Help diagnose low Doom3 frame rates with 6800GT

[jburnett100]

Howdy

AMD XP3000+, 1GB PC2100 ram, Audigy LS, 6800GT here. I have a specific performance
question in Doom3 - read on.

In the regular tight hallways, it hums along at a smooth 60fps on high quality,
1280x1024, no AA. All well and good.

But in some rooms, it'll drop down under 30fps consistently. Specific example:
go to the cafeteria right at the start of the game with the turkey puncher game
in it. If I walk just inside the door and stand with a wide view of the entire room,
it'll sit on 30FPS. Other rooms are worse, like the very first room in the game - 20
fps or less.

My question is: what's causing the low frame rates in the bigger rooms? It can't
be the 6800gt, can it? If not, then what? Are big rooms with lots of objects extra
CPU intensive, memory intensive, or something else? I'll be trying out some PC2700
ram in the next day or two, but I can't see that making up 30fps in those rooms...

BTW, AGP aperture is 256MB, com_videoram is forced to 256, image_cachemegs is at
256, vsync on or off doesn't matter, latest drivers all around except NVidia is 61.76. No
difference with 61.77 or the one beta I tried.

Thanks in advance.

--
Jason

 

[drsatan]

make sure that seta_useimagecache (i'm not quite sure on the exact setting name) is set to 1 and not 0. If you havn't already done so, try running driver cleaner and reinstalling the whql 61.77's. I had the same issues with my 6800 GT before I ran a good driver sweep and adjusted the Doom 3 config file.

 

[apoppin]

what are your OTHER benchs like?
what card did you have B4 the GT?
make SURE the old (non nvidia) drivers are completely UNinstalled

try different (earlier) drivers

Turn v-synch OFF! (you should see a difference)

what Doom setting are you running - HiQ? it is automatically 8xAF

edit: try running the doom timedemo1 and report back the results . . . no, it shouldn't be the GT; probably your BIOS settings or left-over drivers.

 

[JBT]

run "timedemo demo1 1" and give us your results. Run this with Vsync off btw.

 

[vetteguy]

Quick question-do you experience the slowdowns more when looking at a window/heat haze? If so, PM me.

 

[jburnett100]

Ok, to answer everyone:

image_usecache is set to 1 in autoexec.cfg
I uninstalled the driver, ran driver cleaner and cab cleaner, and reinstalled the driver
I'm at 1280x1024 high quality, no vsync, no AA
3dmark03 reports 9600 stock and 10,600 with GPU at 400MHz
I get 60+ fps looking out the window
heat haze seems to have no effect
It always drops below 30fps when there are a lot of objects
in the room.

--
Jason

 

[kylebisme]

the thing is you are running at 60hz with vsync on; and since nvidia doesn't give you a way to force triple buffering in opengl when your framerate will always drops half your refresh rate, a third of your refresh rate, and so on. either up your refres rate so it doesn't drop so low or turn of vsync, both of which suck in my opinion but it is up to you to deside which you prefer.

 

[Leon]

Check the vsync settings in Nvidia control panel (under OpenGL).

Leon

 

[jburnett100]

I have a flat panel with DVI, so refresh rate is not applicable. Same deal whether
vsync is forced to off via the nvidia drivers or set to off in D3.

BTW, I found I had one DDR266 DIMM and one DDR333 DIMM. I'm now all
DDR333 with 333 forced in the bios and it boosted the timedemo frame rate
from 41fps to 49fps.

But it didn't affect the room-specific frame rate troubles.

Would screenshots help?

--
Jason

 

[jburnett100]

Interesting... It doesn't matter what quality or resolution I set it to.
I get 20fps in the first room of the game, 25 in the cafeteria, etc.

Exactly thesame fps in 640x480 medium quality as in 1280x1024
high quality with 4xAA, all throughout the beginning of the game.

I'm starting to think a Win2k reinstall is in order. It's been a while...

Just to check my sanity, can y'all fire up a new game, don't move from
where you spawn, look up at the hovering ship, and tell me what
frame rate you're getting? does it change at all as you look around
the room?

--
Jason

 

[kylebisme]

looks like you are just cpu limited, what kind of cpu are you useing?

 

[BFG10K]

How is your performance in other games? Do have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers installed for your system?

 

[jburnett100]

I have an Athlon XP 3000+, not overclocked. I could see being somewhat CPU limited, but
not so much that I'd be stuck at 18fps in the first room of the game...

Latest bios, latest chipset drivers, BTW.

Someone with a similar class of system, how many fps do you get in the transport
bay at the start of the game, looking up at all the lights?

--
Jason

 

[Keysplayr]

Would you happen to have an extra "worthy" hard drive laying around? For the purpose of a fresh operating system install. Start from scratch. Sometimes its the only way to make sure all previous drivers are out of your system. Driver Cleaner is good but sometimes it just doesn't cut it.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: jburnett100
I have an Athlon XP 3000+, not overclocked. I could see being somewhat CPU limited, but
not so much that I'd be stuck at 18fps in the first room of the game...

Latest bios, latest chipset drivers, BTW.

Someone with a similar class of system, how many fps do you get in the transport
bay at the start of the game, looking up at all the lights?

--
Jason

ok, there goes the cpu limited theory. i have an xp @ 3000+ with a 9700pro here that pulls about 40fps looking up at all the lights in that first room.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

Originally posted by: jburnett100
I have an Athlon XP 3000+, not overclocked. I could see being somewhat CPU limited, but
not so much that I'd be stuck at 18fps in the first room of the game...

Latest bios, latest chipset drivers, BTW.

Someone with a similar class of system, how many fps do you get in the transport
bay at the start of the game, looking up at all the lights?

--
Jason

ok, there goes the cpu limited theory. i have an xp @ 3000+ with a 9700pro here that pulls about 40fps looking up at all the lights in that first room.

I think it's a combination of CPU and RAM limited.

He has 1 GB of RAM at a piddly PC2100 (133 MHz DDR). Most users here have their DDR at 200-250MHz.

 

[Rage187]

Could be your sound card drivers(sounds weird but it happens)


but pretty sure its what has been stated above. That 2100 ram is killing ya.

 

[kylebisme]

he said he is up to ddr333 (pc2700) now so memory bandwidth shouldn't be holding him back that much.

 

[jburnett100]

Snowman, what chipset does your motherboard have?

 

[gizamaluke]

hey jburn, did you ever get to fix the problem? the same thing happens to me. i have a 6800gt and an athlon 64 3000 with pc3200 ram. but also, my computer seems to lag when i open doors in the game too.