***MAJOR PERFORMANCE TWEAKS FOR DOOM 3***

[bigrod]

That's always the way I have understood it. Your appeture should equal the amount of memory on the card, otherwise the other parts of the memory can't even be addressed. I don't know for sure though, that's why I was asking I guess.

 

[Andvari]

Originally posted by: bigrod
That's always the way I have understood it. Your appeture should equal the amount of memory on the card, otherwise the other parts of the memory can't even be addressed. I don't know for sure though, that's why I was asking I guess.

I googled it, and it seems that's not the case. It's like the other fella mentioned. The aperture is used when the ram on the video card is running low. So in most cases, it's probably never used at all.

EDIT: Hmm, unless it could be used for D3. If Ultra mode requires 512 video ram, and youre graphics card has 256 ram, you could set the aperture to 256 to total 512 ram. If I understood it correctly.

 

[bigrod]

Sounds good to me .

Glad to know what the appeture actually does now.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
After all tweaking, frame rates improved: 20%
With no additional overclock, or any different components, this was all using my existing system and I got 20% extra performance out of it, for free.

I call shenanigans on this. See my post in your video thread, Lonyo.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: HelloDeli
I tried the the "Cache" tweak and my game went from semi choppy to very very smooth. I have a 3500+, 1GB RAM, and 6800 GT OC.

Shenanigans.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
To change cachemegs:

Doomconfig.cfg file: (In xxx\Doom3\base\ folder)
seta image_cacheMegs "xx" (Default 20)
To change cachemegs setting.

I have no idea what it is, someone posted it as a tweak, and it worked for me, there is another thread about it somewhere.
Make xx something like 128 or 256, I found 256 didn't help too much above 128, but it didn't affect the rest of my system either, it's very responsive when I close Doom 3.

Quoted for reference for myself

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: BrunoPuntzJones

Originally posted by: Lonyo
To change cachemegs:

Doomconfig.cfg file: (In xxx\Doom3\base\ folder)
seta image_cacheMegs "xx" (Default 20)
To change cachemegs setting.

I have no idea what it is, someone posted it as a tweak, and it worked for me, there is another thread about it somewhere.
Make xx something like 128 or 256, I found 256 didn't help too much above 128, but it didn't affect the rest of my system either, it's very responsive when I close Doom 3.

Quoted for reference for myself

You're wasting your time. Unless seta image_useCache is set to "1", the setting Lonyo keeps praising will have no impact. If you enable the useCache tweak, it will cause Doom3 to fail to load. I managed to tweak another setting to get the game to load, but the benchmarks didn't improve at all.

Shenanigans.

 

[FrustratedUser]

I don't own the game yet but this will come in handy.

Hopefully it will run OK on a OC'ed AXP 2500 w/ ATI Radeon 9700 Pro.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
I don't own the game yet but this will come in handy.

Hopefully it will run OK on a OC'ed AXP 2500 w/ ATI Radeon 9700 Pro.

Stop it this tweak does nothing!! This thread should be locked.

Doom3 runs fine on a 9700PRO. I'm running at 1280 without any issues. It will very rarely dip to around 15FPS, but this is only in very intense scenes. I get ~30FPS at 1280 in the timedemo benchmark, which is a very intense segment of the game.

 

[SickBeast]

Do you guys think I'm posting this stuff for my health? This tweak does nothing, and it has been confirmed on other message boards. Carmack spent years tweaking this game; do you really think he missed something like this? No.

 

[brigden]

SickBeast is 100% right. Altering the value for cachemegs has no effect on performance whatsoever.

 

[Reliant]

Marked for later.

 

[Bucksnort]

The unpacking pak files is bs. The changing cachemegs alone is bs. BUT if you make these changes below you WILL have a smooth frame rate. I could not run 1024x768 on high due to a severe chopping, (a virtual slide show) when many monsters or action was present. After doing this I play very fluid and smooth at high on 1024x768 High. It will not boost fps in timedemo and it will not boost fps in game but it will be very smooth.
I have 1 gig ram, xp2400, 9800p Timedemo fps: 35

seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "256"
seta image_cacheMinK "20480"

Next in advanced system settings menu of the game turn on v-sync.
Now in your gl display control panel enable triple buffering by cliking on the compatability button and leave v-sync to the default setting of "default off".
Now if you had a choppy game go try it now but DONT BE LOOKING AT DEMO OR GAME FOR A MASSIVE FPS INCREASE.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

Originally posted by: Bucksnort
The unpacking pak files is bs. The changing cachemegs alone is bs. BUT if you make these changes below you WILL have a smooth frame rate. I could not run 1024x768 on high due to a severe chopping, (a virtual slide show) when many monsters or action was present. After doing this I play very fluid and smooth at high on 1024x768 High. It will not boost fps in timedemo and it will not boost fps in game but it will be very smooth.
I have 1 gig ram, xp2400, 9800p Timedemo fps: 35

seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "256"
seta image_cacheMinK "20480"

Next in advanced system settings menu of the game turn on v-sync.
Now in your gl display control panel enable triple buffering by cliking on the compatability button and leave v-sync to the default setting of "default off".
Now if you had a choppy game go try it now but DONT BE LOOKING AT DEMO OR GAME FOR A MASSIVE FPS INCREASE.

