H-L FPS halved w/ 5.1x vs. 5.0x w2k drivers - please help

[Smiff]

Greetings good people of the MURC, yet again you are my last (my only) hope... (/me takes on dramatic Star Wars voice, heh)

My system:

P3-800, Abit Be6-2, 256MB RAM, G400 MAX, RRG.

Win2k SP1, DX7.0, Half-Life v1.1.0.1

1152x864 16 bit colour 32bit z-buffer 100Hz refresh via Powerstrip.


My problem:

Performance in Half-Life (and all its mods) in OpenGL is halved using any 5.1x driver, compared to any 5.0x driver. Further, enabling night vision goggles in CS causes FPS to drop by ANOTHER 2/3 under 5.1x e.g. from 60FPS (old driver) to 30FPS (new driver) to 10FPS (new driver + night vision).

Performance in HL in D3D with 5.1x driver is OK (5.1x roughly equal to 5.0x) but D3D mode is not useable due to other issues - control etc.

Performance in all other games (OpenGL and Direct3d) is normal (I tested Quake1, Quake2, Quake3, UnrealT)

Therefore this seems to be specific to Half-Life.

I tried with the default HL video config, and with my usuall custom config, mine is a few FPS faster.

I am aware of the major HL cvars (gl_texsort, gl_ztrick etc.) None helped, some make things worse.

I am frustrated about this because CS is the only game I care about, and I can't play clan matches with 1/2 to 1/6 FPS. I was happy before to revert to 5.0x series, as I was assuming Matrox would fix 5.1x, but with yet another 5.1x release not helping I feel I must now seek help - at some point I will inevitably NEED newer drivers (already there are many features in the new ones I miss) and apart from this one issue am most satisfied with the G400.

Could the 1/2 performance be connected to the 1/2 size G400icd.dll? (just kidding)

I tried using 5.0x ICD with 5.1x installed but causes crash just after entering a map.

Tried disabling powerstrip, no effect. Need it for high refresh rates with 5.0x

I called Matrox UK Tech Support today, but they had no reports matching this issue. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Any help most appreciated,
Smiff

[Smiff]

OK here's some figures to show I'm not hallucinating or anything

Benchmark results (all tests run three times)


GLQuake1 v0.97 1152x864 16-bit, demo1
(default video settings)

5.14 5.04

63.0 60.6
62.6 60.8
62.7 60.8

Quake2 v3.20 1152x864 16-bit, demo1
(default video settings)

5.14 5.04

50.9 57.3
51.2 57.4
51.2 57.4

Quake3 v117: Not benchmarked but very smooth in all drivers

UnrealT D3D v428: ~50 FPS, smooth in all drivers

Half-Life v1.1.0.1 1152x864 16-bit, home-made demo on cs_assault
(default video settings)

5.14 5.04

36.5 62.1
38.8 62.2
38.8 61.8

Conclusion:
slight speedup in Quake1 (whoopee)
slight slowdown in Q2
little effect on Q3
little effect on UnrealT (but that's in D3D anyway)
major slowdown in Half-Life (bummer)

[Liquid Snake]

Did you know that
gl_texsort 1
lightgamma
lambert

no longer work in CS? They disabled them. This made everything look like shit. Also, I remembered that gl_texsort 1 would actually increase speed on G400 (that was a while ago, don't know if it still applies now). Now that I can't use it, I've noticed a lot of slowdowns too. Also, it doesn't look as good as it used to (colors look rather washed out), but I did some tweaking with Powerstrip to help.

[DosFreak]

Benchmark with the 5.01 ICD. That's fast too. It's the first that came out and it doesn't have the Q3 shadow problem.

[Smiff]

oh texsort still works, it's slower on (even slower...)

[DosFreak]

Man if your worried about FPS get the Geforce 2. I went from 21.6gps in Q3 to 76fps. So either make a dedicated computer for gaming and one for work. Or switch between the 2 cards whenever you need a high FPS games.

[Wombat]

No wonder you bought a GeForce DosFreak, you don't understand what support is. That's fortunate for you, since you have an nVidia card now.

So did you have something useful to say, or would you just be quiet now?

[Liquid Snake]

Actually, texsort does NOT work in CS beta7. If you set gl_texsort 1, it restarts the game and its back at gl_texsort 0. lightgamma does a similar thing. You change it and you die, then it goes back to default setting.

Well, Powerstrip is nice, but it requires much tweaking to make it look as nice as it did before with texsort, lightgamma etc. Right now, it looks ok, but still looks a little washed out.

[DosFreak]

Uh, thanks for the comments Wombat. I thought what I said was useful.

"Man if your worried about FPS get the Geforce 2"

Did this little comment hurt you? If so I suggest you look deep inside yourself and ask WHY. Geesh.

*The TOPIC of this thread is: H-L FPS halved w/ 5.1x vs. 5.0x w2k drivers - please help
in case some people have forgotten. Any flames should be directed toward the 5,000,000 other Nvidia vs Matrox threads.

[Smiff]

Steady on folks, I'm not buying a new video card.

Nope, me and my G400 are staying right here until someone figures out what we're doing wrong

[Rags]

Smiff,

Post your autoexec.cfg file contents, and let's see where you are as far as that goes.

DosFreak,

Either help or get lost. Telling someone to get a new video card is not help, when his current video card should work fine.

Rags

[Smiff]

Thanks Rags, someone positive, hurrah!

r_mmx 1
fps_max 100

brightness 5
gamma 3
//lightgamma 1
//texgamma 2
r_decals 256
mp_decals 256
cl_himodels 1

//gl_round_down 3
//gl_playermip 0
//gl_picmip 0
//gl_keeptjunctions 1
//gl_cull 1
//gl_clear 0
//gl_max_size 1024

gl_polyoffset 0.1
gl_dither 1
gl_palette_tex 1
gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST

You can see I commented out some of it, wasn't sure about that stuff... I have other settings but they aren't video related (really, I know what I'm doing in that department ). Also I tried removing autoexec.cfg and deleting config.cfg (to run HL with defaults) and that gave about the same FPS, was just darker. Anything bad you see in there? Anything good you DON'T see in there??

Cheers,
Smiff

[Smiff]

Snake,
yeah I noticed many video related (and exploitable!) cvars are gone or punished(r_shadows and gl_alphamin are others that come to mind)

gl_texsort used to give a massive speedup, then Matrox changed something major in their ICD and suddenly it caused big slowdown, and has done ever since, I think. The downside to not having gl_texsort it you can't use gl_overbright, which WAS usefull! But as you say the colour calibration features of Powerstrip are far superior anyway...

DosFreak,
Yes I used the term "5.0x" because I find that whole serious identical in use. Ditto within 5.1x. Matrox must have made some big changes before 5.10 (obvious from the sizes of the file g400icd.dll!) and every version since has been the same (i.e. terrible for H-L OpenGL).

What I don't understand is this is so obvious a problem, H-L is such a popular game, my PC has such common parts, so why oh why am I apparently the only person on Earth having this problem??! What stupid little thing have I done to make it go so slow?!

Cheers guys,
Smiff

[DosFreak]

r_decals
(number specifies # of decals...more = less speed)


cl_himodels
(1,0)
Slight speed hit if on.

"gl_round_down"
(0,1,2,3)

0 for best quality


"gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST"

Low Quality Bilinear
GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST

High Quality Bilinear
GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST

Low Quality Trilinear
GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR,

High Quality Trilinear
GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR.

[Nuno]

Dosfreak, gl_nearest_mipmap_nearest isn´t bilinear filtering. It´s point sample texture filtering with mipmaping. Ever had a PCX1?