UT 32 bit..

[whiplash]

I find that the 32bit setting is not retained and defaults back to 16bit each time I re-start UT. All other settings seem to remain .

Otherwise this game rocks, no performance issues and looks great..

PIII 450
G400MAX
Abit BH6
Aopen DVD CD-ROM
128M RAM
WinTV/Radio
SoundBlaster Live
19" Monitor

[IceStorm]

I think we all need a common definition of "smooth":

- Turn on TimeDemo stats
- Play Turbine against the computer
- write down your lowest FPS, and your Average.

For me, "smooth" is:

- 27FPS lowest
- 49FPS average

I get that with my V2 SLI, 1024x768, 16bit, all options at high.

For me, "mostly smooth" is:

- 27FPS lowest
- 37FPS average

I get that with my G400 MAX, with 1024x768 16bit, but medium world detail/medium player detail/detailed textures.

If I activate 32bit, my average frame rate drops to 20FPS, which is unplayable for me. lowest stays at 19FPS or so.

I'm hoping the DX7 optimizations help the situation a bit. 16bit high world detail would be great for UT on the MAX... just need the frame rate (drops too much when I enable high world under 16bit).


------------------
Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. V2 SLI rig. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), 2nd Parallel Port, WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 96MB of non-parity RAM, Millennium II, Intel Pro/100+ client NIC, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

All specs subject to change.

[Marco]

UT is a lot slower than Q3.
Q3 is faster in loading!
Q3 got more level!
My choose is Q3!

[absalom]

Running UT in 32-bit is a huge performance hit. In q3, your given the option to use compressed, 16-bit, and 32-bit texture detail at either a 16 or 32-bit rendering depth. It's one thing to use 16-bit textures and render at a 32-bit depth, it's another to go all out with 32-bit everything. If you go all out in q3, the performance hit is obvious. Compared to q3, UT gives us very little choice on how 32-bit is dealt with. If you choose to run UT at a 32-bit depth your forced to use 32-bit textures also... so your going all out or not. The memory requirements of using those high detail 32-bit textures in UT are enormous. I'm willing to bet a normal UT level running max detailed 32-bit textures is more than even g400's healthy 32-megs can keep up with. Even at 800x600, UT is probably torturing agp to fetch textures from main memory for each scene.

Keep in mind these are uncompressed textures. In the future more video card companies will embrace hardware texture compression schemes (ala fxt1 or s3tc) and this level of detail will be more feasable. It's a general rule that the higher the resolution you run, the more ram you allocate for the framebuffer. A 1024x768x32 framebuffer will eat 10 megs of video ram. It goes even more when you try triple buffering that.

I've found UT to be fairly playable when you lower the texture detail... even more so when you run 16-bit. The difference between 32-bit and 16-bit with all settings cranked is like night and day. If you don't go overboard with detail, UT is very playable on a g400. I'd even say it's almost as fast as a 3dfx card in glide if you bring the detail levels down to the 3dfx limitations (given a very fast processor like an athlon too.)

You can also tell UT what framerate you think is the minimum you can handle in the advanced options - video settings list. UT will use this value and try to throttle the detail when the framerate starts to go below it. It will basically start removing polygons and lowering detail on the fly. For those of you with an extra computer lying around, running the bots on a dedicated server also frees up some needed cpu cycles.

[This message has been edited by absalom (edited 09-30-1999).]

[absalom]

oops, 1024x768x32 would actually require 6.3 megs of video ram when double buffered. Triple buffer that and you need 10 megs allocated for that res. Interestingly enough, 1600x1200x32 would eat up 16 megs of ram just for the framebuffer... triple buffer that and you've got almost nothing left for texture memory

[Olivier]

That's normal, i think you use a Windows 16bits desktop ? Because i'm using a 32bits desktop and unreal starts always with the 32bits enable..

By the way have you try playing unreal tournament in 1280*1024 - 32 bits ? because in my opinion it's a little bit slow.. in 1024x768 - 32 bits it's perfect ! but the 32 bits mode is too dark so i play in 1280x1024 - 16 bits and that's very very smooth !