unsatisfying FPS in d3

[whuppinboy]

i've got an Athlon XP 3200 with the 64 bit processor and 1024 RAM the ASUS VIA KV8
i may be wrong here but i could swear my FSB is at 800
the CPU to AGP is set at 200
my vid card is the GeForce FX 5900 ultra with it overclocked to 600/900 from a default 400/700

timetest results with my performance set at Turbo1:

-nointro -nomusic -framecap 0 -playermessages -usesmoothing -deadzone0 0.0 -deadzone1 0.0 -timetest secret2.dem

303.84 Descent3 v1.4
177 Min
523 Max
205 Second 1
407 Second 2
523 Second 3
476 Second 4
251 Second 5
177 Second 6
242 Second 7
284 Second 8
391 Second 9
193 Second 10
258 Second 11


refresh rate is 100 at a rez of 1024x768

i would expect a better a minimum FPS from this system. any suggestions?

[fliptw]

using opengl? Vsync disabled in the control panel?

Outside of that, nothing much I can suggest.

You need to remember, the FX wasn't designed to run Descent 3 at insanely high framerates.

[CDN_Merlin]

Everyone cheats by using the -nosound also.

[Darkside Heartless]

I don't get all the hype about high framerates. I get 80-100 and I'm fine with that.

[BUBBALOU]

anything over your refresh rate is useless... just bragging rights

[Teddy]

That is dam good figuring that you have sound playing!!! Most people get higher scores by turning off the sound.
Also, your high overclock wont really speed up d3 any, it's dependant mostly on your cpu speed.

[Warlock]

I don't get all the hype about high framerates. I get 80-100 and I'm fine with that.

i agree

[MD-2389]

Yeah, turn off sound and watch your frames skyrocket. (btw, fix your avatar dude. Click the profile link and upload it to the server.)

[Mobius]

Whuppin - a couple of things:

-fastdemo

Don't turn off sound - that suxors. It's only value is to determine what hit the sound gives you. I mean, you don't play with no sound - do you? Try various sound options, but for my money, 3D sound is the way to go. D3 gives positional sound cues - so limiting it to software sound, or 2 speakers is teh lame.

(And Fusk you idiots and your I'm-L337-software-sound!!)

The limiting factor in your timetest is the CPU. Remember, the Fusion Engine was designed for 300MHz CPUs and with cores 10 times that fast, there's just no way the engine will scale geometrically with CPU speed. I'd be very surprised if a 6GHz core would be more than 15-25% faster.

To change the bottleneck back to the GFx card, raise the resolution to 1280 x 960, and test again. Youmight find you get identical scores at 1280 mode, but check and make sure you maxed the refresh at 1280. You want 85Hz or more. You might even want to go to 1600 mode - but I doubt you can refresh at more than 72Hz at that resolution - so probably pointless.

That "low" figure of 177 isn't bad at all - remember - in days gone by, that number would have been "13". I do believe the D3 Engine doesn't respond amazingly well to clock rate increases on the CPU side, but I *do* believe it scales nicely at hi-resolution. I could be wrong though.

[Krom]

By the way Mobius, do you actually have any idea what the -fastdemo command line does---and why it is completely useless when used with the -timetest command line?

I'll give you a hint, run D3 without -timetest and view a demo using the -fastdemo command.

-Krom

[whuppinboy]

flip: yup, using opengl and vsync is disabled in d3 and the vid card.

MD: haven't had time to fix me avatar, tried it last week but it can't be more than 15kb i think? so i'll fiddle with that eventually

mobi: went thru your walkthru and made sure my refresh rate was maxed on all display settings up to my current one. i'll try upping it and see what i can get.

i've turned off the sound for the timetest and of course everything jumps up, hell, it only takes 5 seconds to run

i'm just surprised is all, switching from a 800 athlon with a geforce 3 ti500 to my current one, my minimum rate was like 90.

