G400, Counter-strike, K6-350 low performance

[J.bruntt]

I just don't get it. I have a system that aught to run Half-life / Counter-strike OK, but in actual life it sucks.

I hope some of you have some ideas on what to do (I won't scrap my system yet thank you).

I get 6 to 25 FPS but on average it's 15 FPS. I tested both D3D and OpenGL in resolutions from 640*480 to 1024*768, and the FPS are about the same.

Stats:
K6-2 350Mhz
Aopen MoBo AX59Pro
64 MB Ram
Matrox G400, 16 MB ram
SoundBlaster PCI128
Running Win98SE

I'm using the newest beta 6 Quickdesk, but there is no difference between it and the 5.52 one.

I have DirectX 7 installed.

[This message has been edited by J.bruntt (edited 19 June 2000).]

[Rohde]

Halflife is pretty demanding.
G400 does not like Halflife.
You have a lousy processor.
G400 does not like lousy processors.

All those points combined make up the bad performance. There is a lot of tweaks for Halflife, so you can probably make it run better, but Halflife will always suck on a machine like that. I had a K6-2 333 with my 16 meg G400, and it sucked big time in Halflife.

I know it's not very constructive, but that's just how it is.

Torben R

[EchoWars]

A K6-2 550 is only going for about $60 or less online. Would help out a lot. If you could spring for it, go find a K6-3 450, put a good fan/HS combo on it, and run it at 500.

[Joel]

I have to agree with the other two here. Your CPU is holding you back. I have an AMD K6-2/500 and HL runs good on my system even at 1024x768x32bit in OpenGL.

Joel

[J.bruntt]

Thanks!

So basically you're telling me that my G400 is OK but that the k6-2 350 processor is too weak to play half-life.
An upgrade to the G400 MAX (or a Geforce for that matter) would give me nothing or very little - right?

[Joel]

Right!

Joel

[J.bruntt]

I have upgraded my system since the original post, and guys - you were right. My k6-2 350 sucked.

Heres the new stats

Stats:
AMD Duron 650
Asus A7V
64 MB Ram
Matrox G400, 16 MB ram
SoundBlaster PCI128
Running Win98SE

I now run between 35 and 70 FPS in Counter-strike. Generally I've got 55 FPS, but sometimes it dips, but never below 35.

I am one happy camper :-)

[Helevitia]

I hope you don't mean that you are one happy "camper" in the game

That would be a no-no of course in most situations.

Dave

btw-Do you play in 32bit mode?

[Liquid Snake]

Since you brought up 32bit color...

Has anyone noticed that using 32bit Z-Buffer causes jerky fps? Smiff had this same problem a while back (http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum4/HTML/003916.html).

[Helevitia]

I don't think I have that box checked. I can checkit out when I get home.

btw-What does 32bit Z-buffer do for you?

Dave

[Liquid Snake]

In Half-Life, 32bit Z barely increases image quality because the texures are 16bit. Only transparencies (like the smoke gren in CS) will look better. It slows down quite a bit, and also causes jerkiness for me.

[Rohde]

Liquid snake : "32bit Z barely increases image quality because the texures are 16bit"

Z buffer and texture bit-depth has nothing to do with each other. Maybe you can't tell the difference between 16, 24 and 32 bit Z-buffer, but that's not because the game uses 16 bit textures.

The Z-buffer stores information on how far away all the objects in the scene are from you, so it can be determined which objects are in front of each other (think the name Z refers to the z-axis).
Low z-buffer depths can cause object to sort of flicker because the distance "interval" is to coarse. (something close to that anyway ;-)


Torben R

[Helevitia]

Well, I checked the Z-buffer box in advanced settngs in my display properties and proceeded to to run CS. I do not have any problems with Jerkiness but I do notice a lot more flicker of objects in the distance. Hope this helps.

Dave

[Helevitia]

If anyone cares, I get around 50fps in 32bit mode(1024x768).

Dave

[J.bruntt]

For Helvetica:
No I was running in 16-bit mode.
In 32-bit I get a few FPS lower i'd say 50 FPS on average(90% of the time), goes as high as 70, might dip to 30 when I'm shooting it out with all the other guys in the corridor of de_dust. When I camp in the launch area I get maybe 65 FPS...
All these numbers are when running at 800*600*16bit - haven't tried 1024 yet (15" monitor, so 1024 is not that great).

Hey, I only camp when it's absolutely necessary

------------------
Duron 650@650/Asus A7V/64mb/5600rpm/SB128/G400(16Mb)/Win98