BFG 6800 OC And Bad Performance With Doom III Demo! Advice?

[Mister Dark]

I'm trying to play the Doom III demo at 1024x768 high quality, no AA and the frame rate just chugs a lot of the time, particularly when entering a new environment, door opening, etc ... I did a search on here and found other 6800 users experiencing the same problem, and there was a debate on whether more ram would help, or a faster CPU, etc ... Here are my system specs:

XP 2600 Barton core
512 megs PC 2700
IBM DTLA-307030 HD
And of course the BFG with 16 pipes unlocked ...

Shouldn't that setup be able to handle 1024x768 high quality, no AA? Is there something I need to tweak? Would more ram help?

Any advice appreciated!

 

[Cat]

All textures are duplicated in system memory, so the card can swap as needed. You probably need more system memory.

 

[daveybrat]

when i upgraded form 512MB to 1GB i noticed much smoother gameplay in Doom3 and all my other games. Highly recommended for the more demanding games out there.

 

[Mister Dark]

Thanks for the responses, Cat and daveybrat!

I'm thinking about going from 512 to a gig of ram ... the only problem is that I have a single stick of 2700, and I eventually want to upgrade my CPU to a 400 mhz FSB, in which case I would need to get all new ram ... Would it be a waste to add another 512 stick of 2700 in the meantime? Should I just get the PC 333 (or whatever the ram for the 400 FSB is called) now and run it as 2700 so I'll be ready when I want to bump up to that 400 FSB>

 

[Todd33]

Just get the faster DDR, it's just rated higher, but it will run fine at low speeds.

 

[Mister Dark]

Thanks for the answer, Todd33! Am I correct in thinking I can't match a stick of 2700 with a stick of 3200? I'll have to ditch the 512 meg stick of 2700 I have now, right?

Is it better to have a single one gig stick, or do I gain something by having two 512 meg sticks?

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: Mister Dark

Am I correct in thinking I can't match a stick of 2700 with a stick of 3200? I'll have to ditch the 512 meg stick of 2700 I have now, right?

No, you can run the PC3200 at PC2700 speeds.

Is it better to have a single one gig stick, or do I gain something by having two 512 meg sticks?

If you have 2 sticks you can run the memory in dual channel if your cpu/mobo supports it.

For the AXP it does not matter, but depending on what you upgrade to in the future it may.

 

[Mister Dark]

klah - what kind of speed increase would I see running in dual channel?

I have to choose between getting a one gig stick, and saving the other slot if I want to bump to 2 gigs later, or running dual channel ... Which is more important do you think?

EDIT: "For the AXP it does not matter, but depending on what you upgrade to in the future it may."

I'm sorry, I missed this the first time. You mean that running in dual channel makes no difference for the Athlon XP? If so, then I should just get the single stick ...

 

[Avalon]

I think dual channel for the AXP adds somewhere around 1-5% performance, depending on the application. Either way, you probably wouldn't notice.

 

[Mister Dark]

Thanks Avalon.

Well I just popped in two 512 meg sticks of PC 3200 (they didn't have any one gig sticks at the shop) and performance in Doom III has definitely improved. I still get some stuttering in particular areas for some reason - in the demo, when you first go to Marine HQ and get your order to find the missing scientist, the frame rate in that room stutters like crazy. But in other areas where it would stutter, it doesn't anymore ...

Do any of you know if I have to make any adjustments to Windows 2000 after I add more ram? I know the system recognizes the extra ram, but I thought I might have to manually set the page file or something?

 

[thegimp03]

Have you made sure that fast-writes are off Mister Dark? Boot into the bios and make sure they are off, because they will cause some stuttering. Your system should run that game fine on those settings.

 

[Mister Dark]

Thanks for the response, thegimpo3. Before I added more ram I tried turning off fastwrites but didn't notice much of a difference. I'll try it again. I've heard that turning off sideband addressing helps too but my BIOS won't let me do it ...

Adding more ram has definitely benefited my system overall. Windows and webpages load much faster now.

Also, in case anyone is interested, I changed the size of my minimum and maximum page file and that seems to have helped as well ...

 

[Gamingphreek]

Also what drivers are you using. See the drivers thread for the latest drivers.

-Kevin

 

[Mister Dark]

I'm using the 66.77 drivers ... I tried the latest beta driver (there's a thread about it here) but it corrupted the graphics in Doom III ... Still that's a good suggestion. I need to experiment with different drivers and check the results.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Check the driver thread. There are plenty of better drivers there. I would first go for the 67.03, then 67.02, the 66.93, adn 66.81. If all those fail trythe 70.90's.

(I know there is a thread about the drivers here, i wrote it )

-Kevin

 

[Mister Dark]

Just downloaded the 67.02 driver, Gamingphreek, so we'll give those a spin ...