Getting better performance in XMP

[Cutedge]

Hello,
Sorry if this is something that's been covered. I've been fighting with XMP for awhile and I can't seem to get decent performance on it with my computer, so I'm curious to see what the settings and hardware of people are to know if I'm getting about what I should or not.

My system:
AMD Athlon 1700+ (overclocked to 1.57g)
Biostar M7VIP (Via KT333)
512m PC2700 DDR-RAM
ATI Radeon 9600XT (overclocked to 580.5/324.0)
Driver: Omega 2.5.14

3dMarks (2001): 10200
3dMarks (2003): 3921



I'm running in 1024x768 with no AA/AF and with the textures at VeryHigh, no shadows, no VSync, and no hi-res lightmap. In Garden, for example, I hit about 30 fps when going outside during no action and dropping to 10-20 fps during action of any kind. The new CBP maps are hitting very low FPS rates, to the point of making it hard to play. Changing the resolution doesn't even help.

Is this normal? I've tried most of the ini file changes suggested on the Atari forum and it hasn't really done much. I guess the next step I'm going to try is to roll back to an earlier driver version, so if anyone could let me know what drivers they run with their ATI card and how they perform, that'd be great.

 

[protoz]

I would turn on V-sync (gives more resources toe verything else so it runs faster if you hit your V-sync cap) and drop the world detail down a notch. I have a Radeon 9500 Pro 128mb and I run everyting in ultra high (except world detail) in 1024x748(or whatever) with 2x Aa and AF with no slowdown.

maybe try closing a few things before starting the game

here are my specs:
AMD 2500+
256mb 2700 DDR
Radeon 9500 Pro
Soltek 75FRN-RL

 

[Pawnbroker]

I would turn on V-sync (gives more resources toe verything else so it runs faster if you hit your V-sync cap) and drop the world detail down a notch. I have a Radeon 9500 Pro 128mb and I run everyting in ultra high (except world detail) in 1024x748(or whatever) with 2x Aa and AF with no slowdown.

maybe try closing a few things before starting the game

here are my specs:
AMD 2500+
256mb 2700 DDR
Radeon 9500 Pro
Soltek 75FRN-RL

No way. I still get a little slowdown on big maps at 1024 with no aa and at very high detail when a ton of turrets/action is happening.

athlonxp 1.8 @ 2.2
512mb ddr400 buffalo
radeon 9500 Pro 330/306
asus p3v4x

Maybe I do need to reinstall winxp. And no, my box is not overheating. 35c under load, max temp. Vantec Aeroflow and lovely lil AS Ceramique, w/2 120mm case fans.

Is there an in-game fps console command? Guess I could look in the Unreal2 forums...

 

[Bloodsplat]

Console command: stat fps


Holds true in any unreal tech engine game.

 

[Cutedge]

I would turn on V-sync

VSync just means that it doesn't draw the next frame until the entire screen is drawn. It eliminates tearing at the sake of performance.

I gained about 5 fps or so by turning it off.

 

[Cutedge]

Question: What does "terrainLOD" do? I changed it and i can't see a difference, but some people are saying that turning it from 11 (the default) to 0 gained them some FPS.

 

[=BLOOD=]

Vsync enabled will usually limit your fps to your default screen refresh rate.
If this is 85mhz then that's about the max fps you will get. I disable Vsync and my fps is better. This goes for most any game I play.

 

[wrecklass]

VSync

You missed the point. While setting VSync DOES mean that your FPS is limited to the refresh rate of your monitor, it is more complex than that.

When most games hit the VSync limit, if VSync is enabled, they will perform other tasks (like AI or updating network information). They draw the next screen only when it is needed by the monitor. If you turn VSync off, then the system is constantly trying to draw the screen as fast as it can, even if your monitor won't show it that fast. So the game spends all of it's time in the Graphics engine, and less time doing other, necessary things.

Turning on VSync improves overall game performance in many cases, and since your monitor isn't drawing all those extra frames anyway, it is just a waste if you have VSync turned off.

Turn VSync off during Benchmarks, but turn it on to play games. That's my general rule...

 

[RushofBlood]

How do I display the actual fps during the game?

 

[RushofBlood]

Whoops, missed the post above

"Console command: stat fps"

my mistake

 

[=BLOOD=]

Here is the "truth" about what VSync is and what it does...
This is some reading, but I assure you it is explained in layman's terms at the end...This info comes from Planet Descent..The people who wrote the book on FPS and 3D.
If you're really concerned about VSync, then read on my fellow gamers!

