If you are getting crappy FPS in UT2K3....

[Smilin]

This was posted in another thread somewhere but buried.

*** Turn OFF your hardware 3D sound. ***

I'm using a Live! 5.1 and I've heard from Audigy users as well. I'm beating my head against the wall trying to figure out why I'm getting 'average' framerates with a Radeon 9700 Pro. I got another 20 FPS just by switching to software 3D sound. Something may be wrong with the sound code in UT2K3.

Hope this helps someone out there.

 

[cmdrdredd]

lemme try that with my hercules gametheater

 

[cmdrdredd]

nope...I use 3d sound + EAX and get the same FPS as other sound methods

 

[Brian48]

How are you determining your benchmarks? The normal, built-in benchmark.exe utility with the UT2003 demo ignores the sound settings (as well as OpenGL for that matter). Are you running the individual .bat files?

When running a benchmark without the utility, I found that I get about a 35-40% decrease in performance when using HW 3d audio whether I'm using a ti4600 or a 9700Pro. I've tested this with my Audigy, my Acoustic Edge, and my Santa Cruz (which uses the same CS4630 as the Herc GTXP) and they all took a performance nosedive when HW is enabled.

 

[vss1980]

Yeah, I did that yesterday myself and noticed a big speed increase. Was gonna post once I benchmarked the difference, but haven't got around to doing that yet. But, it does make a big difference.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
lemme try that with my hercules gametheater



nope...I use 3d sound + EAX and get the same FPS as other sound methods

lol, of course you do, thats becasue you didnt buy a fat lazy sound card from a fat lazy company like creative labs

 

[vss1980]

OK, got some benchmark results.

Computer Spec:
Duron 900 @ 1050MHz (140MHz FSB)
Abit KT7A (v1.3)
256MB Crucial PC133 RAM
Windows XP
Geforce DDR @ stock speed
SB Live! with latest SB driver (not Windows Update driver) dated 17th July 2002

Patched UT2003 Demo results:

min / average / max fps

Software 3D:
dm-antalus
14.246051 / 28.435907 / 58.733757 fps
Score = 28.455732

br-anubis
16.624786 / 40.320992 / 74.216156 fps
Score = 40.340420

Hardware 3D:
dm-antalus
10.090744 / 20.063120 / 40.749531 fps
Score = 20.071943

br-anubis
12.460136 / 28.943920 / 47.080616 fps
Score = 28.961233

Hardware 3D + EAX:
dm-antalus
10.534564 / 20.067602 / 42.090870 fps
Score = 20.078844

br-anubis
13.097428 / 29.057392 / 49.269928 fps
Score = 29.074318

Safe-Mode:
dm-antalus
14.321988 / 29.437492 / 60.295918 fps
Score = 29.453682

br-anubis
18.594841 / 41.385803 / 75.453117 fps
Score = 41.408051

It would be good if someone with an Audigy card did the same benchmarks as this, as the Hardware 3D + EAX option should be much better suited to Audigy cards (ie. EAX HD) according to the demo readme information.

In terms of sound quality Hardware 3D is a little bit better than Software 3D, but even on my Live! the Hardware 3D + EAX option was in a different league regarding the quality of sound placement. It wasn't so much the quality of the actual sound playback, it was the audio positioning that was significantly better (but that is to be expected of course). Unfortunately the same option was also in a different league with performance, ie. the 'little league' along with the normal Hardware 3D option.

A real surprise turned out to be Safe Mode. In terms of sound placement and quality of the sounds as they are played back, it is a little lacking, but overall isn't too shabby. The positioning is pretty much basic stereo and the quality of the sound samples sounds a little rougher, but the gap compared to Software 3D isn't as big as it is moving from Software/Hardware 3D to Hardware 3D+EAX. As far as I can figure this must be similar to the sound playback in UT anyway without the Hardware 3D acceleration option switched on.
I suppose that if your trying to play on a computer with nothing special sound card, speakers or a laptop, it isn't a bad option to use to get that little extra speed as you may not miss the extra that Software 3D gives you.

Edit: oh yeah, the reason I picked those specific benchmark maps is because they were both a good contrast. The DM map had a lot of action going on and made a lot of use of positional audio whereas the BR (bombing run) map timedemo had less on screen action and hence less mixing of sounds from different positions.

