Fps Help

TommyVercetti

<div class="IPBDescription">...not the desperate kind</div> I have a decent computer, and yet I still get crappy framerates in NS. It's kind of disgraceful getting a FPS of 20 in such an old engine, but I do anyways. I was wondering if anyone knows of a solution to these performance problems; I get FPS lower than it should be in many games. I'm running NS in 1280x1024 res with Dillinja's SpecOps pack installed, and I get a framerate of about 20 when I go near the Marine base, but 50 most everywhere else, and I do have vsync on because I think it looks better. These are my specs:

1.2Ghz Athalon 200Mhz FSB
512MB DDR RAM
GeForce 4 Ti 4600 128MB
SoundBlaster Live Value! (don't know if this affects framerate)

About 2GB free space on my 20GB Windows drive, 3GB free space on my 40GB secondary drive.

A lot of people say I should be getting a better framerate, and to try closing background applications, but I've closed all the non-critical processes I can. There're still about 12 running that either cannot be stopped or cause my computer to shut down when I terminate them.

MMZ_Torak

Read <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=34027' target='_blank'>this</a>. It should be all the help you need.

TommyVercetti

Thanks... but I thought my computer could get a better framerate without...

Ah well, I'm just saying it sucks to get a framerate of 5FPS in UT2K3 when you have a good video card like that. Think it's the processor?

MMZ_Torak

No. I think its probably your refresh rate. That guide is a LONG read but it is well worth it.

big_jim

wow, i didnt know anything about vsync, now my fps is through the roof <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> :

thanks Torak for the link and thanks Roobubba for the info
/me happy bunny

Soylent_green

First find out if you are CPU bound or GPU bound. Try upping the res and see if it hurts performance or try using lower res and see if it helps(if it makes a difference it is a good hint that you are GPU bound). Look at the framerate counter, is it jumping about like crazy or does it vary only inbetween discrete values like 60, 30, 20, 15... If it manages to vary wildly even with double buffering that means that almost without a doubt you are CPU bound as the graphical load will not vary that quickly from frame to frame but the CPU load just might(your looking at pretty much the same thing inbetween 2 adjacent frames, it should be a constant framerate). Since the framerate is a time average over a few frames it will display weird framerate's(e.g. 32.7) even though vsync is on if it is varying wildly.

If not GPU bound you can at least use some nicer graphical settings without incuring a performance hit. Try "gl_texturemode gl_linear_mipmap_linear"(trilinear filtering, removes horrible looking quality difference between LOD levels by using linear interpolation and you get no blurry edge at a short distance in front of you). Try using anisotropic filtering(removes blur at angles almost perpendicular to the screen by applying extra filtering) or even some anti-aliasing(removes jaggies, quite slow on geforce 4 ti).

If GPU bound, try forcing triple buffering in openGL in the controll panel or with nV hardpage or something if that is possible with nV cards.

Triple buffering allows your graphics card to keep rendering even when it's done with a frame and waiting for the monitor to complete drawing the last one. i.e. your framerate won't go as refreshrate/n. It may or may not be better to have a higher framerate. Personally I would prefer a framerate of constant 20 FPS than varying between 20 and 40 by rendering displaying the same frame twice, then displaying the next once the next twice etc. This tends to look like stuttering and can be almost as bad as frame tearing. It's a matter of taste really, does more frames and less even spacing look more even to you or not?

Obviously if your GPU bound lower res will help.