How fast is Radeon 9700 Pro supposed to be in RtCW?

[Goi]

Hi guys,
I have a P4 2.4B clocked to 3023MHz with 1GB PC3200 memory running at 420MHz(2.5-6-2-2) on a GA-8PE667 i845E motherboard, and an original ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Sometimes, during RtCW, my framerates drop down to 20-30+FPS, I'm wondering if that's normal? I'm playing at 1024x768 resolution, with the highest in-game quality settings, 4XFSAA, 8XAF and highest texture/mipmap detail in the Control Panel. DX9 and Catalyst 3.0 drivers are installed.

 

[Pacfanweb]

Your fps should pretty much stay at or near the max the game allows (90, I think?) with those settings in single-player mode. Multiplayer is a different story, as ping enters into the equation.

 

[Goi]

I'm only playing single player...I have com_maxfps set to 0, so it doesn't limit me to 85, which is the default. Most of the time my FPS is decent, above 100FPS, sometimes even 200+, but it drops down to 20 or 30+FPS in some places, especially open areas. I guess the Q3A engine isn't well suited to open areas. Also, There's this map where I'm in a tunnel. I look to the wall on the right and my FPS shoots way up, which it should, since I'm staring at a blank wall. However, I look to the wall on the left and my FPS drops to 2-digit. I guess the HSR isn't working very well here...and the rendering engine is drawing all the pixels and geometry behind the wall on the left hand side of that particular map.

 

[BFG10K]

I run the game at 1600 x 1200 x 32 with 16x fast anisotropic, everything on max except disabled shadows and I have to see it drop below 70 FPS. Your scores sound a bit low but I'm not sure how your settings compare to mine. It looks like they might be more demanding, especially if you're using quality anisotropic instead of fast. On the other hand though, 1024 x 768 is quite a low resolution so there might be an issue with your system.

How's the performance in your other games?

 

[Goi]

Hmmn, I thought it was pretty low. I'm using 8X quality AF, but I just switched it to 16X performance AF, hopefully that'll speed things up a bit.

I'm getting really good framerates in Q3A. At the same settings, my FPS is like routinely over 200+FPS, and if I stare at a wall it can go above 500FPS, causing my connection to get interrupted sometimes. That's why I upped the resolution to 1280x1024 and I'm still routinely getting over 100+FPS at least. Since its based on the same engine, I was wondering why RtCW is getting such comparatively low framerates...

 

[idNut]

Mine doesn't drop like that but in some rooms like this one in Chateu the framerate will drop to about 50 for no reason, Radeon's are strange.

 

[BFG10K]

I'm using 8X quality AF, but I just switched it to 16X performance AF, hopefully that'll speed things up a bit.

Try turning off shadows too as that'll help quite a bit.

That's why I upped the resolution to 1280x1024 and I'm still routinely getting over 100+FPS at least.

Might I suggest 1600 x 1200? Trust me, I'm a hardcore framerate fanatic and the 9700 Pro is plenty fast for me at that setting. I'm yielding close to 220 FPS average in demo four at those settings.

Since its based on the same engine, I was wondering why RtCW is getting such comparatively low framerates...

RTCW is much more demanding than Quake3 is.

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

I'm using 8X quality AF, but I just switched it to 16X performance AF, hopefully that'll speed things up a bit.

Try turning off shadows too as that'll help quite a bit.

That's why I upped the resolution to 1280x1024 and I'm still routinely getting over 100+FPS at least.

Might I suggest 1600 x 1200? Trust me, I'm a hardcore framerate fanatic and the 9700 Pro is plenty fast for me at that setting. I'm yielding close to 220 FPS average in demo four at those settings.

Since its based on the same engine, I was wondering why RtCW is getting such comparatively low framerates...

RTCW is much more demanding than Quake3 is.

What exactly are you settings(in-game as well as windows display settings). I don't think I'm getting 200+FPS average even at 1024x768, at least the last time I did a timedemo, but that was a while back.

 

[TheWart]

Also, sound makes a big difference in RTCW framerates, so be sure that you do not have like EAX on.

 

[BFG10K]

Goi, make sure you have the latest chipset drivers for your system - most people forget these for Intel chipsets and then get very poor performance as a result.

What exactly are you settings(in-game as well as windows display settings

For both Quake3 and RTCW I use maximum settings for everything except I disable shadows and I don't use 3D sound, and I also use texture compression. I also disable com_maxFPS.

In the driver control panel I move both the mipmap and texture sliders to maximum and I use 16x performance anisotropic. I also disable FSAA, truform and vsync.

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Goi, make sure you have the latest chipset drivers for your system - most people forget these for Intel chipsets and then get very poor performance as a result.

What exactly are you settings(in-game as well as windows display settings

For both Quake3 and RTCW I use maximum settings for everything except I disable shadows and I don't use 3D sound, and I also use texture compression. I also disable com_maxFPS.

In the driver control panel I move both the mipmap and texture sliders to maximum and I use 16x performance anisotropic. I also disable FSAA, truform and vsync.

I do have the latest intel application accelerator and INF update utility, I'm not sure of other chipset drivers for the i845PE.

My settings are largely the same as yours, except I'm on 4X FSAA and shadows enabled, so I guess that's why my framerates are different. Q3A doesn't even support 3D sound, and I didn't see any 3D sound setting in RtCW either, so both are disabled. I only have "high quality sound" enabled.

Btw happy new year guys...