Meh, I'll give it a try.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: brigden
SickBeast is 100% right. Altering the value for cachemegs has no effect on performance whatsoever.

:thumbsup:

This "tweak" was posted in another thread on AT and several other boards. I tried 20, 128, and 256. All results were within a few tenths of each other. As SickBeat said, do you guys really think Carmack missed this?

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Bucksnort
The unpacking pak files is bs. The changing cachemegs alone is bs. BUT if you make these changes below you WILL have a smooth frame rate. I could not run 1024x768 on high due to a severe chopping, (a virtual slide show) when many monsters or action was present. After doing this I play very fluid and smooth at high on 1024x768 High. It will not boost fps in timedemo and it will not boost fps in game but it will be very smooth.
I have 1 gig ram, xp2400, 9800p Timedemo fps: 35

seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "256"
seta image_cacheMinK "20480"

Next in advanced system settings menu of the game turn on v-sync.
Now in your gl display control panel enable triple buffering by cliking on the compatability button and leave v-sync to the default setting of "default off".
Now if you had a choppy game go try it now but DONT BE LOOKING AT DEMO OR GAME FOR A MASSIVE FPS INCREASE.

Um, doesn't "seta image_useCache "1"" make the game crash on load? That's what others have reported.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: Bucksnort
The unpacking pak files is bs. The changing cachemegs alone is bs. BUT if you make these changes below you WILL have a smooth frame rate. I could not run 1024x768 on high due to a severe chopping, (a virtual slide show) when many monsters or action was present. After doing this I play very fluid and smooth at high on 1024x768 High. It will not boost fps in timedemo and it will not boost fps in game but it will be very smooth.
I have 1 gig ram, xp2400, 9800p Timedemo fps: 35

seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "256"
seta image_cacheMinK "20480"

Next in advanced system settings menu of the game turn on v-sync.
Now in your gl display control panel enable triple buffering by cliking on the compatability button and leave v-sync to the default setting of "default off".
Now if you had a choppy game go try it now but DONT BE LOOKING AT DEMO OR GAME FOR A MASSIVE FPS INCREASE.

Um, doesn't "seta image_useCache "1"" make the game crash on load? That's what others have reported.

Actually if you set the cacheMinK to something higher than 2048 the game won't crash at load. I illuded to this in my post in the video forum. Why they chose 20480 I have no idea. In any event, I've tried changing the cacheMinK setting also, and this tweak had absolutely zero impact. I don't understand how some people can be claiming 20% performance increases with this so-called tweak. It does nothing.

 

[Andvari]

You're right SickBeast. These tweaks do nothing. I tried them each individually, and combined, on a fresh install of Doom 3. (uninstalled pirated copy, installed bought copy)

"timedemo demo1 1" so it would precache.
High Quality.
1024x768
Vsync enabled.

I'm using Catalyst 4.7

cfg file unchanged = 31.0 fps

cacheMegs = 30.9 fps

useCache, cacheMegs, and cacheMinK = 31.0 fps

Forcing 24-bit Z-Buffering = 31.0 fps

However, enabling Triple Buffering did honestly give me a 25% fps increase. Assuming I did the math correctly... 31fps to 39fps is a 25% increase right?

Triple Buffering = 39.0 fps

 

[MustangSVT]

how do I enable triple buffering again?

 

[Andvari]

Go in the ATI Control Panel, go to the 3D Tab. Select OpenGL. Click Compatibility. Enable Triple Buffering.

 

[MustangSVT]

Originally posted by: Andvari
Go in the ATI Control Panel, go to the 3D Tab. Select OpenGL. Click Compatibility. Enable Triple Buffering.

eh.. i have Geforce4 ti4200

 

[NeoV]

ok, playing at 1280X1024 on a P4@3ghz, 1gb pc3500 ram, and a Radeon x800 card - prior to any tweaks I got 34.5 fps on timedemo demo1 1 - Cat's 4.7, HQ settings

Enabling triple buffering changes the score to 43.6 fps - a nice increase

I'll try the 4.9's next...

 

[MustangSVT]

if none of these "tweaks" are working (so far none for me) who/why are these ppl posting them saying xx% increase in performance?

 

[xSkyDrAx]

They may work for some and not for others.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: MustangSVT
if none of these "tweaks" are working (so far none for me) who/why are these ppl posting them saying xx% increase in performance?

Because they're lying\exagerating to seem like l33t hackers.