Expendable + Bump Mapping + G400 vanilla incures 50% performance hit?

[cpld005]

I have 2 versions of the game, the retial without bumpmapping. and the version that came with my G400 retail. My system is relatively fast PIII 450, 128MB ram, Intel SE440BX-2 MB, Soundblaster Live, Adaptec 2490U2W controller with Seagate 9.1 GB U2W hdd. Things ran fast and furious with the non bumpmapped version of Expendable so I decided to benchmark it at 1024X768 16-bit color and was getting nearly 50fps, Uninstalled the retail version of the game and installed the Matrox version, Benchamrked at 1024X768 16-bit color and got between 20-25 fps. dropped resolution down to 800X600 16- bit color got 25-30fps. Is it strange to take a 50% performance hit with bumpmapping? If so I will play the game with it off and not worry about it. it's strange cause the numbers the MURC is getting in Expendable with bumpmapping on are way better then mine with a slower all around system.

[djroberts]

I have had two seperate versions of the game. A demo ran at 32 fps and a updated demo ran at 47fps. I was told the retail version will include all the speed enhancements. So basically the version shipped with the Matrox card may be the older lite version of the game. I hope this clears things up. I wonder how MURC would have got a faster version that included EMBM...

- DJ

[cpld005]

That would explain the speed difference, i'll try repatching the retail and see if that cures things. I love the game BTW.

[SmilingCorpse]

Just a note on the o/c bit. I've got a PIII450 running at 581mhz at 2.1 volt and 558 at default 2.0v. And all I have is the retail heatsink/fan.
Get yourself a real mobo and o/c that sucker. I'm using a BX6 2.0 and the PCI is set to 1/4 of the FSB so i dont need to worry about PCI devices.
If I would buy one now, I'd go for a Abit BE6 or the Soyo 6BA+III, they both make great overclockers.
And if you dont have it already, get some good ram. At least RAM rated for 124-133mhz or better yet PC133 memory that can be run up to 150mhz+.

Just too bad I can't get a hold of that G400 yet. My good ol TNT is getting obsolete:-)

Good luck

[cpld005]

I have seriously been looking at a Abit board for awhile now, although the BE6 would be overkill for me since I do not need ATA/66 my scsi setup is way faster and more reliable. I'm not familiar with overclocking at all, so can you tell me with your setting what speed your PCI bus is running at?

[Ant]

I'm a little confused here, are you saying you are testing two different versions of Expendable to get these results? The normal version of Expendable against the G400 bump mapped version? Why don't you just run the G400 version with bump mapping enabled and disabled? This is the only way to get true results to see the effect of bump mapping.

[djroberts]

I agree with Ant. I also think there are too many versions going around, with different optimizations and different benchmark results. I want to see a demo come out with EMBM so I can finally see the difference. So far every game claiming to support it has not.

- DJ

[cpld005]

To answer Ants question, I ran the retail version with the bump mapping patch, and also the version bundled with the card, It seems both of them are slower by a substancial margin with bumpmapping installed. I didn't see a way to disable bump mapping with the bundled version but I will install that version tonight and rebenchmark and up the results. I still fear that with bump mapping installed at any resolution any higher then 800X600 16-bit color the game will run close to or under 30fps. I am also seriously beginning to think that it's due to my porcessor speed and that a PIII 500 is going to be the bare minimum with any G400 based card. I do intend to soon, maybe as soon as this weekend buy a new MoBo and ram and overclock the PIII 450, that should help improve things alot.

[cpld005]

I did patch the demo last night and ran time demos at various resolutions and color depths, and at least on my gaming system bumpmapping is still incuring close to a 50% performance drop, I am beginning to beleive that even a PIII 450 is not enough juice for this card, now my next quantry is as follows, should I dump the PIII 450 and go straight for a PIII 550, or buy a new motherboard that is overclockable and and go that route, I did at one time have an Asus P2B that allowed me to run my sdram at 145MHZ, but I am worried about the the rest of the system especially my SCSI stuff cause it is way expensive. Decisions decisions, and I will NOT consider any AMD chip ever.

[Ant]

I don't have the info in front of me but in the G400 version use F4 to switch EMBM on and F5 to switch it off, or something very close just experiment. Expendable is a real CPU hog and can give some misleading results if you are trying to gain true graphics performance from it. It fails to pull in impressive fps on any system I've seen benchmark it with or without EMBM.

[SmilingCorpse]

Alright here it goes.
PIII 450 SL3CC Retail running at 580mhz 2.1v.
Abit BX6 rev 2.0 and Crucial PC133 memory.
FSB is set to 129mhz. The PCI divider is set to 1/4 of the FSB. 129/4=32.25, slightly undeclocked from the default 33mhz.
At 1/3 the PCI would be 43mhz so I'd rather go for the safer setting. The AGP is set to 2/3 of FSB and is the main problem since it's running at 86mhz, 20mhz over spec. But I dont think the matrox AGP cards are so sensetive to o/c AGP buses, at least my old G200 wasn't.
With some good RAM you should have no problem reaching at least 558mhz with your PIII. I would recommend the Soyo board though, since Abit aren't really famous for their stability and compatibility.
Could you tell me where you got your retail G400? Right now my o/c PIII is pretty useless since I have nothing that can put the juice into use.

[cpld005]

I got mine from a computer show last weekend in Pomoma Calif. there were not many there, I grabbed the first one I could get my hands on, 30 minutes later they were all gone, except for the oem single head card.