what SLI mode for Wolf ET?

(thewonderfulcar) #1

Just added another card for SLI… seems to be working great, but I can’t get ET to take advantage of it.

When I had just 1 card, I used to play it at 1600x1200 with 4x AA and get a solid 76 fps. I’d now like to get it running with 8x AA, but it still only seems to be using 1 card (one gets hot, the other doesn’t)… so I get big dips in the frame rate, even when I try SLI antialiasing. I’ve tried renaming the .exe to get round nvidia’s SLI profile. Which mode should I be using? I have an Athlon 64 at 2.6ghz so I doubt it’s CPU limited.

I run ET in windowed mode so I can switch back to windows easily, should that make any difference?

(corvey) #2

like ET needs SLI for decent frame rates.

(thewonderfulcar) #3

It does if you want to play at ridiculous resolutions with ridiculous amounts of antialiasing.

No big deal though, I’m sure I can get by with a mere 4x AA…

(McAfee) #4

Make sure you are using the latest drivers.
I suggest running it at full screen mode.
Nvidia should already have profiles for that game (which is not a bad thing)

(Dazzamac) #5

SLI was a distant dream when the Q3 arena engine was built. ET wouldn’t know what to do with 2 graphics cards.

(McAfee) #6

The video card driver does.

(Mordenkainen) #7

Hmm you don’t mention which cards you’re SLIing. 1600x1200 at 8xAA (I assume SSAA not any superAA methods) requires cards with more than 128mb of video ram. Perhaps this is the problem?

Anyway, you should always go for AFR first unless there are problems. This mode is the one that best scales and can theoretically provide up to 1.9 times the performance of a single card. This mode doesn’t work if the game uses render to texture (which I’m sure Wolf: ET doesn’t use) or causes visual artefacts/performance problems.

(Shaderman) #8

ET is not yet listed on the profile list. Here’s a starting point for making your own profile: http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_appprofile.html

(Nail) #9

yes it is, silly shaderman, they just call it rtcw:et

(ParanoiD) #10

  1. Use the ETmin minimizer to get back to windows, playing ET fullscreen is much better :slight_smile: Here (the good old one, newer doesnt seem to work that good.) Just save it to your disk and just start the exe before starting ET. Use ctrl+z to go back to windows

  2. You capped your FPS at max 76. You would have gotten already more without SLI. Open up the console (press ~) and typ: /com_maxfps 999999. That should do the job.

And even my 1800+, 1 GB DDR and a 9600pro EZ 256 MB is even able to get a stable 76 FPS at 1280x1024x32 everything high… Nothing special, my CPU can max handle 90 FPS anyways according to Tomshardware. Yours should be max 200 FPS according to the same benchmark.

(ouroboro) #11

Those bastards! :moo:

Q3E Minimizer (latest known version is 1.51) works with several games out of the box, and has other cool options.

Or just 0 (zero), meaning don’t cap framerate at all. Although he obviously used 76 for it’s jumping benefits. With an excellent system, 125 would give the same benefits and be a lot smoother.

(Shaderman) #12

Damn, the old trick! :stuck_out_tongue:

Ok, here’s my excuse: Posted: May 23, 2006 - 08:12 AM (seems like I was still sleepy this morning and had no coffee before reading and posting) :banghead:

(thewonderfulcar) #13

Hmm you don’t mention which cards you’re SLIing.

It’s 7800GTX.
Will try those suggestions.

(|M|) #14

God I wish I had 2 of those

(ParanoiD) #15

Who doesnt… Spits on crap 9600pro EZ 256MB… Altough it still does his job, and pretty good as well.

#16

Q3E Minimizer (latest known version is 1.51) works with several games out of the box, and has other cool options.
[/quote]

Q3E Minimizer will give you a low resolution of 640x480 when you are minimizing, even if running a high resolution in for example Quake3.

etmin will give you the same resolution as in the game, when minimizing. So if you have both 1280x1024 in game, and in windows, you should see no difference in resolution when minimizing.

#17

This is a bit off-topic, but I’ll ask it anyway: How can I enable AA in ET? I think there’s a command called r_ati_multisamples or something like that, but does it work with nVidia? My graphics card is GF 6600 GT PCI-E and FW is 91.28.

(SCDS_reyalP) #18

I’d suggest just turning it on in your video card control panel. The recent nvidia drivers have game specific profiles.

(Nail) #19

I’d suggest just turning it on in your video card control panel. The recent nvidia drivers have game specific profiles.[/quote]

on that thought, we had a site member increase his fps from 15 to 40 on radar just by using the ET specific settings on the nVidia control panel

(ouroboro) #20

I’ve never seen this, and I’ve been using Q3E for several versions. I have the same res when minimized as I have in game, just like etmin does. That can be annoying if you use a lower game res than Windows res (as I do), because some windows may become partially hidden. There’s also a mildly annoying bug regarding Firefox, where minimizing a game with higher res than Windows (which I occasionally do when using a fancy movie config), then closing the game, results in an “empty toolbar” at the top of Firefox, if it was open at the time. But I’ve never once had your problem, and the universality of Q3E makes those minor issues tolerable (I am a former etmin user myself). Either the problem is on your end, or I am the benefactor of a bug which makes Q3E work properly for only me.

Sounds like AA (or something) was enabled globally, but not in the ET profile. That’d be my guess. Pretty sure Nvidia don’t compile game-specific optimizations into their software. Those profiles just load your control panel preferences per game.