Monitors use an electron gun to draw each scan line horizontally from left to right (right to left would also work). When reaching the end of the scan line on the right the electron gun must be repositioned back to the left side of the screen, one scanline down, to begin drawing the next scan line.

The time it takes to do this repositioning is your monitor's horizontal frequency. This number is measured in kilo Hz and happens extremely fast (sub-millisecond). Once the last scan line is drawn, the electron gun must be repositioned at the top of the frame. This is your monitor's vertical frequency (also known as the flyback frequency), usually 50-150 Hz (not kilo Hz) and corresponds to your monitor's refresh rate for a given screen resolution.

This vertical repositioning operation is relatively slow (10 milliseconds for a 100Hz refresh rate). Your graphics card will take advantage of this by updating the frame buffer (what's being drawn) while the flyback is underway. The graphics card is notified when the flyback begins, so the card swaps the front and back buffers, and begins drawing the next frame into the new back buffer. This is what happens when "Vertical Sync" is on or "Enabled".

If the graphics card just draws frames as fast as possible, swapping front/back buffers without regard to the flyback frequency this is a result of having "Vertical Sync" off or "Disabled". The tearing you see with VSync off is a result of the front frame buffer getting updated while it is being drawn.
The scanlines that are output before the buffer swap are from the old version of the front buffer and scanlines that are output after the buffer swap are from the new version of the font buffer.

Now the Layman's Version:
What the means may not be immediately apparent to some people.
Enabling V-SYNC when your refresh rate is higher than your average FPS will have no effect - or at least no real "observable" effect.
It is only when your FPS "exceeds" your refresh rate that V-SYNC starts to have an effect.

With V-SYNC enabled, your Vidcard card will "NEVER" deliver more frames to the screen than your Refresh Rate. This is why it's advisable to always maximize your refresh rate, and even more so if you are one who feels they must enable V-SYNC. At low refresh rates it is NOT a good idea to enable V-SYNC, as your framerate will drop to your refresh rate.

HOWEVER in some circumstances, V-SYNC Enabled can fix some display problems for some people. For instance...

In Windows XP without V-SYNC, I get the most horrible screen lockups in SOF2. It will run fine for a while at a very high FPS and then just jam on one frame for what seems like forever, and during this time the game engine keeps moving, so when the screen un-locks I am pointing or aiming somewhere I don't want to be.
It's enough to make playing the game almost impossible.

With VSync enabled however, the lock-ups will vanish.

 

[headwire]

LOOK AT THIS

Look at PF Prophet's post on the U2XMP.ini tweaks (which is found in u2xmp/SYSTEM folder) and make as many tweaks as you feel neccessary. I have done this and my framerate has boosted in a major way, landing me 60fps on most indoor areas and 25-30 in outdoors.

Let me just tell you that it doesn't make your game look any worse either, looks great and plays great.

Hope that it helps you as it helped me.

 

[W0RF]

Resolution appears to be the worst resource hog. I turned details up and down with little effect, but dropping to 800x600 doubled my framerate. It looks fugly but it makes XMP much more playable on my GF2MX.

 

[Cutedge]

Yeah, the 4 texture detail settings don't do anything for me when I alter them. What's odd is that turning down my resolution doesn't affect my fps that much. I can actually up it to higher than 1024x768 and it runs worse, but not that much worse.

 

[Cutedge]

I did a bunch of the Atari-thread INI tweaks. They probably helped, I guess one of the issues was I was tweaking to get XMP-CBPBETA-Emerald to run well and it's looking like it just doesn't run that well for anyone. Garden runs pretty good now, though. It stays a pretty solid 25-30 outdoors which is better than before.

 

[Cutedge]

New Catalyst drivers (4.2) are out on ATI's website.

** Framerates in Unreal Tournament 2003 is up by 15%

I'll try when I get home, but hopefully this applies to all unreal-tech games.

 

[Richteralan]

Suggest you guys turn off teh detail texture, lower teh texture details to Medium or below.
And turn off draw weapons(big boost).
Teh Shadows seems not quite an impact to framerate.


Here's meh PC spec:
AMD Athlon XP 1600+@1.61GHz
512MB DDR333 CL2
Albatron KX18D Pro
Albatron Geforce FX 5600P@375/615
Creative Audigy 2

 

[Ðetta]

Shadow's made quite a diffrence to my FPS Alan, just need to make sure they are 'blobs'

 

[Richteralan]

Shadow's made quite a diffrence to my FPS Alan, just need to make sure they are 'blobs'

No comment on ya ATI stuff..