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

Is this Hardware/Software 3D sound a setting in the game, or my driver? I use Acoustic Edge.

benchmark.exe results:

Flyby: 96.94
Botmatch: 38.86

Athlon T-bird 1.2 @ 1350
GF3 Ti200 @ 200/470

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
lemme try that with my hercules gametheater



nope...I use 3d sound + EAX and get the same FPS as other sound methods

lol, of course you do, thats becasue you didnt buy a fat lazy sound card from a fat lazy company like creative labs

heh...could be

 

[nardvark]

I had a similar problem with UT and my Live! Value card.
For some reason, by default, both Direct3D sound and Hardware were enabled.
I was getting a really weird double echo effect and my fps were real low.
Going through the command prompt and manually disabling one or the other fixed the problem, and the game ran real smooth after that.
Actually, it was a fairly common problem amongst people with soundblaster cards...

 

[vss1980]

OvErHeAtInG, its an option in the UT2K3 game itself. You can find it under settings -> audio.

 

[vss1980]

Oh yeah, I probably should have pointed this out before, but benchmark.exe in the UT2003/system/ folder is useless for testing the differences between sound options as it runs the game with its own visual detail and sound settings hence it will yield no difference whatever you manually set the options to in the game.

This may explain why some of you kept getting the same results no matter what you tried because it was just being ignored. I doubt that any sound card can run 2 different sound detail options at equal speed (well not yet anyway).

Anyway, to actually benchmark the changes:
1) Set the game up as desired to benchmark whichever aspect
2) Exit the game
3) Go into the UT2003Demo/benchmark folder
4) Erase the benchmark log files that are there if they are there so as to avoid confusion of results (these should be text files - DO NOT ERASE THE BAT FILES!!!!!)
5) Run one of the BAT script files and that will do a timed run through the demo and record the results (I ran botmatch-antalus and botmatch-anubis.)
6) In the text file created called 'lowframerate.txt' will be the fps results for whatever settings you set for the game.

I would actually be interested to see what people get with the different settings on different sound cards such as cmdrdredd or someone with an audigy card. Hopefully the same sort of pattern will happen as in my results above.

 

[Brian48]

I actually posted this at another forum, but here's my results playing around with the sound options.

1280x1024x32, w/MAX settings:

DM-Anatalus - Direct3D - Software 3D enabled
21.628569 / 51.404018 / 96.431549 fps
Score = 51.428066

DM-Anatalus - Direct3D - HW 3D enabled
16.641504 / 36.796535 / 73.732719 fps
Score = 36.811890

DM-Anatalus - Direct3D - HW 3D enabled + EAX
16.743950 / 36.804096 / 68.401817 fps
Score = 36.819504

This is with my fastest machine (which was using a ti4600 at the time) using a Philips Acoustic Edge. I don't have any results saved, but I got similiar results with my machines using the Audigy and Santa Cruz. I should also mention that HW audio sounds terrible in all the machines except the Audigy. Obviously Epic ignored testing of all the other brands of sound cards during development.

 

[oldfart]

When you are testing, do not use benchmark.exe. If you look at any of the flyby.bat files, they use the -nosound switch. If you dont hear sound, it not a valid test.

I tested with the botmatch-antalus.bat. I have a Santa Cruz in this system.
My results:

safemode
24.608753 / 51.295815 / 108.888763 fps
Score = 51.330235

software3D
24.773159 / 50.657429 / 107.251686 fps
Score = 50.695457

HW3D
19.434095 / 41.502586 / 85.313965 fps
Score = 41.530064

HW3D+EAX
19.209101 / 41.358910 / 81.658638 fps
Score = 41.385777

I'll be using SW3D!

 

[Smilin]

Just one bump.


Oh yeah I'll mention one thing. I use the batch files in the benchmarking folder and I DON'T delete the log. New scores are simply appended to this text file so you can still make changes to the file without screwing anything up. It's really nice to put a description in like "1280x1023 4xAA 16xAF Software Sound..." and then run your benchmark.

At the end of the day when you've tested a bajillion configs you have a nice documented record.

Anyone know the hack to get the announcer in Bombing Run to STFU?

 

[Rado45]

Thx a lot for the advice! I was having pretty miserable performance on my Athlon Tbird 900 + Geforce2 gts (soundcard : creative PCI 128), even with everything on lowest settings. I thought something wasnt right especially with all the people saying how well the game ran on low spec machines. I can crank up some options now and play much more comfy now

 

[vss1980]

Yeah Smilin, I noticed that also in the log files (benchmark.exe also leaves its results in there and probably uses an average or some other calculations to come up with its flyby and botmatch scores), but didn't comment on that so as not to confuse things for some people - was more interested in getting the numbers - and my earlier post is a near carbon copy of what my log file looked like.

In a way I prefer the way the new UT2K3 demo records things such as timedemo results, just a shame it isn't as easy to get running like that in the game itself....