change BUS speed i ahve the following:
PCI configuration
Boot configuration
Peripherial configuration
IDE configuration
Diskette configuration
Event log configuration
Viedo configuration
USB configuration
Chipset configuration

Ive had a look in each option an cannot find anything todo with the BUS speed, iv also checked other sections and noa vail.

Maybe they did make p4 2.6’s with 400mhz BUS’s

My mobo 100% supports a 533mhz BUS and doesnt mention switching speeds in the documentation.

Thanks for helping.

any suggestions?