Doom 3 at 1600x1200 except when this happens...

[HappyFunBall]

For the heck of it, I tried setting doom 3 to 16x12 at the high quality setting on an amd xp 2500+, NVidea 5900, 1 gig ram, etc, and it ACTUALLY RAN WELL... EXCEPT..

Whenever there's a scene where "warping" occurs, my framerate drops to 5 fps or less. Basically, when there are scenes like those little control rooms with glass windows, or when those demons hurl fireballs at you.

If you study what's going on, you'll notice that glass causes whatever is seen through it, to get distorted. When there's scenes with fire (fireballs, floating heads, etc), the flame makes the surrounding air "warped", like a heat effect.

Well, anytime this happens, at every single quality setting, and every resolution except for 640x480, my game slows to a crawl. As soon as I look away from the glass, fire, etc, the framerate zooms back up.

Does ANYONE know if there is a way to disable this graphical "feature"? If I could, I could play smoothly at 16x12, which pretty much blows my mind, considering there are much faster video cards, and PC"s out there.

Thanks!!

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Stupid question but... do you have the latest drivers for your video card?

 

[Yanagi]

AS ARMCHAIR said. try different drivers.

 

[bandana163]

Get the 61.77 forceware drivers.
Heat haze shouldn't cause any slowdowns.

 

[HappyFunBall]

Yep, I got the latest drivers. Just snagged them 2 days ago. I'll doublecheck, but they should be the 61.77 drivers.

Maybe I need to completely clean off the old drivers? I can't think of anything else.

The heat/glass distortion effect completely kills the game for me, literally. 640x480 is the only resolution that isn't effected by this.

I don't have any other games that react that way.. as far as slowing to a crawl based on some graphics effect.

I'm basically baffled.

 

[Boogak]

I read somewhere that only DirectX 9 cards can do that heat warping effect (I'm guessing the window warping effect is the same way), so that probably means your card's DX9 processing engine is "teh weak". Maybe a setting under "Advanced Options"? I think I remember seeing a checkbox for advanced special effects or something.

 

[HappyFunBall]

Thx for the help.

I was hoping there was some setting in the doom config file.

I set that cache? setting to 256, and my framerate went up a great deal (not for the heat/glass distortion effect).

Too bad the Doom 3 coders aren't on this thread. I'd bet they would know how to solve this in a heartbeat.

 

[HappyFunBall]

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

I was grabbing at straws, until I did this:

I went into my display settings->advanced->geforce->performance and quality settings->Show advanced settings- then scrolled down and turned on Anisotropic Optimization ON.

I went back into the game, I tried 1024x768, high quality (even tried ultimate), 2x AA, and the game runs great!! No slowdowns from fire/distortion effects. I'll post another message with a different topic so other people can try this. I can even play at 1600x1200, although it's a little slower.. but not as much as you think it would be. I can't believe I'm getting this kind of performance from a 5900... only 128mb too/non-ultra!

 

[vetteguy]

Originally posted by: HappyFunBall
PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

I was grabbing at straws, until I did this:

I went into my display settings->advanced->geforce->performance and quality settings->Show advanced settings- then scrolled down and turned on Anisotropic Optimization ON.

I went back into the game, I tried 1024x768, high quality (even tried ultimate), 2x AA, and the game runs great!! No slowdowns from fire/distortion effects. I'll post another message with a different topic so other people can try this. I can even play at 1600x1200, although it's a little slower.. but not as much as you think it would be. I can't believe I'm getting this kind of performance from a 5900... only 128mb too/non-ultra!

I was having the same problem you were (see my thread here). I enabled the setting you suggested, and for a time everything was working fine, but now it's back to chug-chug-chug whenever I encounter fire, heat, etc. I can run 1600x1200 high quality and have it be completely smooth up until I get close to a window, etc, then it drops to about 1fps. As soon as I move away, everything's fine. This is killing the game for me, as I basically can't play (can't fight monsters, because as soon as I get near a window or one throws a fireball reaction time is nill). Is there anything else I can do?

 

[Smilin]

Start | run | dxdiag

Make sure you are running DirectX 9.0b or 9.0c

 

[welst10]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Start | run | dxdiag

Make sure you are running DirectX 9.0b or 9.0c

how do i check the DirectX version on my pc?

 

[HappyFunBall]

Welst10 - do what the previous post said. Start menu->run, then type in 'dxdiag' (no quotes). On the first page of the dialog that pops up will be your directx version number.. look at the bottom of the dialog.


Vetteguy, too bad my suggestions didn't work for you. I hate when something works perfectly on one PC, and horrible on anothers (with similar hardware, etc).

I bought and Audigy 2 ZS to see if I could get better sound than my motherboard is producing, and now I have speaker or sound card problems.

Doom 3 sounds absolutely horrible.
Farcry sounds are perfect.
Line in, from my mp3 player, sounds horrible.

Horrible = LOUD pops, static, etc

It's probably the sound card, but I'd like and excuse to buy the Logitech Z-680's (if I have that number right).

I'll probably hit CC and swap this card for another and see what happens.

To confuse things further, I plugged my old 4.1 cambridge soundworks speakers in the Audigy, and they sounded fine.