DescentBB

Hi people. My new box is kickin' motherfathering A' - but not in D3. Whenever I enter a map (even in single player mode) the game dives to around 30 fps (from 300-500) about every 5 seconds or so.

I seem to remember reading something about this some time ago - but can't remember what the cause was.

I generally use OpenGL on the X800XL for Descent 3. It plays Doom ]|[ just fine, and HL2, and Tron 2.0 just great.

Is there any way to stop the stuttering?

In testing, I've seen 1000 FPS in BI3! Hell, I remember when my Pentium 2 400 with my Matrox G400 was really struggling to poke out 60 FPS at 640 x 480 mode! Hehe.

Crap; I've experienced those types of hang-ups myself in the past, but I'm not entirely sure what caused them. If I remember correctly, I believe my version of it was some sort of controller conflict.

If your playing in D3d, changed to opengl...

If your playing in opengl on an ATI card... good luck, it's most likely a driver conflict with some backgroung app....
I still have an old 7500 aiw that i use as a pvr mostly and d3 is played on it when my nephews come over, and if Upnp is enabled(at least with the driver that is loaded) it pauses every few seconds. I had the same problem with my 9700 and changing out the drivers would sometimes make it go away or make it sensitive to another background app... I remember one time it would studder if i had download meter running in the background(this was aobut the time i pulled out the pos card).

Vsynch off in game and in windows
Direct sound and not EAX
Turn off AA and AF

Try toggling your fastwrites.

CDN_Merlin wrote:Vsynch off in game and in windows CHECK
Direct sound and not EAX CHECK
Turn off AA and AF NO FREAKING WAY!

I am running 4X FSAA and 16X ANISO at 1024 mode. There is no way I'm gonna ditch the eye-candy I paid so much for. I seriously doubt AA and AF affect performance thusly.

punisher wrote:Try toggling your fastwrites.

Disable AGP FastWrites in BIOS - OK, I'll try that.

Mobius wrote:

punisher wrote:Try toggling your fastwrites.

Disable AGP FastWrites in BIOS - OK, I'll try that.

I've heard that recommended a lot, fwiw.

Mobius wrote:

CDN_Merlin wrote:Vsynch off in game and in windows CHECK
Direct sound and not EAX CHECK
Turn off AA and AF NO FREAKING WAY!

I am running 4X FSAA and 16X ANISO at 1024 mode. There is no way I'm gonna ditch the eye-candy I paid so much for. I seriously doubt AA and AF affect performance thusly.

Up to you what you do but if all else fails and it still stutters, then STFU.

I offered a suggestions and you won't even try it.

OK Merl - just because it's you - I'll try it.

If you're right - I'll be very upset!

FWIW, I generally like vsync to be ON not OFF, for 2 reasons.

1. It gets rid of screen tearing which I am absolutely convinced has uped my online game a bit making me more accurate, because an opponent doesnt appear to be where they are not in a torn part of the screen.

2. The over all smoothness of the game is increased because Im not maxing out my processor, and allowing it to generate several screens in advance. (I uped the frames in advance buffer in openGL using rivatuner)

But getting vsync to work correctly in openGL is like trying to make Windows ME into a stable OS

So you're suggesting that at 1280 mode I should only see 85 FPS, when my GFX card can draw 500+ at that resolution.

No thanks. I'd rather my screen updating from the front buffer whenever the back buffer is full. At that number of FPS, the differences between frames are tiny, and hence tearing is not noticeable.

If you had a system which would only cough up 90 FPS at 1280 mode, then V-Syncing might make some sense.

ATi doesn't have triple buffering ? Dude, get an nVidea card..

Heh, for once I aggreed with Mobius, keep the 4x FSAA on that card, I run 4x all the time with my 5900 Ultra at 1280x960 and easily crank around 200 FPS in D3.

But true, Nvidia cards and drivers are better if you are playing anything that uses OpenGL.

Nosferatu wrote:I generally like vsync to be ON not OFF... [because]

...It gets rid of screen tearing which I am absolutely convinced has uped my online game a bit making me more accurate, because an opponent doesnt appear to be where they are not in a torn part of the screen.

or maybe you're a whole frame behind...(almost 14 milliseconds @ 75hz!!)

WarAdvocat wrote: or maybe you're a whole frame behind...(almost 14 milliseconds @ 75hz!!)

Heh Ive actually had dudes complain about my ping when I was playing on my server when they were connecting at a speed almost at a 14 millisecond difference.

Mobius, if you do an all-terms search for "d3" and "stuttering" on this board, you will see four or five posts which probably have the information you had in mind.

I've had this as well, a while ago, as had several others. the issue was resolved in the tech forum. I can't find the post anymore though, may have been lost with all the other ancient posts in the archives. When I recall correctly, it had was basically an interrupt conflict, either with a joystick or a dsl-driver.