- Sep 28, 2001
- 8,464
- 155
- 106
Hello,
i take myself the freedom to write down a mini-FAQ of what i found out so far.
I'd appreciate it if people could correct mistakes and/or contribute.
contents:
1) playing with 1GB, reducing stutters
2) bug in ge3.ini
3 in-game Anisotropic filtering does NOT work (with workaround)
1) Gothic III on 1GB machines with pointers to reduce stutters, loading times:
Lots has been said in regards to tweaking G3, and FACT is that GIII's minmum specs are 1GB of memory...so expect some stutters with only 1GB of memory.
You CAN however do lots to prepare your system to make room for the game, to squeeze out any byte you even can. (NEEDLESS to say the best solution is of course just get more memory)
- disable any Virus software, motherboard-monitor/speedfan.
- stop and disable ANY service in XP which is not necessary. You can even go to the extreme and disable ANY service related to networking too which leaves you with only 6 essential XP services running, eg. firewall. On my machine i managed it to disable 50 XP services. Reboot.
- Have a tool for windows cache management, those are essentially tools which allow you to tweak the XP file cache management, like
o&o clevercache or cachemanxp.
I set clevercache to "maximize main memory" profile. NOTE that a game usually has its OWN cacheing-system and therefore we can disable/reduce the windows filecache.
Also..both of these tools have an option "prohibit swapping of Kernel on disk" (or similiar worded)....make SURE this option is UNCHECKED because you *want* the OS to swap out the kernel to disk. We dont need that using up memory if we PLAY.
There are many tweak-utils where this is set (!) for performance reasons(so the OS does NOT swap out the kernel).....this is TRUE if you stay in windows.
But if you play a game you could care less than letting the OS using another 200MB of files "in memory" which you dont need while playing !
- what we want is AVOID heavy disk-access and stutters......so i am recommending the "Resource Cache" set to HIGH...even on a 1GB system...but make sure that your PC itself has as much free memory as possible. The more internal cache the game uses, the less there should be disk-accesses and therefore stuttering. (According to my logic). Goal: MAke as much free memory on your PC as even possible...but TRY to use the "resource cache high" setting in Gothic III. <---- this is MY opinion/understanding. feel free to correct me if you got other findings.
2) There is a bug in ge3.ini affecting people playing at "HIGH" settings, eg. with "Resource Cache High" on.
The ge3.ini file is in your main game folder/INI/ge3.ini
The line is
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000
and should be REPLACED/EDITED to:
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000
i.e add one 0 (zero) to correct this value.
report back if this does something for you.
3) Anisotropic filtering settings IN-GAME do *not* work.
At least not with my ATI X850XT.
As a sidenote i already noticed this in "Spellforce", and G3 is from the same company. I just did another test to confirm that.
The workaround is to use a 3rd party tool like "Ati Tray Tools" end create a profile for "gothic3.exe" with a d3d-profile using 16xAF, all other settings on "application preference".
You can also manually just go to the tool (or Nvidia equivalent tool)..leave anything on application preference but make sure "Anisotropic filtering" is *forced* in the control panel at 8x or 16x. Then start the game.
DEFINTLY big difference in appearance.....even with 16xAF set "in game" i get washed out textures....but doing it this way (forced with a tool) it looks MUCH nicer. This setting then overrides whatever you set in the game menu.
Edit: Or just use the ATi/Nvidia control panel options for the Aniso setting.
Thanks for contributing
i take myself the freedom to write down a mini-FAQ of what i found out so far.
I'd appreciate it if people could correct mistakes and/or contribute.
contents:
1) playing with 1GB, reducing stutters
2) bug in ge3.ini
3 in-game Anisotropic filtering does NOT work (with workaround)
1) Gothic III on 1GB machines with pointers to reduce stutters, loading times:
Lots has been said in regards to tweaking G3, and FACT is that GIII's minmum specs are 1GB of memory...so expect some stutters with only 1GB of memory.
You CAN however do lots to prepare your system to make room for the game, to squeeze out any byte you even can. (NEEDLESS to say the best solution is of course just get more memory)
- disable any Virus software, motherboard-monitor/speedfan.
- stop and disable ANY service in XP which is not necessary. You can even go to the extreme and disable ANY service related to networking too which leaves you with only 6 essential XP services running, eg. firewall. On my machine i managed it to disable 50 XP services. Reboot.
- Have a tool for windows cache management, those are essentially tools which allow you to tweak the XP file cache management, like
o&o clevercache or cachemanxp.
I set clevercache to "maximize main memory" profile. NOTE that a game usually has its OWN cacheing-system and therefore we can disable/reduce the windows filecache.
Also..both of these tools have an option "prohibit swapping of Kernel on disk" (or similiar worded)....make SURE this option is UNCHECKED because you *want* the OS to swap out the kernel to disk. We dont need that using up memory if we PLAY.
There are many tweak-utils where this is set (!) for performance reasons(so the OS does NOT swap out the kernel).....this is TRUE if you stay in windows.
But if you play a game you could care less than letting the OS using another 200MB of files "in memory" which you dont need while playing !
- what we want is AVOID heavy disk-access and stutters......so i am recommending the "Resource Cache" set to HIGH...even on a 1GB system...but make sure that your PC itself has as much free memory as possible. The more internal cache the game uses, the less there should be disk-accesses and therefore stuttering. (According to my logic). Goal: MAke as much free memory on your PC as even possible...but TRY to use the "resource cache high" setting in Gothic III. <---- this is MY opinion/understanding. feel free to correct me if you got other findings.
2) There is a bug in ge3.ini affecting people playing at "HIGH" settings, eg. with "Resource Cache High" on.
The ge3.ini file is in your main game folder/INI/ge3.ini
The line is
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000
and should be REPLACED/EDITED to:
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000
i.e add one 0 (zero) to correct this value.
report back if this does something for you.
3) Anisotropic filtering settings IN-GAME do *not* work.
At least not with my ATI X850XT.
As a sidenote i already noticed this in "Spellforce", and G3 is from the same company. I just did another test to confirm that.
The workaround is to use a 3rd party tool like "Ati Tray Tools" end create a profile for "gothic3.exe" with a d3d-profile using 16xAF, all other settings on "application preference".
You can also manually just go to the tool (or Nvidia equivalent tool)..leave anything on application preference but make sure "Anisotropic filtering" is *forced* in the control panel at 8x or 16x. Then start the game.
DEFINTLY big difference in appearance.....even with 16xAF set "in game" i get washed out textures....but doing it this way (forced with a tool) it looks MUCH nicer. This setting then overrides whatever you set in the game menu.
Edit: Or just use the ATi/Nvidia control panel options for the Aniso setting.
Thanks for contributing
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