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Q3 - SMP - G400?
Has nayone done any testes regrading SMP in Q3 and G400's, what performance gains can be had, anyone tried dual p3's with TurboGL, that could be very interesting!
Chris
Chris
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Turbo-gl is only for windows-98. To get smp you must be running NT 4 or 5 (called win2k)
AFAIK the drivers for G400 in NT4 is as the G200, terrible in opengl.
For win2k there isn't any opengl-drivers. Not even for G200.
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Asus P2B-DS, dual P2-333, 256 MB, G200, SB 128. OS: NT 4/5. -
feel stupid here but could you please tell me what you mean by SMP?
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Hi Zwisch,
SMP stands for "symmetric multiprocessing". Programs can be processed by multiple processors that share a common operating system and memory. They can also share device I/O and interrupts.
Some people use the abbreviation for "shared memory multi processing" which should normaly be called "asymetric multi-processing"
Ciao
JComment
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if you goto http://www.hardocp.com they have an article on smp and q3. basicly you have to enable it yourself right now and there is problems with it like only working with non 3dfx cards
ok since it is kinda far down on hardocp.com here it is
===from hardocp.com========
Damage:
Man, a whole pile of you guys mailed me about Q3Test SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) support after I mentioned it in passing yesterday. Your questions seem to center around a few things:
1) How do you turn on SMP support in Q3Test?
Go to the console (type ~ to bring down the console) and type "r_smp 1". You will need to restart the game once you've made the change.
2) Which OS are you using for Q3 SMP? Why won't it work under Win98 / Win2K / Linux?
I'm using Windows NT 4.0 (SP5). The DamageBox II has two 504MHz Celeron 300As and a TNT2 card. I'm using the 2.08 Detonator TNT drivers.
To my knowledge, NT4 is the only OS under which Q3Test supports SMP properly. It ain't right yet in Win2K or Linux, and Win98 doesn't do multiprocessing. (The MacOS? Well, it doesn't even have a multitasking kernel or real protected memory space. Pfft.)
3) Why won't it work with my 3dfx card?
It won't work on mine, either. My Voodoo2 locks up when I run Q3 in SMP mode. I think it's a driver problem, and I believe it affects pretty much all the 3dfx cards the same.
4) Now for the really important question: how much does it help?
Time to bust out some timedemos! These are all run on the DamageBox II, with two 504MHz Celeron 300As, a TNT2 at 150MHz, NT4 SP5, and 256MB RAM. The scores are from Q3Test v.1.08, q3demo1. I ran the tests three times and averaged 'em. I used 32-bit textures in 32-bit color mode, and 16-bit textures in 16-bit color.
[insert bar graph picture here]
As you can see, SMP helps a lot more in low-res, low-color depth modes, where the TNT2 card isn't hitting its limits, especially in terms of fill rate. Check out that 82.4 fps score at 640x480x16. Who needs a GeForce when you've got a second CPU to handle the load?
As always, folks, remember that frame rate averages aren't everything. The important thing about Q3's SMP implementation is that SMP should, theoretically, help most in worst-case scenarios, when a zillion polygons are flying around in the middle of a heated deathmatch and a single CPU's processing power just wouldn't be enough. Subjectively, that kind of thing can make a huge difference. I can't wait to get my hands on a phat fill rate card like whatever 3dfx has up its sweaty corporate sleeve and really test that theory.
To some degree, at least, it's also possible we could enjoy the benefits of SMP by running high-poly-count settings in Q3, much like GeForce owners are supposedly going to be able to do. I have tried cranking up the LOD (level o' detail) settings for curves, etc. in Q3Test, and it does benchmark out pretty well in SMP. Of course, most of this stuff is speculation until we have a final version of Q3 in our hands. Time will tell.
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