Help! UT running slow/fast...

[feller17]

Hey...I have a Dell laptop running Windows XP Professional, and I'm trying to run unreal tournament...it worked fine on my desktop (running XP Home), but on this computer it runs very slowly (not just poor framerate, but the game itself is slow), and it sort of speeds up and slows down as I go...The second time I installed and played it it actually ran way too FAST...any ideas? Thanks.

- D.J.R.

 

[Daedalus]

well it would help if you gave us the specs of your laptop, just saying it's a Dell doesnt help much.

welcome to buf btw

 

[feller17]

well it would help if you gave us the specs of your laptop, just saying it's a Dell doesnt help much.

welcome to buf btw

Sure thing, here they are...sorry I didn't give them in the first post but often I've noticed that certain details like that aren't important for a lot of questions on forums, so I didn't want to be too elaborate...anyway:

Dell Inspiron 8600
Win XP Prof., SP 1
1.7 GHz Centrino processor
NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5650 graphics card
80 (actually more like 75) GB HD
1024 MB RAM
15.4" Wide-Aspect Display

I think that's about it...let me know if there's any piece of information I'm missing that would be helpful. Thanks!

- Daniel J. Rozeboom

 

[Daedalus]

alright. Lets see. The UT going fast thing is probably because your FPS are going above 300frames a second on your machine. It makes running and everything go way too fast? If so, that's probably the problem. Cant remember how, but you'll have to enable VSync.

Also, are you using OpenGL or D3D to render UT? Go into your UT directory and screw around with the Unrealtournament.ini. If you mess anything up, just delete it and the game will make a brand new one so you basically cant lose there.

Good luck

 

[feller17]

I'm using Direct 3D...I'll look into that V-Sync thing, but I still don't know if that would help with the current problem, which is that it runs too slowly and goes faster/slower constantly...if it helps I think I've also heard the sound sort of come in chunks, kind of like what you might hear from an MP3 file if it were slowed down, or like a bunch of frames of a movie.

- D.J.R.

 

[Daedalus]

I'm using Direct 3D...I'll look into that V-Sync thing, but I still don't know if that would help with the current problem, which is that it runs too slowly and goes faster/slower constantly...if it helps I think I've also heard the sound sort of come in chunks, kind of like what you might hear from an MP3 file if it were slowed down, or like a bunch of frames of a movie.

- D.J.R.

ah well. I believe I had this problem a long time ago on my 700mhz machine. It would crackle and fizz and all that kind of junk for a while. I cant remember how I fixed it though. Does your laptop have integrated sound? (I'm guessing yes)

 

[feller17]

I have whatever sound card came with it...it's not external or anything, just a 2-channel card. Tried enabling V-Sync, didn't really do much for it...if it makes a difference I'm also playing the Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo on my computer right now and it runs fine.

- D.J.R.

 

[CodEZ]

the problem is the laptop uses speedstep technology [basically steps down your processor usually to conserve battery] ... i just got a 600m and i was freaking out -- same thing was happening to me

the easiest thing to do... is right click on your UT shortcut (not needed on ut2k4) and go to properties... after the path put this: -CPUSPEED=1700 and it will work fine... for example:

Target:
"C:\Program Files\UnrealTournament\System\UnrealTournament.exe" -CPUSPEED=1700

assuming that is where your ut is... but just add a space after the last " and then add the command... you will be playing normally after that ^^

 

[Predcaliber]

A friend of mine has a problem 2 on his PC that UT runs way to slow, and it was not only the framerate idd.

it may sound weird, but when he installed my UT GOTY, GOTY runs ok

so Patch your UT to 436 if you havent done that yet.

btw, if it is not really the frame rate that is slow, try to speed up the game speed With the slomo commands

4 example in your console (~ key) :
slomo 1 = this should be normal speed
slomo 0.5 = This is half speed
slomo 3 = three time faster speed

etc, you can experiment with it

 

[feller17]

Thanks...

Thanks for the various tips...it seems to me like CodEZ's solution would be the most likely to solve my problem, and I tried it, but I think it only slightly helped it...didn't totally clear it up. But anyhow I got the full version of UT2004 a while ago and I've been having a ball with that, so I've pretty much given up on this problem. Thanks again for all of the advice...if I ever decide to fiddle around with UT again I might try different settings for the processor speed.

- D.J.R.

 

[SubCog]

sorry to bring back a dead thread, but I'm having this problem now too.

the -CPUSPEED command line definitely has an effect. The game still varies speed alot, except instead of jumping between fast and superfast, now it jumps between normal and slow.

Anyone got any other ideas?

 

[Crowze]

You need to disable SpeedStep while playing. Easiest way is to set your power saving scheme to 'Always On'. For some reason this still didn't work for me - I find that disabling VSync will keep the CPU under maximum load and stop it changing clock speed.

 

[Demon]

I came to these forums to try and fix the same problems described here. Tried all the suggestions and none of them stopped the problem completely. Then I thought why not try OpenGL as the game was only detecting D3D, so I downloaded the updated OpenGL file from www.unrealtournament.com and put the file in and updated the unrealtournament.ini file, ran the game in safe mode selected show all driver types and selected OpenGL.....and hey presto the game runs as it did on Windows 98. I have a 1.7Ghz Centrino laptop running Windows XP Pro. Hope this helps.

 

[trailmaker]

solution to the problem

Hi all,

After days of trying all kinds of solutions found on internet, I found one that does it for me. As many have pointed out, the cause is Intel's SpeedStep technology. The problem is that the frequency of the processor changes and UT doesn't seem to adjust properly to the new frequency.
So my solution is to always keep the frequency at its highest. So I ran another application in parallel so that the processor is kept busy at all times. After trying some small applications that kept the processor a little too busy (like super pi), I made a very small console application in C that ran an infinite loop and made a very small arithmetical operation. So now, before I start UT, I start that app and then the game works flawlessly, just like before.
Please note that on a core duo, this is not a problem, as only one processor is kept busy (you can see in the task manager that the cpu is only 50% occupied).

 

[fedux]

THE REAL SOLUTION: just go properties on the shortcut, go compatibility and then put a tick in the "run this program in compatibilty mode for" and then from the drop down menu Windows 98 / Windows ME.

Easy as hell.

 

[Defeat]

That doesn't work all the time though fedux ;0

 

[fedux]

That doesn't work all the time though fedux ;0

True as it may be, it works this time with this game.

 

[GreatEmerald]

Use the FRAMERATELIMIT=300 in your renderer options and that's it!

 

[Dark Pulse]

Use the FRAMERATELIMIT=300 in your renderer options and that's it!

200. 300 is too fast.

 

[GreatEmerald]

Oh, yea, 200, I don't like numbers.