W:ET Graphics performance degradation on Linux

(thysiophus) #1

I am running into a strange problem with the graphics performance. When I start W:ET I get between 20 and 30 FPS according to the counter. This might seem low to some people, but it has always been that way and is quite playable. However, starting about 2 weeks ago, I get sudden drops in frame rate. Going down to 2 FPS or less. So it’s basically unplayable. Until now, I have no idea what is causing this problem.

Here are some system specs. If I am missing something, just ask.

  • It’s a laptop with a Intel Pentium M @ 1500 MHz.
  • 512 MiB memory.
  • Graphics adapter: Intel 855GM.
  • Kernel: Linux 2.6.19-gentoo-r5
  • Xorg version: 7.1.1
  • OpenGL version: 1.3 Mesa 6.5.1
  • ET version 2.60b
  • I have disabled about all the graphics features of W:ET and run at a resolution of 800x600.

I am well aware, that this is not exactly a gaming machine, but so far playing was at least possible.

What I find interesting is that glxgears gives me a frame rate of about 610 FPS before starting the game. After the in-game graphics went ballistic and I exit the game, glxgears only produces 80 FPS. So far I couldn’t find any screaming error message in either system log, Xorg log or the console output of W:ET indicating that some sudden event causes the performance drop.

Any help or further suggestions for investigations would be greatly appreciated.

(figvam) #2

Do you have a compositing manager enabled by chance?

(thysiophus) #3

Not that I know of. This is a pretty basic system. Xorg, xdm and Enlightenment 0.16.8.1.

I don’t know if any of the recent updates are causing the issues, because the game was running fine for over a year. But then I’d expect other people having similar problems.

(Sauron|EFG) #4

Does it happen if you host your own server/watch a demo/play on non-PB servers?

(thysiophus) #5

I just tried running my own server for a while. I did not experience anything bad. Maybe I just didn’t wait long enough. Once the graphics performance plummeted while playing on the server I usually play on, playing on localhost will also be impossible.

Usually, I only play on one server and that one has PB disabled as far as I know.

(Alexey) #6

You use software(Mesa), not hardware acceleration. Software acceleration (use processor resources) always slowly. For hardware acceleration load driver from http://intel.com or http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org for you videocard and change /etc/X11/xorg.conf section driver. ET use too many OpenGL extension and will be faster if will be use hardware videocard, not processor.

(pringles1942) #7

Hmmm… well the specs meet the requirments, (I don’t know about much of the Intel Graphics Accelerator, because I just hear about ATI and Nvidia) but it should be running fine with the settings you have it at. Try getting the latest drivers for your graphics card. But I don’t know much about the Linux version because I’m a Windows user.

(ayatollah) #8

Required again…