:edit: lord i need to drink more coffee, that's almost double what i was getting

anyhoo, i can't complain i guess and thought i'd see what y'all might think. looks awesome in the mines, now if i could just learn to fly

[Teddy]

well, if you beef is the min framerate, It is mostlikely caused by the poor opengl drivers that ati makes... sorry but radeons are slower at rendering d3.... drop a napalm missle and watch how low your framerate goes... it will still probably drop as low as it did on your previous system, even with how much faster your current system is.

[XeonJr]

Add -nopentium3 and -nocompress (I get an extra 100 FPS using them)

If you just use headphones like most, It is probably best to set your sound acceleration to "BASIC." This will give you 100 - 200 REAL FPS boost with sound enabled and will be beneficial to you in game

[WarAdvocat]

Oh good point! Given that D3 was designed with 8 & 12 MB video cards in mind, Texture Compression isn't all that necessary these days with a modern(ish) video card.

I gotta try that, thanks for the tip.

[MD-2389]

MD: haven't had time to fix me avatar, tried it last week but it can't be more than 15kb i think? so i'll fiddle with that eventually

e-mail it to me dude, and I'll try to shrink the filesize down for ya as best I can w/o loosing image quality.

[whuppinboy]

teddy: i have an nvidid card but thanks anyhoo

xeon: tried the -nocompress (isn't nopentium for intel chips?)

reset my vid card to 400/700 cuz i was getting a grey screen everytime i tried to run d3 timetest:

Turbo1 with vid card at 400/700

1)295.55 Descent3 v1.4
185 Min
541 Max
194 Second 1
379 Second 2
461 Second 3
541 Second 4
270 Second 5
185 Second 6
215 Second 7
246 Second 8
403 Second 9
225 Second 10
246 Second 11

after adding the -nocompress

297.04 Descent3 v1.4
181 Min
560 Max
194 Second 1
369 Second 2
460 Second 3
560 Second 4
270 Second 5
181 Second 6
215 Second 7
257 Second 8
405 Second 9
220 Second 10
253 Second 11

average went up, minimum went down, but max increased

just for shiz and giglets here's with -nosound:

617.94 Descent3 v1.4
389 Min
856 Max
856 Second 1
799 Second 2
543 Second 3
513 Second 4
610 Second 5

[WarAdvocat]

yeah that nosound is a cheese way to make your computer work faster.

It's called a computer SYSTEM, so test it as a system.

Nice frames, BTW. I wish I could get that high on mine.

[MD-2389]

Buny, lets not start that debate again....

The point of using -nosound is to see how it would perform "optimally". Ya know....to give you something to bench your system when you do turn sound on.

[WarAdvocat]

I know I know I'll stfu. It's beating a dead horse, and I understand the reasons, it's just not a realistic benchmark of real-world results, unless you play with sound off.

And I'm officially done with b!tching about it (for now).

[Canuck]

Please explain what difference I would notice jumping from playing locked @ 60 HZ ever since I could afford to move to 3DFX,

to 500 + FPS framerates in D3?

Does it not increase vauss/missle rate of fire?
Speed of reloads?
tracking etc.
What else happens? Negatives/Crashes?

Forever in love wit my Voodoo 2/3
Nuck out.

PS
Here's my timetest wit a V3 P3 800 640x480

92.89 Descent3 v1.4
59 Min
120 Max
59 Second 1
83 Second 2
94 Second 3
67 Second 4
67 Second 5
75 Second 6
110 Second 7
119 Second 8
112 Second 9
98 Second 10
93 Second 11
119 Second 12
120 Second 13
98 Second 14
106 Second 15
120 Second 16
120 Second 17
120 Second 18
88 Second 19
112 Second 20
69 Second 21
68 Second 22
68 Second 23
69 Second 24
93 Second 25
96 Second 26
93 Second 27
106 Second 28
113 Second 29
107 Second 30
119 Second 31
110 Second 32
92 Second 33
90 Second 34
74 Second 35
101 Second 36
104 Second 37
108 Second 38

[fliptw]

Besides playing with a higher refresh rate?