optimizing Q3A test for G200?

[rei]

Thanks for the suggestions guys on HL and Q2. Anyone had experience fooling with and getting Q3A to run satisfactorily on their G200? It seems awfully choppy for me.

[Morbid]

What you need to do is make everything ugly. Turn all the visual options off under 'game options'. You can leave 'marks on walls' and 'identity targets' on, they don't effect performance.
Next, you need to set the resolution to 640x480x16 and switch 'lighting' to vortex.
Set the 'textures detail' to either of the middle 2 settings, the performance begins to bog only on the highest. Set geometric detail to high and 'texture quality' to default. Also set 'texture filter' bilinear.

On the 2 timedemos i get ~40fps with those settings, the latest drivers, a celery 450 and 128mb of ram.

Hope this helps.

-Morbid

[rei]

thanks for the tip, how about r_swapinterval or whatever it was, how about other console tweaks?

[Morbid]

I don't know about r_swapinterval but you can try it yourself and see what happens. As far as I know, you'll get the most performance boost by playing with the settings in the menus. They, of course, have corrisponding console variables. However, messing around with variables unavailable in the menus will usualy make things quite ugly, but will give you minimal performanc increases. (Will you want to use cg_simpleitems 1 to get .3 fps gain? not me)

See for yourself. Using the instructions I gave you earlier, will make the game feel a lot peppier. You can also see the benifits through benchmarcking.

Remember, there's only so far you can go with tweaking. At some point, its time to get a new graphics accelerator. (myself included)

-Morbid

[Phlex]

If you're really hard up for framerates, set the game resolution to 512x384x16. I have all the eye candy turned off and use r_swapinterval 0 in my config.cfg. I'm running NT4 server not the best gaming platform but it does the job for now. I haven't done a timedemo yet since I already deleted it. But my framerates are good enough that it's not choppy, and being on a cable modem does help too.

[DigitalWelfare]

I dont think you should have to sacrifice the EYE CANDY for performance, I am sure thats not what Matrox intentions were- try getting powerdesk 2.25, and latest drivers for your 3d accelerator- YOU DO HAVE ONE DONT YOU? It should perform beautifully. If your referring toone particular map on Q3 (the real buggy space one) the bugs is the network code, it was optimized for LAN or Cable modem, so the affects would not be harware....

[Phlex]

In a perfect world you shouldn't have to sacrafice performance for eye candy. But the simple truth is that the drivers are still immature for the G400 let alone for the G200. When I play online my first priority is framerates, 2nd being eye candy. It's rather fustrating when you enable some level of eye candy but you end up dying because Q3test plays choppy on G200. And forget playing at any resolution above 640x480x16 on the G200.

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Asus P2B-DS Dual Pentium II 450 (bios v1010) 128 megs Corsair cas 2, Seagate 9.1 Gig Cheetah 39102LW LVD, G200 8 Meg SGRAM, SB 128 PCI, Hollywood Plus, 3Com 905B-TX, Sony 5x DVD, Yamaha CDW 4216. Running NT4 Server Enterprise SP5.

[Cellular Mitosis]

try these:

I get 50.3 fps w/ PII 300 @ 309

run at 640x480, with the texture quality slider 1 down from top

oh yeah, and overclock your g200.
I overclock mine from 83mhz to 110mhz (core)

seta s_khz "11"
seta s_loadas8bit "1"
seta cg_gibs "0"
seta cg_brasstime "0"
seta cg_drawattacker "0"
seta cg_draw3dicons "0"
seta cg_gun "0"
seta crosshairhealth "0"
seta cg_drawammowarning "0"
seta r_depthbits "16"
seta r_colorbits "16"
seta r_texturebits "16"
seta r_picmip "1"
seta r_subdivisions "999"
seta cg_simpleitems "1"
seta r_flares "0"
seta r_finish "0"
seta cg_marks "0"
seta r_texturemode "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST"
seta cg_shadows "0"
seta r_stencilbits "0"
seta r_fastsky "1"
seta r_drawsun "0"
seta r_noportals "0"
seta r_lightmap "0"
seta r_dynamiclight "0"
seta r_vertexlight "1"

[NoClue]

hmmm...well I just installed Q3Test1.08 and I played it on the net withouth any problems and quite smooth.
my system:
PII-400, 128mb, g200-8mb
nothing overclocked

I ran Q3 at 800x600 with every graphic option on (except sinx every frame) and about medium detail level (normal settings)
I dunno how many fps I have but everything looks smooth and sure playable!

btw: how can I check the fps I get during a game?
and how can I start the Timedemo (tried timedemo 1 at consol, then run timedemo...and it sayd s'thing like "timedemo not found in .../demos/"

another point: I get around 1830 3D-Marks on my system (sound this plausible?), running the Shareware-Version of 3DMark99 where I cant change any settings..anyone can tell me where to get a more functional version pls

thx

[Opus]

Hi Noclue,
You should be getting around 2700 in 3DMark99 (800x600x16) without overclocking your system (I've got a PII-400 (o/c to 412), G200 and 128Mb, DX6.1, v5.25 G200 drivers and latest bios. I got 3200 using MGATweak o/c to 205 with SGRAM optimisation.

As to your other question, there are patches out there if you need them...

Cheers

[NoClue]

Thanks a lot for your reply Opus

and of course you're right..my 1700 points was a score made with an old version of 3DMark...I just upgraded it and got this result:

Project Settings (Template):
Rendering Platform: Internal (Matrox Millennium G200 AGP - Deutsch)
Resolution: 800*600
Color Depth: 16-bit Color
CPU Optimization: Intel(r) processor
Z-Buffer: 16-bit
Frame Buffer: Triple buffering
Refresh Rate: 83 Hz
Looping: Disabled
Texture Format: 16-bit, 4444 RGBA
Run Tests: Once
Title Screen: Shown

Test Results:
3DMark Result : 2'746 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed : 3'795 CPU 3DMarks

System:
Windows Version: Windows 4 , Build 1998
DirectX Version: 4.07.00.0700
Bios Version: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
Bios Date: 10/09/98
Total Physical Memory: 128 MB
Free Physical Memory: 63 MB

Processor:
Processor Type: Intel Pentium II
Processor Speed: 400 MHz
Processor Caps: MMX
L1 Cache Size: 32 KB
L2 Cache Size: 512 KB

I am still not overclocking cause I dont want to damage anything..are you cooling yout g200?

btw: I finally figured out how to run the q3-timedemo and i get around 40fps at 640x480, normal detail settings, lighting: vertex...quite playable

greeting
NoClue