Got Q3Demo 1.09 working .. now, for comments =)

[Echo|Fox]

Thanks Team MURC, you guys pull through and come up with a solution to get TurboGL working. Life is good =)
While my framerate seems to have dropped by about 10%, for whatever reason, gameplay seems smoother. Hard to describe really, especially since the difference was 62fps before and 56fps now (800x600@32bit), but it just feels ... hmm ... better.
The new level is okay I guess, nice architecture, kinda boring. Some of the graphics tweaks to the previous levels are nice as well.
Gameplay is enhanced greatly by the "Excellent" and "Humiliation" tracking, etc. I was playing on a 24 player deatthmatch server on Q3Tourney (not sure what its called now ... q3tourney2?) and racked up 20 frags using just the gauntlet. Mwuahah =)
The bots, i'm embarassed to say, whooped my ass. Playing vs a single third level bot and I was massively outmatched on Q3Tourney. I lost 10 to -2 without getting a single frag, twice the damned Sarge blasted me into the red mist. At lower difficluties, the bots were dumber than bricks though.
So, for pure deathmatch, Quake3 reaffirms itself as king, but its gonna have a hell of a time knocking Unreal Tourney down as the champ for cooperative games, like CTF and domination and such. I find UT's netcode to be massively broken (even on cable, its unplayable on the internet), but its a ROCKING game for LAN play, more so than Quake3 is.

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P3-450@558mhz@2.1v, ABit BE6, 128megs 7.3125ns PC133 SDRAM, SB Live! Value, G400 32meg Dualhead (@120%), Acer ALN-201 PCI 10bT NIC, 6.5gig Seagate Medalist Pro 7200rpm, 13gig Quantum Fireball CR, Yamaha 4416e Burner, Pioneer 10x DVD-ROM, Panasonic e70 17" Monitor, Antec KS-188 24" Tower, 6 year old Honeywell-SUH 101key Keyboard, Logitech Trackman Marble+

[IceStorm]

Got the TurboGL working after a bit. Even without, it was fast. I'm on an Athlon 550, and The Longest Mile is rough with all the options on at 1024x768x32.

When I drop to 800x600x32, all options on, it's gorgeous AND fast. The textures are amazing. Of course, it's not like you actually have time to look at the textures.

Anywho, on a G400 MAX, DualHead multi-monitor enabled, it plays well. I'll have to try using bilinear instead of trilinear and some of the other options to see if I can get the speed up on 1024x768. I really like the textures, though.

[Grimace]

IceStorm: Do you find with DualHead enabled that your frame rate drops alot? I gave up on DualHead once I got my Sony G500 since DH seemed to take 10-20% of my framerate in Q3A. I also seemed to have alot of issues with DH enabled with my primary at 1600x1200x32 and my secondary at 1152x864x32.

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Asus P2B-DS, 2 x Pentium III 450 @ 504, 128MB CAS 2 SDRAM, Matrox G400 MAX,
Sony CPD-G500, Sony GDM-17SE2T, Sound Blaster Live MP3+, NetGear FA310TX 10/100 NIC,
IBM 9ZLX 9GB 10,000 RPM LVD Drive, BusLogic 958 Ultra Fast/Wide SCSI Controller,
Pioneer DVD-303s 6X DVD-ROM, Toshiba 6102B 32x CDROM, Yamaha 4260t CD Writer,
Linux (Primary OS), Win98, and Win2K

[Broken]

I'm in love...
Oh boy, Quake 3 is so damn cool. Just got hold of it now, and started it up with some bots. Man, this game rocks. The effects are just so cool, the chrome, the animated textues, the menu look and feel. I like I like.

Now to go and see what the framerates are like compared to the other demos. By just playing it in 32bit 1024x768, I cannot complain too much, with bots and everything.
That's on a P3 450 straight, 128mb ram, G400 Dualhead...

Okay, back to Quake...

[IceStorm]

- I use DualHead all the time for multidisplay. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'd have to DISABLE it (not just shut the other monitor off) to get the framerate back, as when I just disable the other monitor, I see no diff in performance. I may disable DualHead to test tonight, but doing so would be moot for me - one of the main reasons I bought the G400 MAX is for DualHead, and untill the V5 6000 comes out, I'm not putting another card in my machine. :-)

- I cannot tell the difference between 32bit and 16bit in Q3A. In UT, the game is brighter overall in 16bit vs 32bit, which is a plus, not a minus in my book.

I played The Longest Mile against three bots on Q3A with all the options on, using the TurboGL, all at 16bit - trilinear, etc. Had the 32bit Z-buffer disabled using the tweak util. The framerate is plenty for me. It slows down in 32bit mode, but like I said, I cannot tell the difference between 16bit and 32bit, at all.

Oh, the TurboGL is working fine now - the problem was a bad DIMM in the machine. I'm down to 256 in the main box until I get the DIMM RMAed.


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Primary System: Athlon 550, MSI 6167 mb w/BIOS 1.3, 3x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode, Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), WDC WD20 5AA 20GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Gravis Xterminator gamepad (no DX7 drivers yet), Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM, 10/100 5-port Linksys Ethernet switch, Epson 1200u scanner, Epson Stylus Pro printer, Logitech QuickCam Pro with the little stand and the lense kit (cool).

Secondary System: PIII-450, Soyo 6BA+ IV, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium G200 AGP, V2 SLI rig, Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter, SoundBlaster 32, WD AC41800 18GB HD,WD AC310100 10GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

Tertiary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium II, 3Com 3C905, 3Com 3C509, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, Seagate 1GB Hawk, Quantum DLT 4000 tape drive, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Quaternary System: Ocean Rhino 9 motherboard w/Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 4x64MB EDO Parity RAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Haven't chosen an OS yet.

And a JetDirect EX print server that bootp's its address from the Tertiary System.

All specs subject to change.

[Nuno]

The gameplay is definetly smoother (I play 960x720x32 all settings maxed out - including texture detail) and it´s very good indeed.

I believe the timedemos give lower numbers just because they´re not exactly the same as previous versions. It seems to me that much more action is going on. So - lower framerates...

[poopy]

how come i'm alwayz getting the opposite results than everyone else? 1.09 seems more choppy than 1.08 even though i have all the same settings and i still will never be able to use turbogl...keeps crashing my system...i'm starting to get tired of my g400 and thinking that i should have bought a tnt or voodoo...

[Nuno]

Yeah, maybe you should.

[IceStorm]

Eh, wait for the V5 6000. From Voodooextreme.com:

"More info on the next line of Voodoo cards... saw over at Firing Squad a Comdex 99 update. They talk to 3DFX's Scott Sellers and reveal an interesting fact about the high-end Napalm products; they're going to require an extra power supply.

Load on two VSA processors however (as is the case with V5 5000 and 5500), and we're looking at an enormous strain on the 18-20 watts put out by some AGP busses. To draw more power into the system, 3dfx decided that V5 5000 and 5500 boards will actually ship with an internal power connector, to be hooked into the internal PC power supply.
I don't know about you, but things aren't looking too good for their next gen of cards. "

A vid card that needs its OWN power supply. THIS I'm definitely buying. :-)

Just my $0.02

[Ozymandis]

Man at 800x600, all options, Q3 is beautiful. At 1024 it is ok in Singleplayer, but no way on the internet.

[Snake-Eyes]

IceStorm:

You said you can't see a difference in Q3 between 16 and 32 bit color. Are you running the desktop with a 16 bit or a 32 bit palette?

I asked this because I recently noticed something interesting. The only reason I noticed it was that I tried to take someone else's advice to lower the resources used before playing Q3. What I did was lower my desktop color depth from 32 to 16 bits. I noticed then that I saw some dithering (very noticable compared to normal display in 32 bits) in Q3. I changed Q3 back and forth (color depths of course) several times, observing that the dithering REFUSED to go away, whether in 16 or 32 bit color. Then I changed my desktop back to 32 bit color. I repeated the same experiment in Q3, and suddenly was getting virtually NO dither, no matter whether in 16 or 32 bits.

Now I can't decide what the cause is- unless the G400 is doing the internal calculations at the same color depth as the 2D display resulting in reduced-to-no dithering when 2D is 32 bit, and dithering when it's 16, regardless of 3D starting palette. This is the only thing that makes sense to me, since the card DOES improve framerates when I tell Q3 to use 16bit mode. That tells me that the overall data shuffling around is still in 32bits/16bits, like I have Q3 set to.

Anyone else noticed this, or want to try it and see if they do?

BTW- This is using the standard ICD (not sure if the TurboGL does it or not- since mine was crashing Q3 after getting into a game last I tried it. I'll check tonight).

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Ace

[Snake-Eyes]

I just realized something. I don't think it's a problem with the ICD, because I've noticed that UT exhibits the same behavior. That means DX7 games are doing the same thing on my system too. Like I said, weird stuff.

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Ace